Society

Friday

Henry Donovan

When will Europe's leaders wake up to the Russian threat?

Europe’s leaders flocked to London this week, determined to show the world a united front. Like school boys at a bus stop, Ukraine’s president Zelensky stood beside Keir Starmer, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French leader Emmanuel Macron in a carefully staged tableau of Western resolve. It was designed to send a message to Moscow: Europe is ready. Yet the spectacle only highlighted the uncomfortable truth: Europe talks like a military power, but behaves like a political debating society. The continent insists it has woken up to the new reality, yet it still refuses to build the armies required to confront it. Europe talks like a military power, but behaves

Lara Prendergast

From The Queen to Bonnie Blue: The Spectator’s Christmas Edition 2025 

40 min listen

The Spectator’s bumper Christmas issue is a feast for all, with offerings from Nigel Farage, Matthew McConaughey and Andrew Strauss to Dominic Sandbrook, David Deutsch and Bonnie Blue – and even from Her Majesty The Queen. To take us through the Christmas Edition, host Lara Prendergast is joined by deputy political editor James Heale, associate editor Damian Thompson and writer of the Spectator’s new morning newsletter, Morning Press, Angus Colwell.  They discuss: the state of British politics as we leave 2025 behind, and who will have a worse year ahead between Kemi and Keir; what physicist David Deutsch’s enthusiasm for humanity can teach us all in the age of AI; why the Sherlock Holmes

Thursday

Michael Simmons

Is the superflu really ‘unprecedented’?

The NHS is facing a ‘worst-case scenario’ for flu this winter. That was the verdict of Professor Meghana Pandit, national medical director for the NHS, this morning as she warned the tsunami of ‘super-flu’ cases sweeping the UK is ‘unprecedented’. Worse still, the peak of this wave is ‘not in sight’. Her warning came as NHS figures revealed the number of patients in hospital with flu in England is up 55 per cent compared with last week – meaning an average of 2,660 patients are in hospital every day. Internal NHS forecasts predict that, by the end of the week, that number could have risen as high as 8,000 –

Paul Burke

Why the McDonald’s AI ad flopped

Be afraid, be very afraid. That’s what we’d been told in the advertising and commercial production industry. AI is coming for your job. It’ll be faster than you, more creative than you and certainly more cost-effective than you. Well, if the McDonald’s new – but swiftly deleted – Christmas ad was anything to go by, we haven’t, for the moment, got too much to worry about.    The completely AI ad was produced for the Netherlands but thanks to YouTube, has been been met with a mix of ridicule and revulsion all over the world. Ridicule because its images are so badly rendered and revulsion because those images are also quite creepy and disturbing.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYz-5cL-BhA The

Melanie McDonagh

What humans can learn from mice about monogamy

Time was, we took lessons from brute creation. Medieval bestiaries, books of beasts, weren’t simply descriptions of animals; these compendiums of their home lives and habits, mostly derived from a text called the Physiologus of the second century, were for the edification of the reader. The upshot of the research is that we are roughly two third monogamous, which puts us way ahead of dolphins and chimps ‘But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee’, said the book of Job. The lion, being brave and kingly, represented Christ. Some animals had bad characteristics to avoid, like the

Flora Watkins

I'll miss the unintended hilarity of the round robin

‘Dearly beloved friends and family, well, what a year it’s been! Where to start?! The big event for us – aside from nurturing our preternaturally gifted children and enjoying multiple holidays in exotic locations – was the “K” for Rupert in the King’s Birthday Honours list. Mingling with the Beckhams at Buck House after the investiture was an experience we won’t forget in a hurry!!! Meanwhile, Sarah’s novel about Thucydides is doing rather well in the Kindle charts and Agatha, Mungo and Antigone continue to impress…’ A few years ago, by this point in Advent, many Spectator readers would have received a pile of similar missives tucked into Christmas cards.

