Alexander Larman

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

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

The royal family has entered uncharted waters

From our UK edition

The statement issued by Buckingham Palace last night, addressing the ongoing fallout from the latest release of Epstein files, was undeniably terse: The King has made clear, in words and through unprecedented actions, his profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct. While the specific claims in question are for Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor to address, if we are approached by Thames Valley Police we stand ready to support them as you would expect.  Its inference was every bit as clear as the Prince and Princess of Wales’s remarks earlier the same day.

Monday

Alexander Larman

William and Kate are bracing themselves for more Andrew scandal

From our UK edition

There has been much hand-wringing and drama about what the royal family should be doing – and criticism of what they are doing – about the former Duke and Duchess of York and their respective relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. But amidst all this, two of the most significant voices in the Firm have been conspicuously silent. The Prince and Princess of Wales, especially William, were thought to be instrumental in last year’s decision to strip Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his royal titles and to exile him from Royal Lodge. Nevertheless, the most recent moves to hasten his banishment to the Sandringham estate were believed to have come entirely from the King, rather than from his son and daughter-in-law.

Alexander Larman

Is Industry the Brideshead Revisited of our times?  

From our UK edition

At first glance, there are few similarities between Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh’s classic 1945 novel – later adapted into an equally classic ITV series – of prelapsarian bliss in Oxford and Industry, the BBC’s adrenaline-fuelled show that exposes the dark iniquity at the heart of the financial industry. The one is a languid examination of (discreetly portrayed) same-sex love and Catholic guilt, and the other is a profane, sexually charged and palpitation-inducing dive into hedonistic self-indulgence. Brideshead is plover’s eggs and Meursault; Industry class A drugs and group sex. They would seem as distinct from one another as chalk and (Comté) cheese.

Saturday

Alexander Larman

Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg’s outsized impact on 1970s cinema

For any serious lover of cinema, the 1970s were both a golden decade and the beginning of the end of film as an art form. After the permissiveness and countercultural impact of the 1960s, a whole generation of new filmmakers emerged, many of whom remain household names. These men – and they were almost exclusively men – produced work that shook up expected norms and took the medium in new, thrilling directions. It is impossible to list all the pictures and their directors who made this difference, but there are good reasons why they remain celebrated today. And then Star Wars came along in 1977 and changed the trajectory of the industry forever.

coppola

Thursday

Alexander Larman

The golden years of David Bowie

This year marks the anniversaries of two of David Bowie’s most compelling and powerful albums: 1976’s Station to Station and 2016’s Blackstar. Given that they are often – rightly – described as Bowie’s crowning artistic achievements, amid severe competition from his other releases, they also have the intriguing fillip that both were originally released in January: a fortunate time for the musician, who was born on January 8, 1947, even if it was also the month in which he finally departed this Earth. Yet the comparisons between Station to Station and Blackstar, which came out 40 years apart, are far more pervasive – and persuasive – than the serendipity of their release dates.

david bowie

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Why Andrew had to be booted from Royal Lodge

From our UK edition

The news that the disgraced former Duke of York has been turfed out of his home of Royal Lodge in the middle of the night and rusticated to a rather less grand property somewhere on the Sandringham Estate will not, perhaps, be greeted with particular sorrow by many. Ever since the latest and highly embarrassing round of revelations concerning Andrew’s scandalous association with Jeffrey Epstein, it was inevitable that the royals would have to act ruthlessly and swiftly in order to get ahead of the situation. In truth, King Charles had fewer options available than he might have liked.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

The Epstein files have exposed the extent of Fergie’s greed

Since the latest tranche of the Epstein files was released over the weekend, the people who have been most embarrassingly affected by them include Peter Mandelson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Bill Gates. Yet inevitably, attention has turned to Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, who is emerging spectacularly poorly from the scandal. This is thanks to a series of revelations that portray her as, variously, greedy, an appalling judge of character and someone seemingly willing to figuratively pimp her children, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, while she sought to obtain the money that she craved from Epstein. Many distasteful details were revealed in the first files released last year.

jacob elordi
Alexander Larman

No, Jacob Elordi isn’t a ‘whitewashed’ Heathcliff

For those of us who associate Wuthering Heights either with high-school English classes or Kate Bush caterwauling over the moors while exhibiting some remarkable interpretive dance moves, the news that the new Emerald Fennell-directed film of what she calls “my favorite book in the world” has become the subject of a race-based controversy may come as a shock. Yet the latest interpretation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel, which is being released, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day, has already been met with contempt and derision by many before anyone even sees it.

