Hilary Mantel
My Negroni-soaked lunch with Laurence Olivier
Breakfast is my preferred meal, in case you’re interested. I broke my fast this week with my walking laser-light of…
Marks out of ten
Like a weary schoolmaster toiling over his pupils’ homework, Peter Kemp dispenses praise, encouragement or reproof to modern fiction’s big-hitters
Trump tried to bribe my daughter-in-law
You have to give it to Donald Trump: he never stops trying. In a letter dated 25 September, he wrote…
How to go clubbing without leaving your living room
To my surprise, what I miss most about life before the lockdown are parties. As others pine for restaurants and…
From Middlemarch to Mickey Mouse: a short history of The Spectator’s books and arts pages
The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby
Perhaps we are all communists now
‘I am a columnist for the Daily Telegraph,’ I began a text message to an NHS executive last week. Due…
The government’s zero-carbon policies will do harm to Britain’s beautiful landscapes
The government is trying to get onshore windfarms going again, defying the damage they do to unique environments. I am…
What have you changed your mind about? A Spectator Christmas survey
Grayson Perry In 1992 I created a graphic novel called Cycle of Violence. Reading it now, the initially striking thing…
Diarmaid MacCulloch delves deep into the soul of Thomas Cromwell – administrator, henchman and evangelical
The final moments of Hilary Mantel’s magnificent Wolf Hall see its central protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, trying to banish ghosts. Assailed…
Paul Ewen’s Francis Plug is the saviour of comic fiction
Such was the perceived low standard of the 62 books recently submitted for the 2018 Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction,…
The Spectator’s notes
We went to the first night of the Proms last week. Thinking it was all over, we left the auditorium…
Books aren’t medicine. They’re more powerful than that
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
Long before Twitter, Wogan offered continuous conversation
For once, the superlatives that have greeted Terry Wogan’s death from cancer have been entirely in keeping with the man.…
History is the art of making things up. Why pretend otherwise?
In a recent interview, the celebrity historian and Tudor expert David Starkey described Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall as a ‘deliberate…
Without childhood traumas, how did Alan Bennett ever become a writer?
‘So — take heart,’ said Alan Bennett, sending us out from his play, Cocktail Sticks, on a cheery note. The…
The Thomas Cromwell plays would be stronger if they made him weaker
Three things you might not expect of the RSC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels. First, Mike Poulton’s plays have…
Angel, by Elizabeth Taylor - review
‘She wrote fiction?’ Even today, with the admirable ladies at Virago nearly finished reissuing her dozen novels, Elizabeth Taylor remains…
How to think like Chekhov or Turgenev
Immersion is the key to adaptation says Mike Poulton, who is bringing Turgenev and Hilary Mantel’s novels to the stage
