Alexander Larman

Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

The fall of Fergie

From our UK edition

Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, the beleaguered Duchess of York, may have finally met her reputational Waterloo. Despite showily cutting off all contact with the late paedophile and financier, Jeffrey Epstein, after his 2008 conviction and imprisonment for sex offences, it has emerged that she sent Epstein a toadying email in 2011 calling him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family’. Fergie also insisted in the leaked message that she had not called him a paedophile (ironic, really, because he very much was). After the email came to light this week, she was dropped by several of the charities where she was a patron.

churches
Alexander Larman

Two wholly different but complementary ways of looking at Christianity

In Philip Larkin’s 1954 poem “Church Going,” the narrator walks into a deserted English country church, and observes that it isn’t up to much. Larkin writes that there is “a tense, musty, unignorable silence/ Brewed God knows how long,” feels a sense of “awkward reverence” and, on the way out, “Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.” It is one of the great vignettes of church-crawling, as the practice is generally known – wandering into an empty ecclesiastical space, not being wildly impressed and strolling out again, unblessed by the visit. Yet for Larkin, that it will be “A shape less recognizable each week/ A purpose more obscure” is a tragedy, even for a non-believer.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Is Prince Harry angling for a royal return?

From our UK edition

Royalist or republican, you have to feel some sympathy for King Charles. In the past ten days alone, not only has he been largely responsible for ensuring that the first part of Donald Trump’s unprecedented second state visit went smoothly but before that, he had an audience with his hitherto estranged son, Prince Harry. It was a condition of the meeting that no readout of their conversation be leaked to the press. So far, this has been adhered to, but it has not stopped a ‘royal insider’ – who bears a suspicious resemblance to a member of the Sussex camp – from offering their spin on what this might mean for father and son in the future.

Alexander Larman

Jason Bateman breaks bad in Black Rabbit

When Bryan Cranston staggered on-screen in the opening scene of Breaking Bad in 2008, stumbling out of a crashed RV dressed only in his underpants, and addressed the camera with, “My name is Walter Hartwell White…to all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt,” he immediately changed perceptions of who he was as an actor. Previously, he was best known for being the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle, and despite some effective straight performances, most thought of him as a comedic performer, rather than the star of what became the most talked-about crime drama series since The Wire. Jason Bateman would, one presumes, like to follow Cranston’s lead.

Friday

Alexander Larman

How the Princess of Wales bonded with Melania Trump

From our UK edition

President Trump arrives back in the United States today, and Keir Starmer will have returned to 10 Downing Street breathing a sigh of relief that this unprecedented second state visit went about as well as it could have done. However, there may be different feelings in Buckingham Palace and the other royal residences. Certainly, Trump’s open admiration – even obsequiousness – for King Charles, who he described as 'a great gentleman [and] a great king' – would have been received well. But the King himself maintained a poker face throughout the visit, with his only pointed remarks at the state banquet about the need for a lasting peace in Ukraine giving anything away about his own thoughts.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Trump’s state visit could not be going better

From our UK edition

So, the Donald was on his best behavior after all. There had been rumours flying around that President Trump would use his speech at the formal banquet that has been thrown in his honour by King Charles to make some pointed reference to free speech and its perceived absence thereof in Britain today. In the event, there was nothing but a series of emollient statements of praise for his hosts, their family and the country he was visiting, as well as, of course, himself. This threw up some incongruities – who would ever have imagined hearing Trump allude to Locke and Orwell? But his sentiments were warm (only partially reduced by his less-than-fluent delivery, reading at times haltingly off what looked like a giant prompt book).

