At this time of year I’d usually be writing dozens of Christmas cards, with a Snowball to hand, heavy on the Advocaat. Many would be to people with whom I have no contact at any other time of year. It can be quietly meditative to write a note with an actual fountain pen to an
I’ve always loved cinema, but hardly ever cinemas. It’s no surprise to me that movie-going audiences are in decline. Ticket sales this year are only $4.8 billion, down from $6 billion in 2023. Apparently 65 per cent of Americans now prefer to watch a movie at home, compared with 35 per cent who say they
When a DHL cargo plane crashed while approaching Vilnius airport on Monday, killing one of the crew, it looked like technical failure, but given that Russia was believed to be behind a series of incendiary devices which ignited on DHL flights and in warehouses this summer, inevitably many feared Moscow’s hand. The suspicion is likely
The SAS are worried. Britain’s most elite military unit have come face to face with the IRA, the Taliban and Isis. But the enemy that really concerns them doesn’t carry a gun or wear a suicide belt. It’s the phalanx of lawyers they think are coming for them, armed with a deadly weapon: the European
Boris Johnson is enjoying himself back at The Spectator. ‘My place of former employment,’ the former editor booms as he sits down, stands up, and starts re-ordering items around the wood-panelled office. ‘I like this book-lined air that you’ve given me – very, very grand.’ ‘I found the pandemic a nightmare because I was genuinely
Now that I’m no longer editor of this magazine, I can admit that I spent the election night of 1997 cheering on Tony Blair. Reader, it gets worse. I didn’t particularly want a Labour government but I badly wanted the devolution they had promised. A parliament in Edinburgh would, I thought, consider why the East End
When the Taoiseach Simon Harris called a snap election for 29 November, Ireland’s electricity board asked political parties not to put election posters on telegraph poles. They might as well have asked them to take the time off on holiday. As I drive through the Irish countryside on my way to County Cork, I notice
On Sunday morning, a communications cable between Sweden and Lithuania was damaged, almost certainly deliberately. Just hours later, the C-Lion cable, the only data link between Finland and central Europe, was severed by what authorities have diplomatically called an ‘external impact’. Most would call it sabotage. In a week where the Biden administration finally gave
What will this government be most remembered for? Ed Miliband’s wind turbines? Assisted dying? Farm bankruptcies? No: rather, I suggest it will be football. There were some 34 million attendances at football matches in England’s top four divisions in the 2022/23 season. I bet that most of those fans have no idea what’s about to
The nomination of husky-voiced, musclebound Robert F. Kennedy Jr – who once dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park – to be secretary of health and human services in the Trump administration has horrified ‘experts’, according to the BBC. A left-wing Democrat who admires the late Venezuelan Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez, hates big business,
With just over 60 days left in office, Joe Biden’s White House has significantly escalated the Ukraine war it had tried so hard to contain by authorising the use of US-supplied medium-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) and antipersonnel mines against targets inside Russia. Biden’s U-turn breaks a long-standing convention on US presidential transitions that
If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise… in Dulwich Wood – a charming fragment of the medieval Great North Wood in south London – the self-dubbed ‘Penis Gang’ have been at work. The gang have been daubing huge penises, in red, black and green, on ancient tree trunks
Avote on assisted dying was supposed to be one of the easiest reforms for Keir Starmer’s government. To many, including the Prime Minister himself, a law allowing terminally ill patients to choose to die would be a self-evidently progressive and historically significant change. It would mean Britain could transcend the objections of a religious minority
Next week, parliament will have its first opportunity to vote on assisted dying in almost a decade. This is a matter of conscience; it supersedes party politics and each MP is rightly given the freedom to make up their own mind. I sympathise with many of the views expressed on both sides of this debate,
Every April and every Halloween weekend, Whitby in Yorkshire is chock-full of goths. As I seem to be The Spectator’s adopted goth, I was asked if I might like to write about Whitby Goth Weekend (WGW). Goth is a fashion that emphasises darkness and death: Edgar Allan Poe and Alice Cooper are the best examples.
On 13 July this year, an assassin’s bullet grazed the ear of Donald Trump as he turned his head on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. The whole world saw it and his response: ‘Fight, fight, fight.’ For Elon Musk, this was not just a news event but a galvanising and clarifying moment. He immediately posted a
How do you solve a problem like Elon? That is the dilemma facing Keir Starmer. Musk seems particularly exercised about the state of the UK and is quick to criticise the man he calls ‘two-tier Keir’. Using his platform X, he has weighed in on just about all the worst Labour news, from over-taxing farmers
It’s taken him more than a decade, but Justin Welby has finally united the Church of England. The petition calling for him to resign over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth was set up by three clergymen who would normally disagree: Dr Ian Paul, Robert Thompson and Marcus Walker,
Of all Keir Starmer’s appointments to government, none have been so personal or politically significant as his choice of Attorney General. The Prime Minister’s politics have been shaped, refined and hardened by his time as a human-rights barrister. The role of Attorney General – the government’s chief legal adviser and the minister responsible for the
‘An old lady’s fallen down – quick! She’s bleeding. Come help.’ An elderly woman lay on the entrance steps of the block of mansion flats, food from a Tesco bag spilled around her, blood spreading on the stone. It was clear she’d tripped and banged her forehead, opening a large gash over her right eye.