Travel
What Britain can learn from Romania
What Britain can learn from Romania
I’m a holidaymaker… get me out of here!
Reading about all the travel chaos, I began to regret my summer holiday plans. Wouldn’t it have been more sensible…
Antarctica: the best journey in the world
Nothing compares with Antarctica
The case for ‘premium economy’ train carriages
A few years ago I wrote here about the unexpected symbiosis between economy passengers and business travellers on commercial flights.…
The strange inspiration of the Gobi desert
The first time I went to Mongolia was in 2014, when I travelled across the country with the actress Michelle…
Why we pick the wrong holiday destinations
Having returned from a fortnight’s break, I wonder if we get holidays all wrong. In northern Europe, the custom is…
What did Nasa achieve last time it visited the Moon?
Of mice and Moon What did Nasa achieve last time it visited the Moon? Apollo 17, in December 1972, involved…
What’s the point of the NHS if it doesn’t work?
We left prepared. Bottles of water, protein snacks, phone chargers, portable Scrabble (even the teenagers can look at the internet…
How the travel industry convinced us we needed holidays
In September 2019, Thomas Cook filed for compulsory liquidation, leaving 600,000 customers stranded abroad. It was a sorry end to…
Iceland’s scenery takes your breath away – but so do the prices
I’m writing this on the plane back from Iceland, a fact that fills me with relief. Not because I didn’t…
They do things differently in the Cotswolds
The Season has ended and – apart from The Spectator’s summer bash of course – the two bang-up parties of…
The poet and the polymath: two 16th-century Portuguese travellers
In 1866, Dante Gabriel Rossetti visited a London print shop to buy a large canvas of a Renaissance street. He…
My Icelandic holiday with Kevin and Perry
I’m currently on holiday in Iceland. I say ‘holiday’, but I’m with my three teenage sons so it’s more like…
The hidden benefit of an electric car
Hello, and welcome to episode one of What’s in My Frunk?, the first in an occasional Spectator series of news…
Why Ryanair is the best airline
Why Ryanair is Europe’s best airline
Why I was almost thrown out of South Africa
On my 2 p.m. arrival for a week-long work trip to South Africa a fortnight ago, an immigration agent flapped…
The call of opium-based analgesics and introspection
On the morning of my last day in England, I drew back a curtain and there in the garden, browsing…
The ghostly ruins of vanished Britain
Take a walk in the English countryside and you get the impression that little has changed. The churches and farmhouses,…
Who let the dog out?
Caroline and I are just back from a weekend break in Scotland and, nice though it was, I hadn’t realised…
The thrill of running late
‘Dad, why is it that whenever we go anywhere, we’re always running to catch a train?’ asked Charlie, my 13-year-old.…
End of the line: it’s time to rethink the queue
It’s time to rethink the queue
Portrait of the week: Gas prices soar, cabinet reshuffled and a green light for travel
Home To prevent a shortage of meat, which relies on carbon dioxide in its packaging, the government gave millions of…
Only Iain Sinclair could glimpse Hackney in the wilds of Peru
It seemed like a preposterous proposition. For decades, Iain Sinclair has been an assiduous psychogeographer of London, an eldritch cartographer…
The great holiday Covid test rip-off
The great holiday Covid test rip-off
