The last time I reviewed a restaurant in Selfridges, a PR man rang up to ask what he could do to change my opinion of Selfridges. Don’t worry, I told him, Spectator readers don’t go to Selfridges to sit in a fake Cornish fishing village, because they are too busy eating the remnants of the
Many have rightly attacked the police for their handling of the demented accusations against Field Marshal Lord Bramall, now at last dropped. They ostentatiously descended on his village in huge numbers, chatted about the case in the pub and pointlessly searched his house for ten hours. But one needs to understand that their pursuit of
The New Year got off to a great start with TGR’s annual auction pairs, the best run tournament I have ever played and one of the most fun. It’s matchpoint scoring, meaning every trick makes a difference — certainly not my forte as the pained face of my partner made clear every time I sloshed
Quarrelling about the date of Easter has been a Christian pastime for centuries. The chief bone of contention is whether Easter should be held on 14th Nisan in the Jewish calendar — that is, at a fixed point of the lunar month — or whether it should be held on the nearest Sunday to this
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that Muslim women must learn English, and that those who had entered on spousal visas would be told halfway through their five-year spousal settlement: ‘You can’t guarantee you can stay if you are not improving your language.’ He said that learning English had ‘a connection with combating extremism’.
This week brings to a close an absurdly overblown cause célèbre. The Court of Appeal ruled that David Miranda’s detention at Heathrow three years ago under the Terrorism Act was lawful. He had been part of a professional operation leaking classified information to the Guardian, which compromised British and American national security. Yet the judgement
The unclued lights, one of two words, are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Across 1 After the outskirts of Barnsley, overtake on road round town (6) 7 Series for bikers? (6) 13 Regularly burn options and release (5) 14 Like a Peruvian, having completed filming? (5) 15
The unclued lights (1A, 1D, 6A/33, 13, 18, 32 and 38/24) are seven of the ‘Twelve Curious CUSTOMS Worth Reviving’, as listed in Brewer 19th edition. First prize J. Bielawski, Liverpool Runners-up Neil Mendoza, London W11; K.J. Williams, Kings Worthy, Winchester
Just before Christmas, the Catholic Herald named the composer Sir James MacMillan as its first Catholic of the Year. The award recognised many things: masterly compositions such as the St John and St Luke Passions and the Fourth Symphony, the latter played at this year’s Proms; his investiture as a knight in December; the setting up
What does David Cameron mean when he says, as he did today, that he’s happy to wait a bit longer for a deal in his renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the European Union? The Prime Minister told the Davos summit today that ‘if there isn’t the right deal, I’m not in a hurry’ and that
Labour is a very poor opposition at the moment, and no amount of money could fix that. But the government is currently pursuing a policy that seems intended to weaken even decent oppositions. In the Autumn Statement, George Osborne announced a 19 per cent cut to Short money, which is the state funding for political
There’s a spate of statistic-based stories about Christianity in decline. Recently we heard that under a million Brits now attend the CofE. Now we hear that the proportion of Britons who say they have no religion is creeping up to 50 per cent. Already, most white Britons identify as non-religious. It’s not really news. For decades
If you walk down Holland Park Avenue, down the hill to Shepherd’s Bush, you’ll come across a statue wreathed with peonies, lit by a single candle. Two years ago, in February 2014, the flowers stretched almost to the street curb; the candles were myriad, ringing the statue in ever-widening concentric circles. This is the statue
During the Labour leadership election, Guardian readers complained that the paper’s Jeremy Corbyn coverage was worse than its coverage of the Vietnam war. The paper then launched an in-house investigation into the claims, concluding that while they could have taken Corbyn more seriously in the beginning, this had since been remedied. Now word reaches Steerpike that the
It should be easy to admire the BBC’s handling of the Savile scandal. Two of its journalists, Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones, broke the story. Panorama then ran a devastating account of the corporation’s failings which is still worth watching online. This morning the Today programme properly led with the leak of Dame Janet Smith’s
The publication of expenses for last year’s election is a useful reminder of the reality of much of politics. It turns out it’s not all barnstorming speeches and televised debates. There are an awful lot of invoices involved too. The claim everyone is obsessing about is that Labour spent just £16,000 on Facebook adverts, compared to more
There was one infamous invoice missing from the Electoral Commission’s campaign spending data yesterday — that of the EdStone. Labour claimed that the missing invoice was simply down to an ‘administrative error’ rather than a reluctance for the public to know how much money was spent on the disastrous election gaffe. Happily Bloomberg News have
This week David Cameron has warned that migrant spouses who fail language tests could be made to leave the UK. While many have since accused the Prime Minister of stigmatising Muslim women over his call for immigrants to take language lessons, Mr S is more concerned that he is not au fait with the age-old adage that
Many have rightly attacked the police for their handling of the demented accusations against Field Marshal Lord Bramall, now at last dropped. They ostentatiously descended on his village in huge numbers, chatted about the case in the pub and pointlessly searched his house for ten hours. But one needs to understand that their pursuit of
Was there ever a less convincing scandal than the revelation that a landlord who rents houses to G4S for housing asylum-seekers in Middlesbrough chooses to paint all their doors bright red? This, apparently, is ‘apartheid’, according to a hyperbolic Times headline yesterday morning. As if that were not enough, Ian Swales, former Lib Dem MP for Redcar, said the firm’s decoration policy