Kimmel
Alexander Larman

Don’t cry for Jimmy Kimmel

The defenestration of the supposed talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, for the inflammatory remarks that he made during the monologue in his show on Monday night about Charlie Kirk, is both an unexpected and deeply predictable development. It was unexpected because Kimmel clearly believed that he was, like Lehman Brothers, “too big to fail,” and was therefore within his rights to make such comments as how “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” And it was deeply predictable because Kimmel now becomes the latest scalp that the right have seized this year, and perhaps the most high-profile yet.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Donald Trump will be on his best behaviour for King Charles

From our UK edition

The Donald has touched down in Britain for his unprecedented second state visit. It makes sense in a way that this most unconventional of American presidents is being granted a privilege that has never been offered to any other US leader, namely a repeat performance of pageantry and pomp that will flatter this Anglophile’s ego to its considerable core. That the event is happening against King Charles’s wishes might bother any other prime minister, but such was Keir Starmer’s desire to curry favour with Trump that he even waved the King's handwritten invitation on camera. And with that he ensured favourable treatment for the country he is (barely) governing. The question is what happens next.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

We won’t see the likes of Robert Redford again

From our UK edition

In the end, the Sundance Kid died in his sleep. The death of the actor, director and Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford at the age of 89 removes one of the last great American icons of cinema from the world stage. Redford was prematurely youthful, even towards the end of his life, never quite losing that shock of blonde hair that first made him stand out as a star of the Sixties and Seventies. However, he was never a dumb blonde, being one of the most politically savvy actors of his generation, as well as an astute businessman who managed to avoid falling foul of the changing shifts in fashion and taste. His status as a Hollywood legend was assured long before he died, but now it will be cemented in history.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Chris Pratt, Christianity and Charlie Kirk

Many people reacted differently after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, but the actor Chris Pratt chose to behave in a way that few, if any, of his A-list Hollywood peers would have been comfortable with. The Guardians of the Galaxy star put a short video on X showing him praying, with his eyes tightly closed, and then he directed his fans – I almost wrote "followers", but he does have over eight million of them on the platform – to go out and do good works. With almost self-parodic seriousness, the erstwhile Star-Lord tells them to “go outside, get some sunshine, touch some grass... you’ve got time to reach out to someone in need and share this prayer with them”, before concluding, naturally enough “Amen”.

Chris Pratt
emmys
Alexander Larman

The superficial edginess of the Emmys and The Studio

When I previewed the 2025 Emmys in July, I wrote “it must feel pretty good to be Seth Rogen today.” His Hollywood satire, The Studio, had been nominated for a mighty 23 Emmy awards, and Rogen himself was up for acting, writing and directing. Well, today it must feel even better to be Seth Rogen. The show trampled over its competition to win a hugely impressive 13 awards – the most ever won by a comedy in a single season, let alone a debuting one – and Rogen himself won Best Actor, Best Director (for the self-consciously tricksy one-shot episode "The Oner”) and shared the Best Writing award with Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez.

Alexander Larman

Will Prince Harry’s charm offensive work?

From our UK edition

Over the weekend, Prince Harry attracted the best headlines and coverage in this country that he has received for months – possibly since he and Meghan staged their abdication of all responsibilities and fled to Montecito in 2021. This was all because of his carefully choreographed charitable and public endeavours. The praise included 'how easy he made it look' and how Harry had 'stopped sulking and played a blinder'. Even the Daily Telegraph wrote that 'it was genuinely gratifying to see Harry back in Blighty, doing what he does best this week' and urged Prince William to reconcile with him. This was exactly what Harry had wished for with his quasi-royal visit to his former home country.

Sunday

Alexander Larman

Please let this be the end of Downton Abbey

The third and supposedly final Downton Abbey picture released in American cinemas this Friday. Ominously subtitled The Grand Finale – oh how I wish, given the residual camp elements within the show, that it had instead been called The Final Curtain! – it supposedly wraps up the story of the Grantham family, the privileged idlers who inhabit the eponymous grand house, and their unusually devoted and long-serving staff, all of whom converse with their superiors on easy and intimate terms that bear precisely no relation to how the English upper classes have ever spoken (or been spoken to) by their servants in history. Still, if you’re looking for historical accuracy from Julian Fellowes’ Downton, you are not going to find it.

