In recent weeks, North Korea allegedly developed a hydrogen bomb and hangover-free booze. This would be a worrying combination in any government not widely thought to have the force projection of an aggressively drunk toddler with a bag on its head. North Korea is often portrayed as a cartoon state — something sustained by Kim
The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While a book of hours endlessly recycles, the point of the book of the year is change, the more the better. There is an implied contest between years — you say 1917 is the most important;
For a child, the idea of ‘knowing’ your mother doesn’t compute; she’s merely there. As an adult, there may be the curiosity — who is this person who gave me birth and brought me up? — but also some kind of resignation: you’ll simply never know. Better, even, not to know. So long as she’s
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air, a lifelong passion. When he was 14, the family emigrated to Europe. There, as a young man, Finch excelled both as an alpinist and a student, enrolling at the prestigious Zurich Federal Institute of Technology,
In the conclusion to his very substantial study of England’s least known and most misunderstood Baroque architect, Owen Hopkins discusses some of the modern folklore that has developed around Nicholas Hawksmoor over the past 40 years, showing how swiftly a myth can capture the public imagination. The bulk of this unevenly written, fact-packed book is
The title of Tim Parks’s 17th novel is false advertising, because Thomas and Mary: A Love Story is barely a love story, and it’s certainly not about Mary. The intended effect is irony: the dust jacket promises ‘a love story in reverse’, and the opening chapter describes Thomas Paige losing his wedding ring on Blackpool
The much-lamented journalist and bon viveur Sam White, late of the rue du Bac, The Spectator and the Evening Standard, who lived in Paris for over 40 years, once wrote an affectionate portrait of his adopted home that opened with the defiant words, ‘Yes: I like it here.’ As a short review of the city
This isn’t a book to read before lights out. It’s about a mentally ill man whose mother exiles him from rural Ireland after years of rumours and reprisals related to his habit of startling passers-by with his bared erection. She has tried strapping him to a chair and bolting the door, but all that did
I don’t know if this counts as name-dropping, but I recently interviewed a boyhood friend of Elvis Presley’s in Tupelo, Mississippi. The interview required a bit of patience, because his memories of the young Elvis appeared only intermittently amid a lengthy ramble through more or less anything that crossed his mind. But, as it turned
The fewer birds there are, the more books about them, particularly of the literary kind. Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk swept all the prizes; and James Macdonald Lockhart has already won a £10,000 Royal Society of Literature Award for Non-Fiction to fund research for his debut. It is of the quest variety, recently popularised
How could you possibly justify a whole book about buttons? How could the mention of a humble wooden toggle, a diamond clasp, a ‘blue side buckle’ inspire such an unusual and irresistibly delightful account of more than a century’s worth of women’s lives? You might wonder. But as Lynn Knight sorts her way through her
Michael Hanlon, the science writer, has died at the age of 51. He was the science editor at the Daily Mail, and also wrote for the Independent, the Telegraph and The Spectator. A collection of his articles can be found here. In 2013, he wrote the following piece for this magazine, in which he asked why
Housing is Jeremy Corbyn’s second favourite subject (after drainage lids). Back in the 1970s the grateful proletariat hailed his long years of service as Commissar For Council Accommodation in the People’s Republic of Haringey. At his retirement, chanting school-girls tied garlands of lilies around his brows and presented him with a commemorative Rent Book in
One of the more intriguing exchanges at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was between Julian Lewis and David Cameron on Trident. The chairman of the Defence Select Committee asked the following: ‘The debate and vote on the Trident successor submarine should have been held in the last Parliament, but was blocked by the Liberal Democrats. Given
This is an extract from the new issue of The Spectator, out tomorrow: Last week Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, tabled proposals which the government hopes will form the basis of the UK’s renegotiated relationship with the European Union. Politically, the proposals may be just the job: a new commitment to enhance competitiveness,
A walk in the park for David Cameron at PMQs this week. Jeremy Corbyn asked six questions on housing, but they were all too long and lacked any edge: they were the opposite of forensic. Cameron simply batted them away and rattled off a list of what he had done and the supposed failings of
As Labour peers prepare to join forces with Liberal Democrat peers this week to challenge the trade union bill in the House of Lords, Jeremy Corbyn is doing his bit at PMQs. The Labour leader has taken the bold step of wearing a ‘heart unions’ badge. It’s in support of an official ‘Heart Unions’ week, which
If a dirty mind is a perpetual feast, then a filthy mind is an open sewer. You see where the manure is coming from. More to the point, you know where it is going. When Galloway faced a challenge for the Bradford West seat from the Labour candidate, Naz Shah, he thought the best way
What will Jeremy Corbyn lead on today at Prime Minister’s Questions? The Labour leader could ask David Cameron about the junior doctors’ strike, about Europe, or about party funding, given Labour is currently fighting the Trade Union Bill, and given it was the Tory Black and White Ball this week. But almost as interesting as
Manchester, New Hampshire ‘Anybody here got any student debt?’ asks Bernie Sanders halfway through his speech at a rally in a small university on Monday. He then starts conducting a fake auction. ‘What are some of the numbers you got? You? 35,000. You? 55,000? Who else? A young lady here… 100,000 dollars. You win! I