Margaret Thatcher

Just who – or what – are the men in suits?

1 June 2019 9:00 am

After he invented the term young fogey (in The Spectator in 1984), the much lamented journalist Alan Watkins coined the…

Geoffrey Hill. Credit: Peter Everard Smith

Last lines on Brexit from Geoffrey Hill

25 May 2019 9:00 am

In 2012 OUP published Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems; they could have waited, because they’re now going to need another edition.…

summer of biden

Are you ready for the Summer of Biden?

6 May 2019 8:37 am

Ah Biden, Sleepy Joe, the gaffe machine from Scranton, Penn. He’s familiar to everyone, but an unknown quantity as a…

Backing Mrs Thatcher

27 April 2019 9:00 am

From ‘Be brave’, 28 April 1979: We can think of a number of reasons why voters might feel reluctant to…

It’s not science I don’t trust – it’s the scientists

25 August 2018 9:00 am

Everyone knows the real reason people like Donald Trump are sceptical of climate change is that conservatives are fundamentally anti-science.…

The Spectator’s notes

23 September 2017 9:00 am

Sir David Norgrove, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), is an honourable man. When he publicly rebuked Boris…

Algy Cluff on Margaret Thatcher, Robert Mugabe and Brexit

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Former Spectator owner Algy Cluff on Margaret Thatcher, Robert Mugabe and Brexit

From Grayson Perry’s Sketchbooks

Self-portrait as Margaret Thatcher in a pink power-suit — by Grayson Perry

16 April 2016 9:00 am

Well, he’s back. Though you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d never been away. Fresh from delivering the Reith lectures, exhibitions…

To believe in Brexit, you have to be an oik like me or Michael Gove

12 March 2016 9:00 am

If you need to know how properly posh you are there’s a very simple test: are you pro- or anti-Brexit?…

Charles Moore vs David Hare: a one-act play

12 December 2015 9:00 am

  Charles Moore and David Hare sit in the editor’s office at The Spectator, Hare on a brown leather chesterfield,…

Wear The Fox Hat looks innocent enough but try saying it in an Irish accent

12 December 2015 9:00 am

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s image never quite recovered in many people’s view from the photograph of him picking up his…

Charles Moore’s Notes: Why the V&A needs Thatcher’s clothes

7 November 2015 9:00 am

It is good to learn that the current management of the V&A want to reverse their predecessors’ lack of interest…

Justin Trudeau and four more hereditary prime ministers

7 November 2015 9:00 am

Family business Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Trudeau, was elected to his father’s old job as Prime Minister of Canada.…

Charles Moore’s Notes: The government needs someone who knows how Parliament works

29 October 2015 9:00 am

An enjoyable aspect of parliamentary rules and conventions is that almost no one understands them. This has become acutely true…

Feminism is over, the battle is won. Time to move on

24 October 2015 9:00 am

Victory has left 21st-century feminists in a morass of social-media sniping

David Cameron’s place in the premier league of Tory history

3 October 2015 9:00 am

Where will David Cameron rank among Tory prime ministers?

Will anyone fight, fight and fight again to save what’s left of New Labour?

26 September 2015 8:00 am

Five years ago this Saturday, Ed Miliband was crowned Labour leader. Three days later, he had to deliver his first…

Why I’ve finally given up on the left

19 September 2015 8:00 am

I cannot be part of a movement run by half-educated fanatics

‘I was facing truths I didn’t particularly want to look at’: Michael Moorcock interview

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Cult novelist Michael Moorcock on fantasy, his father, and the London he loved and lost

William Waldegrave: too nice ever to have been PM

25 July 2015 9:00 am

‘Lobbying,’ writes William Waldegrave in this extraordinary memoir, ‘takes many forms.’ But he has surely reported a variant hitherto unrecorded…

Selling power: a Spitting Image Thatcher puppet

Which political souvenirs are worth hanging on to

18 July 2015 9:00 am

My first reaction on hearing of Margaret Thatcher’s death in 2013 was: ‘Great — now my autograph from her will…

The wonderful, vanishing world of the handwritten letter

4 July 2015 9:00 am

In praise of the old-fashioned letter-writer

The most powerful man in classical music

27 June 2015 9:00 am

When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…

Charles Moore’s notes: The anti-EU camp need to be sure what No means

20 June 2015 9:00 am

It is natural to assume that, if a majority votes No in the referendum on Britain’s EU membership, we shall…

The last Europe vote, 40 years on

13 June 2015 9:00 am

Forty years on The forthcoming EU referendum has rekindled memories of the in-out Common Market referendum of 1975. But it…