The Week

Leading article

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 9 October 2014

Home Alan Henning, 47, a British volunteer aid worker taken captive in Syria by Islamic State, was murdered, and footage of his death, which included an appearance by a man with an English accent nicknamed Jihadi John, was posted online. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘We will do all we can to hunt down

Diary

Ancient and modern

What Aristotle would have made of Brooks Newmark’s selfies

News that the soon-to-be-ex-Tory MP Brooks Newmark has sent pictures of his genitals to a second (presumed female) contact has centred yawningly around ‘rights’, ‘exploitation’, ‘power’ and so on. Aristotle can take us back to basics. The ancients did not do ‘rights’ anyway: they did the law. If there was no law against what you were

Barometer

Dealing with trolls the Swedish way

How to deal with a troll In Scandinavian mythology, trolls were shady creatures who lived below ground and varied in size from giants (in Iceland) to dwarfs (in Sweden). They snatched infants and replaced them with baby trolls, or ‘changelings’, in an attempt to improve their breeding stock. They could, however, be tackled: — By

From the archives

From the archives | 9 October 2014

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 10 October 1914: The Germans must really be in very desperate straits if, as is alleged, they are straining every nerve to prepare a hundred Zeppelins and other aircraft to hover over London and bombard our capital from the clouds. No doubt the first appearance of the visitors

Letters

Spectator letters: St Augustine and Louise Mensch, war votes and flannel

Faith and flexibility Sir: What a contrast in your two articles on religion last week: one liberal atheist parent (Claire Stevens) concerned about her son’s turn to conservative Islam, and one conservative Catholic (Louise Mensch) determined that her children understand her unbending fidelity to the tradition.  Ms Mensch’s problem is endemic throughout the western church,