The crisis that has engulfed the royal family, sparked by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s bombshell announcement that they are jumping ship, is about far more than just their personal future. If that wasn’t the case, it wouldn’t be so important. Families fall out, scandals come and go and the monarchy marches on. But
Three years ago, Sir Christopher Geidt departed as the Queen’s private secretary. For years, he had done much to hold The Firm together, but his influence was resented by Prince Charles. The festering acrimony between Buckingham Palace and Clarence House came to a head in 2017 when Geidt, a Cambridge-educated former Scots Guard, convened a
The 1960s were swinging. The 1970s were stagflationary. In the 1980s we made loadsamoney and greed was good. The 1990s were dot.commy. And the 2000s were the boom and bust decade. Characterising ten-year periods in this casual way is something journalists love to do. It’s deplorably unscientific and yet pleasingly decentralised. A consensus simply emerged
Back in October, Boris Johnson and the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar met for ‘last-ditch’ Brexit talks at a hotel on the Wirral. After nine years in power and having lost control of parliament, the Tories were in disarray. Few thought Johnson could win concessions on the Irish backstop — that perennial stumbling block, the key to
Daniel Hannan Roger Scruton changed the course of my life. He addressed my school’s philosophy society when I was 16, speaking so compellingly about Wittgenstein and language that, when he finished, no one wanted to ask the first question. So, more to fill an awkward silence than anything else, I stuck my hand up and
When I told friends that I would be spending Christmas Day helping the homeless at a Crisis at Christmas centre in north London, they all congratulated me for doing something good for someone else. And then they congratulated themselves for having already done Crisis at Christmas years ago. Volunteering at a Crisis at Christmas centre
White House Farm began last week on ITV; a six-part factual drama about the notorious murders. I play Sheila Caffell, Jeremy Bamber’s sister and one of the victims. She was initially thought to have committed the crimes, and was described in the tabloids as ‘crazed’ and ‘deranged’ — an unfair portrait of a mother who
Don’t worry, this isn’t a piece about fishing quotas. It’s about the word ‘mackerel’ itself. Specifically, the fact that St John’s Wood is the only London Underground station to share no letters with it. Really? Half a page in The Spectator, just about that? Well, yes. The fact has gathered a life all of its
