Alexander Larman is an author and books editor of Spectator World, our US-based edition
Whenever I’m walking down Cornmarket Street in Oxford – an otherwise unlovely thoroughfare – there is something about the spectacle of the enormous Greggs there that gladdens my soul. Compared to all the other overpriced, depressing places that sell lunchtime sandwiches in the area – I popped into Pret the other day and was astonished
So here it is, the undistinguished thing, at last. I had hopes that, after its postponement because of the Californian fires, Meghan Markle’s new reality show With Love, Meghan, would quietly disappear from the schedules. These hopes were, as usual, disappointed. Not only has the programme arrived on Netflix as a simultaneous worldwide premiere, but
The death of the painter Jack Vettriano at the age of 73 is sure to delight at least one art critic: the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones. Jones has consistently attacked the creator of The Singing Butler, Britain’s best-selling single image, as ‘brainless’ and ‘not even an artist’. He derided his work as ‘a crass male fantasy
It is always nice to have a personal connection to the Oscars, however slight and fleeting it might be; hearing Conclave screenwriter give a shout-out to my daughter’s godfather Simon during his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay was a deeply pleasurable moment. Yet this joyful touch aside, what had initially looked like one of
This weekend marks perhaps the most turbulent 48 hours that Ukraine’s President Zelensky has ever experienced – and, given the events of the past three years, that is saying an awful lot. After his already notorious reception in Washington at the White House in Friday, and rather more emollient greeting by Keir Starmer in Britain
When Keir Starmer greeted President Trump on his visit to Washington, he held a piece of paper in his hand that would have been rather welcome for The Donald. It was nothing less than a formal invitation from King Charles for the second-term president to conduct a second state visit to Britain, and it would
So at last the deadlock has been broken. After months, even years, of tension between Amazon MGM, who own the rights to the studio that made the James Bond films, and Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the producers and de facto custodians of the franchise, it has been announced that Broccoli and Wilson have, somewhat unexpectedly, ceded
Strange though this might seem to long-term Spectator readers, I am beginning to warm to Meghan Markle. Not because she has done something worth celebrating, or indeed anything that has shown her to be anything other than self-obsessed, hypocritical and a poseur, but because she is showing an indomitable strength of character that means that,
Say what you like about President Trump – and people very much do – but there is little doubt that, at the outset of his second term, The Donald has behaved like a man in a hurry. Not a day seems to go past without a blizzard of executive orders closing this and shuttering that,
The recent fires in California have had many tragic effects. Many have lost their homes, possessions and livelihoods, and it has been a stark reminder that even the wealthy and privileged are not immune from a truly awful, life-changing event. Regrettably, however, the disaster has attracted a small but vocal number of people who ostensibly
In the inimitable words of The Smiths (or, indeed, Carry On Cleo, where they borrowed it from), stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before. For her first official solo engagement outside London since her cancer treatment, the Princess of Wales was photographed visiting the Ty Hafan children’s hospice in South Wales. She
The news that the high street arm of the newsagent WH Smith is in ‘secret talks’ to be sold – talks so secretive that they have been splashed across every newspaper and broadcasting outlet in the country – should be greeted with a sigh accepting its all-but-inevitable fate. There can be little doubt that Smith’s,
So, in the end, Prince Harry folded. His much-ballyhooed case about News Group Newspapers, publishers of the Sun, which was due to begin in the High Court today and last for eight weeks, has concluded. The writing was on the wall yesterday, when Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne and News Group Newspapers’ barrister Anthony Hudson appeared
Whenever a new study of the Nazi regime appears, it is taken as a given that after Adolf Hitler seized power and became dictator of Germany in 1933 an egalitarian society emerged, very different to previous decadent, backward-looking generations. In this modern era, it is assumed, the concerns of the Kaiser and the German elite
When one of your favourite filmmakers dies, it is hard not to feel a deeply personal sense of loss; the punch in the viscera with the knowledge that someone who has created some of the most iconic pieces of cinema from the past half-century will no longer be bringing his inimitable and unforgettable personal voice
It may only be halfway through January, but the two opposed branches of the younger royal family have both made their first significant public statements of the year. Meghan and Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex came forward with a typically tone-deaf and self-aggrandising attack on Meta, which ended with a plug for the Archewell Foundation and
Who do the Duke and Duchess of Sussex think they are? Since their quasi-abdication from the royal family five years ago, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have seldom found a publicity angle that they were not prepared to exploit for their own personal (and commercial) gain. But the sheer effrontery of the statement that they
As many of us lurched blearily into 2025, desperately trying to remember how, exactly, we’d managed to cause offence to our nearest and dearest in the hinterland between the old year and the new, there was another unwelcome surprise waiting in the wings. In the late afternoon of 1 January, just as the nausea and
At the beginning of King Charles’s Christmas speech this year, viewers may have been surprised when he did not immediately talk about his, or his family’s, struggles with illness this year, but instead about the 80th anniversary of D-Day. It was, in fact, several minutes until the speech made reference to how ‘all of us
If you’re a regular, or even an occasional, customer at Lidl, you’ll know what to expect. Own-brand foodstuffs that shamelessly imitate better-known manufacturers and, by doing so, flirt with copyright infringement right up to the edge of legality; a selection of wines, spirits and beers that alternate between excellent value for the money and frankly