Scotland
Scotland’s fate is more important than David Cameron’s
‘It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.’ So wrote P.G.…
Dear Mary: Do I grass on my son’s schoolfriend?
Q. My son was invited, both verbally and via Facebook, to a schoolfriend’s 16th birthday party. However, when I met…
Andrew Marr's diary: Ruins on Crete and a spat with Alex Salmond
A week away in Crete: I’ve come for the archaeology and culture — little patches of Minos, ancient Greece, Byzantium and…
Shakespeare invented Britain. Now he can save it
Shakespeare defined our united national culture – and now he can help save it
Portrait of the week
Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made ‘a commitment to fight for full employment in Britain’ and for…
Pick of the crime novels
Stuart MacBride’s new novel, A Song for the Dying (HarperCollins, £16.99, Spectator Bookshop, £14.99), is markedly darker in tone than…
It’s time that Scotland’s timid posh folk spoke out
I took part in a documentary about Scottishness a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t bad at all. I mused,…
The Spectator's notes: What shall we call the Country Formerly Known as Britain?
Last week, David Cameron said that we have ‘seven months to save the most extraordinary country in history’. He meant…
Alexander McCall Smith’s diary: Meeting Babar’s creator
As any author will tell you, literary festivals differ widely. If you are invited to Willy Dalrymple’s Jaipur Festival, with…
How Alex Salmond could lose his referendum and still wreck the United Kingdom
From a kind of torpor about this year’s Scottish referendum, Lord Lang of Monkton has roused me. You may remember…
The Spectator's Notes: French presidents used to have a touch of the monarch. Not any more
When I interviewed Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former president of France, for my biography of Margaret Thatcher, I asked him…
Mugabe envy in Scotland
Who owns Scotland? The people who most commonly ask this question believe that the land has been wrested from ordinary…
A girl, a train and a miniature pistol: how I met the Everly Brothers
I had five decades of delight with the Everly Brothers – and it all began on the Flying Scotsman
David Cameron is betraying Scotland's Unionists
Cameron is betraying Scotland’s Unionists
George Galloway's one-man mission to save the Union
Can George Galloway keep Scotland in Britain?
How to make money from the Scottish referendum
An investor’s guide to the Scottish referendum
Drink: the romance of fall
The fall: one of the few instances where American English is superior to English English. ‘Autumn’ has a comfortable charm,…
Why we should fear the new housing bubble
It’s senseless to ask how things are going to end, because things as a general rule don’t. They rumble on,…
