United States
Joan Collins’s diary: The joy of fake Christmas trees
Every year Christmas comes earlier and earlier in America. Cards, baubles and imitation trees were being sold in the big…
Pacific-sized love
Flying from Hawaii and my grandfather
Richard Madeley’s diary: Forgetting Tom Conti’s name, and other harrowing experiences
Oh God, it’s happened again. Another evening where I’m surrounded by people I know personally or have interviewed, and I…
Fort Lauderdale’s law against feeding the homeless still isn’t America’s dumbest
States of criminality A 90-year-old Florida man feeding the homeless was arrested under a Fort Lauderdale law which makes it…
Why I’m glad there’s no British Las Vegas
I didn’t realise that the Rialto Bridge has a moving walkway and muzak, that the gondolas beneath it float on…
Hug a hoodie: can there really be a kinder, gentler Ku Klux Klan?
The Ku Klux Klan is trying to rebrand
Blue Note's 75 years of hot jazz
This is a big book, a monumental text with 800 illustrations, 400 of them in colour, to be contemplated more…
Europe will reconcile with Russia, and soon. It can’t afford not to
The West will have to drop sanctions on Russia – or face another global economic crash
The US military should be winning wars, not fighting Ebola
In the case of America, the answer is now practically everything – except perhaps winning wars
Impeaching Obama would be crazy. But the Republicans will probably try
The Republicans would be crazy to try and impeach the lame-duck President. It would only revive him
A horse ride from Buenos Aires to New York? No problem!
Sam Leith marvels at a lone horseman’s 10,000-mile ride, braving bandits, quicksands, vampire bats and revolution in search of ‘variety’
Spectator letters: America as a genetic experiment, and a gypsy reply to Rod Liddle
An independent policy Sir: James Curran’s review of my book Dangerous Allies (‘Radical nationalist’, 17 May) showed a significant and…
Paul Johnson’s diary: Boris would make a great PM – but he must strike now
I feel an intense antipathy for Vladimir Putin. No one on the international scene has aroused in me such dislike…
Portrait of the week
Home The British economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2014, disappointing hotheads who’d expected 1 per cent. It…
Putin is making the West's Cold Warriors look like fools
Russia is making the West look posturing, weak and divided
Niall Ferguson’s diary: Brazil is overtaking us – but it no longer feels like that
São Paolo It was back in 2001 that my good friend Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym ‘Bric’,…
The American economy vs gravity
Reality may be about to reassert itself after an extraordinary hot streak
America’s right still hates Hillary Clinton. And it still can’t stop her
The American right hates Hillary Clinton as much as ever. But that doesn’t mean they know how to stop her
Harry Shearer on bringing out Richard Nixon’s feminine side
Simpsons star Harry Shearer on what it takes to play the president
The only way to end the war on drugs is to stop fighting it
It’s surprisingly boring, legalising weed. In Colorado, where recreational doobie has been utterly without censure for, ooh, about a week…
Rory Sutherland: Why don't Americans have kettles?
I enjoy reading reviews of kitchen gadgetry. Clever new kitchen products are often under-appreciated. Many rituals around food preparation are…
The free market didn’t kill Detroit: blame bad managers and worse unions
One of the best articles I ever commissioned as an editor was an account by James Doran of a road…