Monday

Alexander Larman

The predictable politics of the 2026 Grammys

When Billie Eilish declared, during her acceptance speech for song of the year with “Wildflower” at last night’s Grammy awards, that “I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter,” she was speaking in the approved register. "Fuck ICE," she added but it was more of the same. In contrast to the Golden Globes, where the neutral tenor of the event was made up of tame jokes about the age of Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriends, the Grammys have turned into an opportunity for musicians to express political outrage. The awards themselves went as expected last night. Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny were the big winners of the night along with Eilish.

Alexander Larman

There’s no way back for Peter Mandelson

From our UK edition

When historians write the definitive biography of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the character of Peter Mandelson will prove a hard one to portray to those who were not around. Mandy, as he was semi-affectionately known, has undergone one of the most bizarre and humiliating journeys in British public life. Once, he was the all-powerful, Machiavellian ‘Prince of Darkness’ who served under both the Blair and Brown governments. Now, he is nothing more than a diminished, pitiful figure who has resigned from the Labour party that he did so much to rebuild electorally, as a result of his ill-advised and reputationally catastrophic association with Jeffrey Epstein.

Alexander Larman

Do the British appreciate Ralph Fiennes enough?

From our UK edition

If you had been fortunate enough to see the first night of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin at the Opéra National de Paris last week, then it might have been with a slight jolt of surprise that you saw a familiar face take to the stage as the cast took their bows.  Ralph Fiennes, the award-winning actor, was not appearing in the opera – although he took on the role of Onegin in a 1999 film that his sister Martha directed – but instead he made his operatic directorial debut with the production. The reviews so far have been mixed rather than laudatory.

Saturday

Alexander Larman

Epstein’s boys’ club has been blown open

It was widely suggested that many powerful people – from President Donald Trump downwards – would have preferred the notorious Jeffrey Epstein files remain sealed for years to come. Now, with the latest and perhaps most shocking release yet, the doors of his seedy transatlantic boys’ club have been blown open. Epstein had a rare quality in life for manipulating and flattering others. His posthumous influence is every bit as malign, to say nothing of humiliating for all concerned.  Epstein's posthumous influence is every bit as malign, to say nothing of humiliating Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is, as expected, front and centre in the latest files. His public disgrace is, of course, long complete because of his association with Epstein.

Friday

Alexander Larman

Has Harry Styles killed the music tour?

From our UK edition

Whisper it, but Harry Styles – once talked of as the biggest British pop star since Robbie Williams – may have come a cropper. His moody new single, ‘Aperture’, lacks the obvious immediacy of earlier hits like ‘As It Was’ and ‘Watermelon Sugar’. His tradition of playing to the gallery (or, the cynical might say, as wide a fanbase as possible) by hinting at bisexual inclinations, all while leading a tabloid-friendly and decidedly heterosexual love life, has begun to founder as his hopeful LGBTQ admirers have wearied of the absence of any demonstration of same-sex proclivities; dressing up in women’s clothing and wearing a bit of lipstick will not do any more.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

What is Travis Scott doing in The Odyssey?

