The Week

Leading article

Red handed

The world is a better place for China’s emergence from behind the bamboo curtain where it hid for half a century. Economic and market reforms have led to the greatest reduction of poverty in world history. For some western manufacturers, competition from low-cost China has sometimes proved fatal, yet the overall economic effect has been

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 31 January 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off to seek a change to the Irish backstop of the EU withdrawal agreement after the Commons voted by 317 to 301 for a government-backed amendment by Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, proposing unnamed ‘alternative arrangements’. Mrs May said there was ‘limited appetite

Diary

Diary – 31 January 2019

For legal reasons I shouldn’t say much about the Alex Salmond case, but it does bolster the argument that the world right now operates beyond most fiction writers’ (and readers’?) imaginations. Fiction needs to be credible; I should persuade the reader that the events in my stories could happen, if they haven’t already. Reality, however,

Ancient and modern

Trophies for everyone

All over the world, from Armenia (the Silver Apricot) to India (the Golden Conch) and the UK (the Shaftas, honest), the film industry award season is in full swing — more than 100 festivals and ceremonies for weeping luvvies to hand out prizes to each other. It was ever thus. Ancient Greeks, who from the

From the archives

On political tribalism

From The Spectator, No. 152, 24 July 1711: There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of vision that rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers to one another, than if they were actually two different nations… A furious party-spirit, when it rages in its

Letters

Letters | 31 January 2019

Vegan excess Sir: As a lifelong vegetarian I am heartily sick of vegans and of the amount of attention that is being paid to them. (‘The great carniwars’, 26 January). Vegan food is everywhere, in places where it used to be difficult to find vegetarian dishes. Often it tastes of nothing much and has the