Features

A priest at the door

It was October 2010 the night the priest came to our door. The knock startled Tim’s dullard beagle into a howl just as Tim’s mother was serving up dinner. She and her husband had flown in from New York a few weeks earlier to care for their dying son. Tim and I had moved to

Hack of the century

To all those computer hackers exulting in pizza-encrusted bedrooms across central Europe — the US presidential election was influenced! The CIA said so! — I would say this: yes, yes, perhaps. But listen: when it comes to altering the course of history through hacking, Britain is waaaay ahead. Indeed, if you want to hear about

Dumb and dumber | 5 January 2017

Katie Hopkins did something dreadful this week, which is not unusual, because she craves such things. She retweeted praise — also not unusual, for she is narcissistic for a masochist — from a Twitter account called AntiJuden SS. The page even featured a swastika, should AntiJuden SS not have been clear indication enough. For Hopkins,

The Atomoxetine year

Driving my son’s snake, Todd, a 3ft python wrapped in a pillowcase, to a Brighton vet in August was child’s play compared to the rest of what had gone on that summer. My son, who is 32 and has Asperger’s syndrome, had been served with an eviction notice from his rented flat, having been on

Not cricket | 5 January 2017

Sport is a serious matter. If you have any doubts on that score, shed them now, because this is to be a South African year. The South African cricket team comes to England in the summer to play four Test matches, three one-day internationals and three Twenty20 games, and as they do so they will

Red faces

How to celebrate the centenary of the Russian revolutions of 1917? Modern Russians are deeply divided over the legacy of that tumultuous year. Russia’s few remaining liberals remember that the overthrow of the tsar in February 1917 ushered in a flowering of the artistic avant-garde, a brief period of feminism, liberal values and democracy. Putin

Taught to be stupid

Enough! Enough! For months, the so-called liberal elite has been writing articles, having radio and TV discussions, giving sermons (literally) and making speeches in which it has struggled to understand those strange creatures: ordinary people. The elite is bemused by what drives these people to make perverse decisions about Brexit and Trump. Are they racist,

Positively Trumpian

This being the time of year for it, you’re probably thinking what form your New Year New You will take. You know — the reinvention that we’re all encouraged to go in for from 1 January. Well, I have a corker. It’s huge. It is nothing less than the programme created by Donald Trump’s spiritual

Populism vs post-democracy

Europeans are usually alarmed or sniffy about American concern for democracy’s fate, but this time liberal opinion on both sides of the pond sings in unison: populism is a threat to democracy. A recent issue of the Journal of Democracy (a sober publication published by America’s National Endowment for Democracy) provided a handy compendium of

James Forsyth

Europe’s year of insurgency

After the tumult of 2016, Europe could do with a year of calm. It won’t get one. Elections are to be held in four of the six founder members of the European project, and populist Eurosceptic forces are on the march in each one. There will be at least one regime change: François Hollande has

A different class of snob

‘Ah, beware of snobbery,’ said Cary Grant, who was surprisingly often the smartest guy in the room. ‘It is the unwelcome recognition of one’s own past failings.’ In Britain, the only place where true toffs abide and, let’s face it, the place where modern snobbery was most successfully codified, it is still a more powerful force than

How to beat terrorism

Until a few years ago, Pakistan was one of the most dangerous countries on earth. The tribal areas in the north were infested by the Taleban, whose bases stretched to within 100 miles of the capital, Islamabad. Western intelligence agencies feared that the Taleban could seize one of the country’s nuclear installations, then hold the

The real Brexit risk

At the Westfield shopping centre in east London, the queues started at 2 a.m. on Christmas night. In Wrexham, people started lining up at three, getting ready for a six o’clock start. In Edinburgh, hardy shoppers braved flurries of morning snow to make sure they were first in line for Boxing Day bargains. Whatever else is

A radical mistake

In the early 1990s, after the shock of the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie, I began to do some research among those who condemned him, and learned that a strange thing was happening among young British Muslim men and women. I first wrote about this strange thing in my novel The Black Album, which concerns

Unforgiven

Now that almost six months have passed since the EU referendum, might it be time for old enemies to find common ground? Matthew Parris and Matt Ridley, two of the most eloquent voices on either side of the campaign, meet in the offices of The Spectator to find out.   MATTHEW PARRIS: Catastrophe has not

Red with the people’s blood

Few 20th-century historians doubted that the 1917 Russian revolution was one of the most influential events of their time, indeed of all time. As the centenary commemoration approaches, however, it seems remarkable how far and how fast the ideology that inspired Lenin and millions of his worldwide followers has receded in significance. Many are the

Season’s beatings

My colleagues at the commercial and chancery bar are all at their chalets in Gstaad, funded by the endless fees from Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and the family bar are out en famille in Mustique, awaiting the festive fallout — there’s something about turkey, port and the Queen’s Speech that pulls marriages apart like a pound-shop