Tanya Gold

Survival here is about logistics: Disneyland Paris reviewed

Alcoholics know that hell is denial, and there is plenty at Disneyland Paris in winter. This is a pleasure land risen from a field and everyone has after-party eyes, including the babies. The Disney hotels operate a predictable hierarchy: princesses at the top, Mexicans at the bottom. We, the Squeezed Middle, are at the Sequoia Lodge with Bambi, where I learn that I like canned birdsong, and that is fair. You don’t consume dream worlds, because that is not their nature. They consume you. We stand in the Magic Kingdom and stare at Mickey Mouse-shaped food and a fake Bavarian castle – it’s Ludwig’s, not Sleeping Beauty’s – painted pink.

Bruce Anderson

One of the joys of wine is the people who make it

Towards the end of the war, a young Guards officer met some Italian aristocrats. They had much in common. Robert Cecil was the heir to a marquessate. The Principe di Venosa’s daughter was married to an Italian marchese. Lifelong friendships have ensued down the recent generations. Nevertheless, the English family would be the first to concede that when it comes to generations, the Italians are a couple of centuries ahead. In 1385, Giovanni di Piero joined the Florentine winemakers’ guild. The easy movement between the Florentine bourgeoisie and the aristocracy helps to explain that great city’s long success: the Medici are the obvious example, as are the Antinori, who have

Dominic Sandbrook

Who is Bonnie Blue?

For me, the past 12 months have been about one man, and that man is Alan Partridge. The veteran broadcaster’s return to BBC screens this autumn, with a documentary about mental health, was only part of the story. The bigger issue is that at the turn of the year, my 13-year-old son discovered Partridge’s podcast, From the Oasthouse, and became completely obsessed. No everyday interaction, no matter how humdrum, can now pass without a Partridge reference. Should we hear, say, King’s Lynn mentioned on the news, my heart sinks, for I know that an enthusiastic anecdote about his birth at the local hospital in 1955 will soon follow. In no

Melanie McDonagh

What makes a ghost Catholic or Protestant?

W.H. Auden, in his essay on detective fiction, ‘The Guilty Vicarage’, asked: ‘Is it an accident that the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant countries?’ He was thinking about confession and how this changes things. In Auden’s view, murder is an offence against God and society and when it happens it shows that some member of society is no longer in a state of grace. But confession gives a transgressor a means of returning to a state of grace, so the moral order can be restored without recourse to a policeman. You wonder: do ghost stories too flourish most in a Protestant (or formerly Protestant) society? There have

The Spectator

The radical message of Christianity

A meeting planned in secret. A message deemed subversive. The authorities both antagonised and confused. The gatherings of the early Church in the time of the Roman Empire? Or Tommy Robinson’s proposed carol concert at an as yet undisclosed London location, proclaimed as the event to put ‘Christ back into Christmas’? To draw even the most strained comparison between the two would seem to offend most mainstream sensibilities. Established churches across the country have reacted with horror and disdain at the former football hooligan and recent prison inmate claiming to be Christianity’s champion this Christmas. Recall the example of Jesus, whose love was not rationed and whose message was for

Gyles Brandreth

How the Queen is spreading the joy of reading

Queen Camilla loves a book. Almost any book will do. ‘There’s something so tactile about a book,’ she says. ‘I like the smell of the pages when you open the cover. I like turning the pages and folding down a corner ready for next time…’ The Queen, 78, has loved books for as long as she can remember. She says her father, Bruce Shand, inspired this lifelong passion: ‘He read to us as children. He chose the books, and we listened. He was probably the best-read man I’ve come across anywhere. He devoured books.’ Bruce Shand was a soldier. His father was a writer, about architecture, food and wine. His

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Trump's tariffs, the definition of biological sex and the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

January Downing Street said Rachel Reeves would remain in her role as Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘for the whole of this parliament’. She made a speech standing behind a placard saying: ‘Kickstart economic growth.’ Axel Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to at least 52 years in prison for the murder of three girls in a knife attack at Southport. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced a ‘rapid audit’ of grooming gangs by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Wildfires raged around Los Angeles. Luke Littler, 17, became world darts champion. The aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires in California (Mario Tama/Getty Images) February President Donald Trump of the United States and the

