Mexico

Why has Leonora Carrington still not had a big exhibition?

7 September 2024 9:00 am

‘It had nothing to endow it with the title of studio at all,’ was Edward James’s first impression of Leonora…

Mother of mysteries: Rosarita, by Anita Desai, reviewed

27 July 2024 9:00 am

On a break in Mexico, a young Indian woman is regaled with stories of her mother’s past by a total stranger. But is it all a con?

On the road with Danny Lyon

30 March 2024 9:00 am

The celebrated photojournalist describes his peripatetic youth recording revolution in Haiti, hunger and homelessness in Mexico and the civil rights movement in the US

How ever did the inbred Habsburgs control their vast empire?

16 March 2024 9:00 am

For centuries, a line of mentally retarded monarchs managed extraordinary feats of engineering across the world against all odds

The problem with trying to resuscitate dying languages

9 March 2024 9:00 am

Ross Perlin is determined to support the ‘last speakers’ of endangered tongues, such as Seke. But if these speakers really are the last, they are not, in any real sense, speaking

Fast and furious: America Fantastica, by Tim O’Brien, reviewed

9 December 2023 9:00 am

As the avalanche of lies issuing from the White House morphs into the pandemic, Covid becomes in an engine of justice in this rollicking satire on Trumpworld

Bags of charm and a gripping plot: Netflix’s The Chosen One reviewed

19 August 2023 9:00 am

Some years ago, Mark Millar (the creator of Kick-Ass, Kingsman, etc.) hit on yet another brilliant conceit for one of…

The ‘historic’ national dishes which turn out to be artful PR exercises

19 August 2023 9:00 am

Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade

Mexico is no country for journalists

26 February 2022 9:00 am

I’m writing this on my last day in Mexico City, having accompanied my 18-year-old daughter here for the first week…

Over the rainbow: D.H. Lawrence’s search for a new way of life

22 May 2021 9:00 am

Philip Hensher describes D.H. Lawrence’s restless search of a new way of life

Playing devil’s advocate: a Mexican historian defends the Conquistadors

17 October 2020 9:00 am

Many books claim to describe junctures that changed the world but few examine ones as consequential as Conquistadores: A New…

I won’t read American Dirt – but not because the author has the wrong skin colour

7 February 2020 10:00 pm

Readers of The Spectator who keep up with the latest literary hissy fits could have predicted (perhaps with a groan)…

Donald Trump one-front trade war

Donald Trump’s one-front trade war

22 May 2019 5:15 pm

At 12:01 a.m. on Monday, President Donald Trump went a long way toward defusing a potential war – not with…

Credit: Getty Images

Love in a time of people-trafficking: Among the Lost, by Emiliano Monge, reviewed

12 January 2019 9:00 am

From the very first pages of Among the Lost, we’re engaged, and compromised. Estela and Epitafio are our main anchors,…

Nothing much happens, yet there is so much to watch: Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma. [Photograph: Carlos Somonte/Netflix]

Nothing much happens, yet there’s so much to watch: Roma reviewed

8 December 2018 9:00 am

Roma is the latest film from Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity,Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and…

Mass immigration has destroyed hopes of a borderless society

30 June 2018 9:00 am

What kind of a president would build a wall to keep out families dreaming of a better life? It’s a…

‘Self-portrait on the border between Mexico and the United States of America’, 1932, Frida Kahlo

How good a painter was Frida Kahlo?

30 June 2018 9:00 am

In 2004 Mexican art historians made a sensational discovery in Frida Kahlo’s bathroom. Inside this space, sealed since the 1950s,…

A local leader of the Mara gang (photo: Getty)

The new mafias that rule the world

30 January 2016 9:00 am

You may not have heard of the Maras. Or Barrio 18. Or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or the Zatas,…

John Irving spoilt my Christmas

23 January 2016 9:00 am

This novel, John Irving’s 14th, took the sheen off my Christmas, and here are the reasons.   The comments on…

The war on drugs is stupid and counter-productive

18 July 2015 9:00 am

Rosalio Reta was 13 years old when recruited by a Mexican drug cartel. He was given a loyalty test —…

When Peter Phillips met E.L. James

2 May 2015 9:00 am

Tours that start in Mexico have a nasty habit of repeating on one. Of all the British groups touring in…

Why is a fish like a bicycle? Pedro Friedeberg’s letters to Duncan Fallowell may provide a clue at last

11 April 2015 9:00 am

Duncan Fallowell on the elusive Mexican artist and man-of-letters who has been his friend and faithful correspondent over many years —  though they have never met

The Heckler: why it’s time to kill off James Bond

11 April 2015 9:00 am

For fans of the franchise who remain unconvinced by Daniel Craig’s time on her majesty’s secret service, the stories leaking…

‘The Giantess’ by Leonora Carrington, currently on show at Tate Liverpool

A mad menage — and menagerie - in Mexico: the life of Leonora Carrington in fictional form

28 March 2015 9:00 am

Leonora Carrington is one of those jack-in-the-boxes who languish forgotten in the cultural toy cupboard and then pop up every…

The Etonian peer who became an assistant to a Mexican commie

18 October 2014 9:00 am

The lefty hereditary peer has few equals as a figure of fun, in life or literature. The late Tony Benn…