Thirty-five years ago, the late Christopher Hitchens published a book about the Elgin Marbles. Unsurprisingly, it was a polemical work; he was passionately campaigning for the return of the sculptures to Athens. But that was not the reason why I wrote a scathing review of it for The Spectator. Parts of it were plagiarised, as
Mark Zuckerberg is in a lot of trouble. He has turned away from the slog of running Facebook to focus almost entirely on his ‘metaverse’, a vision of the internet where people enter interactive virtual spaces using virtual reality (VR) headsets. He has pledged investment of at least $10 billion a year for a decade,
If you are a bird, any kind of bird, the current pandemic of avian influenza rampaging through your kind is far more terrifying than anything the hairless apes on the ground below experienced in 2020 and 2021. Britain’s seabirds – guillemots, gannets, gulls, kittiwakes and skuas – have been hardest hit because they breed in
The first time I went to Mongolia was in 2014, when I travelled across the country with the actress Michelle Rodriguez and a group of her friends, courtesy of the Mongolian-American conservationist Jalsa Urubshurow. Driving out of Ulaanbaatar at dawn, we stopped at a market on the outskirts of the city to buy caviar, blinis
The last King Charles was crowned in 1661. Samuel Pepys attended the ceremony. He was captivated by ‘the sight of all these glorious things… sure never to see the like again in this world’. He later became so merry, he told his diary, that ‘my head began to turne and I to vomitt…Thus did the
Liz Truss did not think that spending cuts would be a major part of her agenda. She and her first chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, were confident that markets, having lent Britain billions of pounds to cover the cost of the lockdowns, would be more than happy to do the same to transform the economy. Their argument
A 24th man has just been charged with the rape of a 13-year-old girl more than ten years ago in Bradford. Twenty-four men. One 13-year-old girl. It takes some absorbing. The case will come to trial in due course, but it prompts reflection on other cases of historic sexual abuse against girls where the victims
Tokyo After 23 years in Japan, having tried everything from yatai (street food) to deep-fried globe fish in a kaiseki (traditional) restaurant, I have come to the conclusion that Japanese food is overrated. It is rarely less than perfectly presented, and it can be superb – but it can also be bland and homogenous. Part
Not so long ago, Fiona Hill was the most powerful woman in Whitehall. She ran Downing Street with an iron grip for the first year of Theresa May’s premiership alongside her co-chief of staff Nick Timothy. Ministers bowed to their authority, civil servants feared them, Tory MPs complained of a power grab by a duo
The J.D. does indeed come from J.D. ‘Boss’ Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard. But Tim Martin’s reason for ‘Wetherspoon’ is slightly different from the commonly told version. Yes, it was the surname of one of his schoolteachers in New Zealand. But Mr Wetherspoon didn’t tell Martin he would never amount to anything – rather
Since I took the Golden Arrow to Paris and back in 1965, I have always thought of that train journey as one of the great joys of life. I cannot remember how many pre–tunnel trips to the City of Light I made, via Dover and Calais, Folkestone and Boulogne or (best of all) Newhaven and
‘It’s like that whole #MeToo thing,’ says Esmond Baring, 44, scion of the famous banking family and founder of The Privileged Man, a support group for, er, privileged men. ‘Once you’ve realised you’re not alone, you can ask for help.’ Baring is rakishly handsome and talks with the zeal and articulacy of the true convert.
Indiana Once cannabis legalisation in the US started being taken seriously a decade ago, the majority of liberal Americans supported it. It just seemed like common sense. No longer would pot users have to rely on street dealers, so criminal organisations would wither away. At the same time, states would benefit from billions in tax
The soldier with the Kalashnikov wasn’t happy. Neither were the hundreds of comrades who had chosen him as the spokesman for their angry complaints as they milled about on a train platform somewhere in Russia. ‘There are 500 of us, we are armed, but we haven’t been assigned to any unit,’ the newly mobilised soldier
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng wanted to shake things up. They were radicals in a hurry, keen to show that Britain was under new economic management. Theirs would be an unapologetic pro-growth agenda: no more genuflection in front of failed orthodoxies, no more being paralysed by fear or criticism. As a sign of this, they
If the world really does face a climate emergency, what ought you, personally, be doing about it? Should you, as increasing numbers of young people are doing, roam the streets at night letting down the tyres of SUVs? The fast-growing movement that calls itself the ‘Tyre Extinguishers’ thinks this is an effective approach, and has
While visiting a Ukrainian militia this summer, I nearly trod on an anti-tank mine which was being used as a doorstop at the entrance to their HQ. ‘Don’t worry, it’s a broken Russian one that we found,’ said my breezy host, Eduard Leonov. ‘We’re trying to fix it so we can use it.’ Eduard’s militia
Vladimir Putin clearly wants us to worry that he is crazy enough to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. This fear was intensified this week when images surfaced that some – possibly in error – believed showed a train operated by the secretive nuclear security forces moving towards Ukraine. Despite this, many believe the
During her leadership bid, Suella Braverman positioned herself as a Tory maverick – a firm believer in Brexit, a campaigner for low taxes, and a defender of controlled immigration. Once her campaign ended, she backed Liz Truss because, she said, she wanted to join a team that would change things. When Kwasi Kwarteng announced he
I’ve just bought Tolkien’s pub in Oxford. Well, to be more precise, I and more than 300 fellow drinkers have bought the Lamb and Flag, the 400-year-old Oxford pub where the Inklings group of writers – including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis – drank. Like so many pubs across the country, the Lamb and Flag