Tim Shipman

'We must not be the Tory party 2.0': Nigel Farage on his plans for power

Nigel Farage is signing football shirts when I arrive at Reform’s campaign headquarters in Millbank Tower, the building where New Labour prepared for power before 1997. The black shirts are emblazoned with ‘Farage 10’ in gold. ‘Someone called them Nazi colours,’ the leader complains. ‘This always happens when we do well.’ As favourite to be the next prime minister, Farage is sanguine. ‘They’re a special edition, £350 each.’ How many is he signing? ‘—king hundreds,’ he says, pulling his punches on the profanity. Seven hundred to be precise, a cool £245,000 for party coffers. This is the same week the party registers a £9 million donation from the crypto millionaire

Melvyn Bragg

My farewell to In Our Time

I set up In Our Time 27 years ago. I had been shunted from Start the Week to what was cheerfully known as the ‘death slot’, 9 a.m. on Thursdays, because BBC management decided I could no longer present that programme after becoming a member of the House of Lords. I know I’ve said it before elsewhere, but its success from those inauspicious beginnings was very fulfilling for me. I decided to retire from IoT in September. I will miss it as it gave me a tremendous education, but I know it will be in very good hands – Misha Glenny is a first-class broadcaster and writer. While passing on

Rod Liddle

The year wokery went into decline

We will remember 2025 as the year that a madness which had gripped us for a decade finally succumbed to that most irritating of things, reality – and the edifice it had built began to crumble like a 1970s brutalist building constructed from high alumina cement. It is not quite the case that woke is over, as Piers Morgan believes, simply that its appurtenances have become despised and those who shout most loudly in favour of its idiotic shibboleths are confined to a smaller and smaller tranche of far-left delusionals. The decision of the Supreme Court in April that the word ‘sex’ as used in the Equality Act should refer

Charles Moore

Should I wear a burka in the House of Lords?

On Advent Sunday, our grandson Christian became a Christian. He was baptised, sleeping, in the font of our parish church. On the whiteboard in the maternity ward, the newborn’s name beneath his was Mohamed. As is usual (and, in my view, preferable) nowadays, he was christened in the middle of the communion rather than separately. As is less usual, the rite was that of the Book of Common Prayer, ‘The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants’. It is tougher than the modern version. The godparents, in the name of the child, had to ‘renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all

Matthew and Camila McConaughey

Santa Pants: a cocktail recipe by Matthew and Camila McConaughey

Our Santa Pants cocktail is one of our go-to holiday pours when hosting at this time of year. Made with our organic tequila and ginger beer, cranberry juice and fresh lime, it brings all the sparkle and cheer of the season. It is like Christmas in a glass. And while the world doesn’t need another celebrity tequila, it could use a shot of fun. So this Christmas, enjoy yourself and keep the holiday spirit flowing. Here’s how to make it. Ingredients for one serving – 60ml Pantalones Organic Tequila – 60ml cranberry juice – 15ml lime juice – Top with ginger beer – Garnish: sugar rim, cranberries, rosemary Rim the

Toby Young

I spend more on wine than I do on my mortgage

The first time I got drunk was at a wedding. I was 12 or thereabouts and sick in the taxi on the way home. I’d like to say that set the pattern for my behaviour at weddings thereafter, but it goes way beyond that. (My Uber rating is not good.) I acquired a taste for alcohol that’s stayed with me ever since. Other intoxicants have come and gone, but I’ve always returned to my first love. Which, to be clear, is wine. That first illicit tipple was Babycham – which is basically wine, right? – so perhaps my lifelong passion has been an attempt to recreate that childhood pleasure. As

Joan Collins

LA lacks London’s Christmas spirit

‘Never again!’ I sigh every 6 January, as I pack away the abundance of Christmas decorations and baubles lovingly collected over the decades. ‘It’s too much!’ I moan to Percy. ‘Let’s go to a hot island next year and get away from it all…’ But I never do, because I just love Christmas. Every year in early November I eagerly unpack multiple boxes tenderly packed two years earlier, and the reason is because we like to spend Christmas in London one year and in LA the next, as we love both cities. I have quite a lot of extended family in each, so we know that celebrating in either one