Writing
Why I gave up writing fiction
When, three years ago, I announced my retirement from writing fiction, the only thing that surprised me was the surprise…
Why do my American friends keep asking me to marry them?
My diary has been filled with dental appointments, reflecting a truism that American dentists pray for British teeth. The tally…
Letters: The beauty of brick
The Union in peril Sir: Fraser Nelson (‘The great pretender’, 15 May) writes that it has never been easier to…
The Proustian power of handwriting
Towards the end of April, my mum sent me a letter. She doesn’t write as a rule — we speak…
The joy and suffering of writing a book
Spring is coming. There was snow in the garden till last week, here in Canada, where I have been spending…
The poetic beauty of science
Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…
How I’d write Covid: The Thriller
How I’d write Covid: The Thriller
John le Carré’s wild MI6 Christmas parties
In the middle of December, for reasons I’m coming to, I woke early in a posh hotel. I lay semi-dozing…
‘People confuse sadness with darkness’: the complicated world of Mary Gaitskill
An interview with the American novelist Mary Gaitskill
City of gold: Peter Ackroyd on the undimmed spirit of London
Peter Ackroyd on the undimmed spirit of London
We don't want pandemic novels – we want gentle escapism
I’m often asked when I’ll write a pandemic novel. I’m not sure I’d ever be tempted, though the backdrop of…
Bangkok’s unravelling was easy to see coming
Three years ago I sat down to write a novel set in my adopted home city. Placing its claustrophobic action…
Barbara Amiel: My memoir has cost me my best friends
The only female writers of importance I have personally met are Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion, both of whom are…
I hate joggers more than ever
Empathy and kindness in these difficult times come more easily to some than others, but I’m trying. I had heart…
Salman Rushdie: ‘The implausible has become everyday’
Salman Rushdie on writing in the Age of Anything-Can-Happen
Michael Morpurgo: Kale smoothies, writing, Pilates – my strict isolation schedule
Writers like me are used to long hours alone. I’ve never enjoyed that side of it. I don’t like the…
I won’t read American Dirt – but not because the author has the wrong skin colour
Readers of The Spectator who keep up with the latest literary hissy fits could have predicted (perhaps with a groan)…
Why do monsters make such good writers?
Did any of you know that most of the 20th-century monsters — Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Ceausescu, Duvalier, and even the…
‘I aspire to write for posterity’: An interview with Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard is Britain’s — perhaps the world’s — leading playwright. Born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937,…
‘I was a tortured, obviously brilliant child’: James Ellroy interviewed
James Ellroy is occasionally quoted as saying he’s the greatest American crime novelist ever. The man sometimes called the ‘demon…
Eggs and hard liquor: Spectator writers on their favourite examples of meals in literature
P.J. O’Rourke I love poems but hate poetasters, love wine but detest oenophiles, love food but can’t stand foodies. Therefore…
Dear Mary: Why does my feminist friend always expect me to pay for dinner?
Q. One of my very best female friends has got into the habit of lecturing me on gender equality, in…
Why do we write dedications in books?
When my siblings and I were clearing out my dad’s bookshelves (he died earlier this year), I made sure to…
Would James Joyce have finished Ulysses without coloured pens?
The Mesopotamians wrote on clay and the ancient Chinese on ox bones and turtle shells. In Egypt, in about 1,800…
Dear Mary: how can I stop myself procrastinating?
Q. I am not a professional writer but on the strength of a short piece I contributed to a Festschrift…