As far as teaser trailers for summer blockbusters go, it takes quite a lot to make jaded audiences – or cynical critics – sit up and say, “What the hell?” But what’s exactly what the latest trailer for Christopher Nolan’s eagerly awaited The Odyssey has done. Not because it has featured a couple of new shots of Tom Holland’s Telemachus squaring off with Robert Pattinson’s villainous Antinous, or Matt Damon’s Odysseus participating in the bloody sack of Troy with his fellow Greeks, but because it introduces the most unexpected cameo of the year, possibly of the decade. Ladies and gentlemen, enter the latest feature of Nolan’s all-star cast: the hip-hop artiste Travis Scott, appearing in the somewhat unlikely role of a staff-beating herald.

travis scott
Alexander Larman

We’ll miss the bar chains when they’re gone

From our UK edition

The news that the Revolution chain of bars has gone into administration may not immediately fill Spectator readers with sorrow. When the Revolution group began in the early Nineties, their raison d’etre was to pump young people full of as much strangely flavoured vodka, in as many different permutations, as they could, all the while playing music at side-splitting volume. It was very successful, for a while, but now the group, under the stewardship of the Revel Collective, is facing a decidedly bleak future. Unless a new owner can be found soon, it looks like the Revels are over.

Saturday

Alexander Larman

Was Hunter S. Thompson murdered?

From our UK edition

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson is best known for his 1972 narcotics-fuelled fantasia Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In some ways, his is a story of life imitating art. Thompson lived large, once saying: ‘I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.’ He killed himself in 2005, at the age of 67, fearing that health problems would ruin what was left of his life. His funeral was a grand, set-piece affair, costing $3 million and paid for by Johnny Depp with the swag from his Pirates of the Caribbean movies; it ended with Thompson’s remains being shot out of a cannon to Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. He went as he lived, in a blaze of glory. Except members of Thompson’s family are now telling a different story.

Friday

Alexander Larman

Is Jacob Elordi too tall to play James Bond?

The casting of the new James Bond is the biggest story in Hollywood at the moment. The sheer amount of disinformation and exaggeration that has accompanied snippets of news about the production of a new 007 adventure is remarkable, even by the standards of La La Land. Ever since the Bond franchise was purchased by Amazon, taken out of the restrictive hands of Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, and placed in the care of Amy Pascal and David Heyman, the question of who’s doing what has been a source of fascination. The hiring of Dune’s Denis Villeneuve to direct was broadly seen as a smart, auteur-ish move; the decision to entrust the script to Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight, who has written an awful lot of bad films and television series, less so.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Is an Oscars upset around the corner?

Can Sinners pull off the biggest Oscars upset in recent times? That’s the question that many in Hollywood will be asking after Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending period-musical-horror picture has been nominated for a mighty 16 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor and Actress, and more. While it has been looking like a done deal that Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another will be sweeping to victory – and with a far from inconsiderable 13 nominations, it still could – the fact that Sinners is now the most nominated film of all time means that, on paper at least, it’s a serious challenger.

oscars
Alexander Larman

Behind Wes Anderson’s infamous sensibility

Woody Allen once sardonically described the fans of his films as being divided between those who liked the “early, funny ones” and the later, darker pictures. Much the same might be said of another famous WA: Wes Anderson, who has established himself as one of American cinema’s most significant auteurs despite no longer living in the country – he hops between England and France. Like most auteurs, his films are more succèss d’estime than they are succèss de box office, but he has the cream of Hollywood lining up to work with him and commands respect among actors young and old. Anderson is rightly celebrated – or castigated – as a visual stylist, but he has enormous flair as a screenwriter Anderson’s visual sensibility is infamous.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

George ‘R&R’ Martin takes it easy

Now that the Stranger Things disappointment has died down – slightly – George R.R. Martin and his merry band of Game of Thrones cohorts have recaptured attention in what we must call the Thrones universe. After the warily positive but underwhelming reception that the major spin-off House of the Dragon received, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’s six-episode offering is in a lower key than either of its forbears. No dragons, no enormous battles, no big stars, just a small-scale relationship drama focusing on the hapless “hedge knight” Ser Duncan the Tall, aka “Dunk” and his child squire, Egg, whose origins are rather less lowly.

george r.r. martin knight seven kingdoms