The Week

Leading article

The Boris delusion

Loyalty, it used to be said, was the secret weapon of the Conservative party. That hasn’t been true for some time. Back in 2006, the then MP for Henley wrote of the Tory party having succumbed to ‘Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing’. Boris Johnson later had to apologise to Papua New Guinea

Portrait of the week

Diary

My Sunday lunch with George Michael

All is grist that comes to a columnist’s mill. The late Alan Coren once wrote that if he heard a screech of tyres in the road outside his house, he rushed out, notebook in hand, ‘because you never know where the next 300 words are coming from’. I find that the Anniversary Almanac can be

Ancient and modern

What the Romans would have made of ChatGPT

Google provides information easily, which the ancients did as best they could. But what would they have made of ChatGPT? Ancient education drew on information about the past to help deal with the problems of the present. Take the Romans. Future statesmen were taught to scour sources – both myth and history – for learning

Barometer

How many people are injured by dogs?

Duke out Will the Duke and Duchess of Sussex be invited to Charles III’s coronation? The royal family faced a similarly tricky decision over the Duke of Windsor, the former Edward VIII, at Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. Documents released by the National Archives in 2007 reveal that the matter was handled by the Prime

Letters

Letters: Harry, Charles and the way to reconciliation 

Back to work Sir: I read with interest Martin Vander Weyer’s clarion call to ‘Mr and Mrs Early-Retired Spectator Reader’ to return to work (Any other business, 14 January). The successful realisation of this aim is likely to require both a nudge from government, possibly through the tax system, and employers to show greater creativity.