Alexander Larman is an author and books editor of Spectator World, our US-based edition
Even the most seasoned royal watchers may not have expected the revelations that came from the serialisation of Andrew Lownie’s new book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, in the weekend’s newspapers. The biography nominally focuses on the vagaries of Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, but judging from the
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,
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
King Charles is a man acutely aware that the monarchy has to be seen to provide value for money in these straitened times. Therefore, to coincide with the announcement that the royal household is to be given over £130 million of public money for the next two years to complete works on Buckingham Palace, it
Judging by the coverage of this year’s Glastonbury festival, and the reaction in certain quarters, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was little less than a hard-left, Jew-hating Nuremberg rally. It is an impressive achievement to unite the government, led by the Prime Minister, and the opposition in blanket condemnation of two of
Britain has received many things from America that we have little reason to be grateful for: Black Lives Matter, Instagram, the word ‘gotten’ – and the brief and unlovely period that Meghan Markle was a resident of this country. Yet one of the most enduring American imports is something that we no longer much notice:
Denis Villeneuve, the Oscar-nominated director of such blockbuster behemoths as Dune and Blade Runner 2049, has been hired to reboot the James Bond franchise. Villeneuve is a hugely capable director, somewhat in the Christopher Nolan school of blending epic set-pieces with an intellectual and emotional core. As the first auteur to be hired to direct
One of the most notable features of Keir Starmer’s otherwise undistinguished premiership is the bromance that he seems to have formed with King Charles. Both men seem to have a shared sense of moral values and a reticence of character that appears to have served them well in what, up until now, has been a
The winner of the contest to design a memorial to the late Elizabeth II has been announced, and it’s not very good. When the shortlist of five designs was unveiled last month, the most striking feature of the various hopefuls was how little they had to say about the much-loved Queen, or the country she
In her 1954 essay ‘The English Aristocracy’, the author Nancy Mitford popularised the descriptions ‘U’, i.e. upper-class or aristocratic, and ‘non-U’, to denote household terms. Although she did not coin the phrase (that credit belongs to the otherwise forgotten linguist Alan S.C. Ross), she brought it to wider public attention. When her friends John Betjeman
Well, you can’t say that we weren’t warned. Repeatedly. At the beginning of this week, the Duchess of Sussex wrote in a subscriber newsletter, in that inimitably faux-chummy way that she has perfected: First off, a sincere thank you for making the debut of As Ever absolutely extraordinary. We had a feeling there would be
The announcement, when it came, was a strangely botched one. The official Ascot carriage list had stated at 12 p.m. that the Prince and Princess of Wales would be riding in the second carriage in the royal procession, accompanied by their friends Mr and Mrs Justin Rose. It was already known that Prince William would
One of the most memorable dinners I ever had was about 20 years ago, at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Fitzrovia called Pied à Terre. It’s still going, and indeed remains a stalwart of the city’s fine dining scene, but what I especially remember, rather than the food or wine, was how deliciously louche an experience