Friday

Alexander Larman

Stephen King, The Long Walk and Charlie Kirk

Under normal circumstances, the author Stephen King should have been feeling pretty good about things and himself at the moment. The latest film of one of his works, Francis Lawrence’s horror-thriller The Long Walk, opened in American cinemas this weekend and has been met with almost unanimously rave reviews, many of which have called it a more socially aware, darker Hunger Games. He recently published a Maurice Sendak-illustrated retelling of Hansel and Gretel, which brings his trademark dark and macabre sensibilities to the age-old fairytale. And his last novel, Never Flinch, was, naturally, a bestseller – as all his books have been since he first published Carrie, over half a century ago in 1974.

Alexander Larman

What is Prince Harry up to in Ukraine?

From our UK edition

The Ginger Pimpernel – as the world will probably not be calling the Duke of Sussex – has popped up once again. It was widely assumed that, after his surprisingly successful quasi-royal visit to Britain this week, he would be returning to Montecito and his family, but he has wrongfooted everyone by instead hopping over on an unannounced visit to Kyiv. There, he and other members of the Invictus Games Foundation were due to meet wounded military personnel and to announce new initiatives to offer unspecified (but presumably financial) assistance, which will be going towards sports recovery programmes to aid the rehabilitation of veterans injured in the ongoing conflict. It is hard not to believe that he is enjoying the sensation of being in demand again.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Will Prince Harry keep quiet about his meeting with King Charles?

From our UK edition

The King received a man at Clarence House yesterday afternoon who has a justifiable right to be aggrieved with the ill treatment that has been meted over to him over the years. He has been unfairly discriminated against for reasons that are not his fault, and he has dealt with the opprobrium that has been hurled his way with dignity, maturity and personal righteousness. If he has a persecution complex, then he can hardly be blamed for having developed such a thing. He deserves our respect and admiration. Yes, King Charles’s encounter with Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, for whom he performed an investiture, was important and no doubt affecting for both men.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

‘Modern pop makes me want to kill myself’: Neil Hannon interviewed

From our UK edition

Search for a successor to Tom Lehrer, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any decent candidates. One of the  few, however, who can match the wit and sophistication of the late musical satirist is the Northern Irish musician Neil Hannon. The 54-year-old is the sole permanent member of his band the Divine Comedy, and his elegant records mix Lehrer-esque wordplay with swooning orchestral pop that is in equal measure Dusty Springfield, Scott Walker and Michael Nyman. But matters have darkened somewhat on his newest LP, Rainy Sunday Afternoon. Here, we are far from the cheeriness that many will remember on his 1990s records Casanova and Fin de ​Siècle.

Alexander Larman

Why does an American billionaire want an Oxford pub?

From our UK edition

If you’re a fan of American billionaires buying up much-loved British institutions, then you, too, might be rejoicing at news that Larry Ellison has set his sights on purchasing much of Oxford. The squillionaire owner of the software technology company Oracle (net worth: $270 billion, or thereabouts) has started relatively small, however. In addition to spending a huge amount of money on the Ellison Institute of Technology in the city’s Science Park, he has also paid a supposed $10 million for one of its best-known and most-loved alehouses, the Eagle and Child, aka ‘the Bird and Baby’.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Is this the end of the Murdoch drama?

From our UK edition

So at last, the vexed question of who is going to succeed the now 94-year-old Rupert Murdoch has been settled. A deal has been announced that reveals that Murdoch’s eldest son Lachlan, the chairman of News Corp and CEO of Fox Corporation, will now be taking control of the family business. His siblings – sisters Prudence and Elisabeth and younger brother James – will each surrender their shares and any influence in the company to him, in exchange for a pay-out estimated at just over a billion dollars each. This concludes a torrid saga that was widely believed to be the major inspiration behind Jesse Armstrong’s acclaimed show Succession – and has ended in a surprisingly similar fashion.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Prince Harry returns, but does Britain want him back?

From our UK edition

“Success”, Winston Churchill was once reputed to have said, “is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” By this metric, Prince Harry must be about the most successful figure in public life today. Despite a series of myriad embarrassments and humiliations, which have included his Sentebale charity descending into chaos, his well-publicised legal shenanigans (which, apparently, cost him over a million pounds, for little reward) and a consistent ranking as Britain’s third most unpopular royal (ahead only of his disgraced uncle and perennially disliked wife), he is returning to Britain this week, for his first significant visit to 2022.