The Francis effect

All the latest analysis of the day's news
An intelligent mix of culture, food, style and property, plus where to go and what to see.
Seeing that photograph of J.K. Rowling, I reflected gleefully that her journey from mousey, play-nice moderate to unapologetically glam and flamboyantly defiant fox is complete. It’s not often that glamour and righteousness come along in one person – but when it occasionally happens, as her caption said, ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’
This week's magazine
Rowan Williams, Wes Streeting, Nicky Haslam, Lynn Barber, Julie Burchill and more...
Until about six months ago, it would have been hard to find a more inoffensive politician than the Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater. A well-liked, upbeat, down-to-earth Yorkshirewoman, she entered politics because of a personal tragedy, the murder of her sister, the MP Jo Cox, in 2016. When asked on a Spectator podcast what was the
Until about six months ago, it would have been hard to find a more inoffensive politician than the Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater. A well-liked, upbeat, down-to-earth Yorkshirewoman, she entered politics because of a personal tragedy, the murder of her sister, the MP Jo Cox, in 2016. When asked on a Spectator podcast what was the
The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Six months before Vincent van Gogh’s death, the critic Albert Aurier, waxing poetical, wrote an article entitled Les Isolés on the then unknown painter. It raised to sainthood the solitary genius driven to insanity by an uncomprehending world. ‘Is he not one of the noble and immortal race which the common people call madmen but