Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
Up until yesterday, I was beginning to feel cautiously optimistic about the new James Bond film. After a long hiatus in which the franchise’s new owners Amazon and the previous Bond producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, seemed unable to compromise, the matter was settled. Broccoli and Wilson were paid a Jeff Bezos-sized ransom,
From our UK edition
Last year, the National Theatre staged The Importance of Being Earnest in a new production by Max Webster. It attracted mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike, who applauded its determination to do something new – to re-queer Wilde for a younger audience, if you like – but also dared to suggest that Ncuti Gatwa,
The musician-comedian spread like herpes, rather than Ebola
On the enduring appeal of conspiracies, theoretical and otherwise
From our UK edition
As bizarre conspiracy theories go, the rumours about France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron take some beating. The stories that have been circulating about her in the murkier corners of the internet generally suggest that she was born a man under the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux, that she and the French President Emmanuel Macron are related
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Imagine, for a moment, that a respected middle-aged British male character actor – Jason Isaacs, let’s say – had been cast in the lead role of a sex therapist in a popular, Gen Z-focused Netflix series, called something like Love Lessons. Then imagine that Isaacs had become seemingly so obsessed with blurring the lines between
There will never be another Ozzy
If Dunham was, once, the voice of her generation, that that torch has long since passed to other, more interesting talents
From our UK edition
The news that the latest Superman picture has been an enormous hit in the United States, but has been received rather more tepidly here, has been taken in many quarters to mean that there is an anti-American mood at large. Maybe this is dictated by America’s choice of president and administration, which means other countries
Hollywood could use a little anarchy
From our UK edition
As Oscar Wilde didn’t quite put it, for one MasterChef presenter to depart because of a scandal may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness. After Gregg Wallace received his P45 from the long-running BBC cookery show, his co-presenter John Torode has also been given the boot, having allegedly made a
More than 60 years after his death, the Oxford literature professor and writer is everywhere
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The news that appeared in the Sunday newspapers was intriguing, to say the least. A meeting has taken place at (appropriately enough) the Royal Over-Seas League club between Meredith Maines, the latest in Prince Harry’s apparently endless line of California-based press officers, Liam Maguire, who has that similarly thankless task in this country, and Tobyn
Why is it so hard to warm to him?
From our UK edition
As the once-promising bromance between King Charles and Keir Starmer appears to be fading, the monarch has found another leader on the world stage with whom he has a greater amount in common. As the state visit of the French President Emmanuel Macron gets underway with much earnest discussion about what this particular cross-Channel ‘special
From our UK edition
The news that Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir The Salt Path may not have been the whole truth has been met with a mixture of outrage, hilarity and ‘I told you so’. Many readers have smugly informed the world that Winn’s journey along the Salt Path with her husband Moth (Moth!) was so obviously a work
Americans remain rightfully suspicious
What explains the studio’s latest flop?
He avoided the most-serious charges, but his image will never recover
This looks to be one of the most clueless and misjudged attempts at romantic comedy-drama ever put on screen
