Charles Moore is The Spectator’s chairman.
He is a former editor of the magazine, as well as the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020.
From our UK edition
As time passes, there is — blessedly — ever less need to pay attention to ‘untold’ stories about Diana, Princess of Wales; but the Channel 4 documentary Diana: The Truth behind the Interview did make me sit up a bit. It revealed, and the BBC does not deny, that Martin Bashir and Panorama colleagues caused
From our UK edition
In the National Trust’s recent interim report, ‘Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic slavery’, nothing caused more controversy than its unfavourable mention of Winston Churchill, whose country house, Chartwell, it owns. The entry said that the British government’s response to the Bengal famine when he was prime minister was ‘heavily criticised’. It failed to
From our UK edition
You have to give it to Donald Trump: he never stops trying. In a letter dated 25 September, he wrote to our daughter-in-law, who is an American citizen living in Britain (‘United Kingdom Englan’, it said on the envelope) to tell her he was giving her $1,700 under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security
From our UK edition
In this column (26 September), I pointed out that the National Trust’s new ‘Gazetteer’ of its 93 properties linked with slavery and ‘colonialism’ was not so much a scholarly documentation as ‘a charge sheet and a hit list’. Once the organisation entrusted with the care of a building denigrates that building’s most famous occupants, logic
From our UK edition
The National Trust has brought out its ‘Interim Report’, with the clumsy title ‘Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic slavery’. Such use of the word ‘histories’, as opposed to ‘history’, is an alert that a woke view is coming your way. Like ‘diversity’ and ‘multiple narratives’ (also deployed in the report), it suggests plurality
From our UK edition
As from this Thursday, I am a peer, although I must wait until next month before I can take my seat in the House of Lords. My letters patent confirm that I am Lord Moore of Etchingham. As do all new boys and girls, I went to see the Garter King of Arms, and he
From our UK edition
One of the most extraordinary features of the ‘cancel culture’ is how well it works. All decent people hate it, but it happens. Why? The key is speed. The bosses of big businesses, universities, quangoes, museums etc. are absurdly frightened by the sudden ambush. Some once-exalted alumnus or benefactor is ‘revealed’ on Twitter as having
From our UK edition
Totalitarian powers mostly want foreign journalists to go, but sometimes they want them to stay. China recently detained Michael Smith and Bill Birtles, of the Australian Financial Review and ABC respectively. The men were held in the country so they could be questioned about Cheng Lei, an Australian-born anchor for the state broadcaster, CCTV, who
From our UK edition
In the early hours of Sunday, a man walked round central Birmingham stabbing people. He killed a 23-year-old man, inflicted critical injuries on two other people and wounded five more. The police were accused of hanging about nervously in cars instead of getting out and tackling the man. Later, Supt Steve Graham gave a press
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Large parts of the senior civil service regard Brexit as almost illegal. Some of them regard loyalty to the EU as a higher duty than to the elected government they are paid to serve. They feel this most strongly in relation to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland which they believe — with no
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As one battles on, a reluctant volunteer in the culture war which the left is fighting on every front with enviable efficiency, it is frustrating that the millions who hate what is happening are not being properly led. On the whole, government responses are reactive rather than proactive, and late at that. Boris Johnson said
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‘The British Museum stands in solidarity with the British Black community, with the African American community, with the Black community throughout the world. We are aligned with the spirit and soul of Black Lives Matter everywhere.’ So blogged the director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, shortly after the death of George Floyd. Many such
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The week before last, I started tweeting. Actually, that is not true, but @1CharlesHMoore, bearing my photograph and brief CV, got going, advancing opinions in my name. The first tweets seemed harmless enough. ‘Charles Moore’ commented in support of the Lincoln Project (Never Trump Republicans), for example. But one had the feeling that once the
From our UK edition
Last Sunday, BBC Radio 4’s The Reunion devoted 40 minutes to ‘Black Wednesday’, as our exit from the ERM was mistakenly called. No one mentioned that the underlying aim behind the ERM was to help create the conditions for a European single currency, and that our falling out ensured that Britain would not join. Only
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Amid all the puzzlement and recrimination about why the government got into this mess about A-level and GCSE results, one factor has been missed — the effect of Covid-19. I do not mean the obvious fact that none of this would have happened without the disease. I mean the less obvious one that our governmental
From our UK edition
One keeps hearing, particularly on the BBC, that the United States is ‘the worst in the world’ for coronavirus, stated as fact. The next worse, by the same BBC measure, is Brazil. Not coincidentally, the BBC hates the presidents of both those countries. Statistically, this is fiction, although neither Trump nor Bolsanaro has done well. It
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Chris Packham is widely seen as the most extreme of well-known animal rights activists. His obsessions against hunting and shooting forfeit the impartiality required of a television nature presenter. So it is bold of the excellent new magazine, Fieldsports Journal, to give Mr Packham lots of space in its issue designed for the start of
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Noel Quinn, the chief executive of HSBC, declines to say whether his bank will disown pro-democracy staff who fall foul of China’s draconian new security law for Hong Kong. The bank, he says, follows the law of every country in which it operates: it will treat the issue case by case. What he may not
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Juan Carlos, ex-King of Spain, behaved foolishly in relation to money and sex, and so his decision to leave Spain is sad, but justified. That seems to be the view of most moderate people outside Spain who are not ill-disposed to the monarchy. But it is it right? Certainly Juan Carlos’s foolishness was real, but
A republican Spain would very likely be a Spain that falls apart, an example not irrelevant to the United Kingdom
