Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson is an associate editor of The Spectator

Why Ukip will descend into sectarian chaos

Yes, yes, I know it’s supposed to be ‘unfair’ that Ukip ended up with only one MP while securing 13 per cent of the popular vote. But that’s first-past-the-post for you. You have to win a seat to get into Parliament. The British electorate was offered the chance to to ditch FPTP back in 2011

Has the Guardian just called it for Cameron?

The Guardian/Observer website is running with this story headed ‘Britain set to face weeks of political paralysis after election poll’. That’s a safe prediction. But what’s intriguing is that the article – by Daniel Boffey, Toby Helm and Ashley Cowburn – is entirely devoted to the prospect of an extremely shaky Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, harassed or indeed

Former Communist spy: KGB created Catholic liberation theology

The respected Catholic News Agency has published an interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former general in Romania’s secret police who was one of the Eastern Bloc’s highest-ranking defectors in the 1970s. In it, he says that Soviet Union – and the KGB in particular – created liberation theology, the quasi-Marxist movement that flourished in Latin America from

The rudeness of John Eliot Gardiner

Sir John Eliot Gardiner is talented almost beyond measure. His Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and stupidly named Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique have notched up one triumph after another over the decades: benchmark recordings of the Monteverdi Vespers and Bach B minor Mass, the finest period-instrument Beethoven symphony cycle and a cantata pilgrimage of live

The passing of a magnificent contrarian

I see my Spectator colleagues have beaten me to it and republished a 1989 profile of Richard West, one of the finest foreign correspondents of the 20th century, who has died aged 84. Never mind. I’m determined to write about him. Annoyingly, I couldn’t find a single picture of him on Google (I borrowed the one above

The legend returns

Daniel Barenboim is back in town: the South Bank is mounting a ‘Barenboim Project 2015’ in which he’s playing the Schubert piano sonatas and conducting his magnificent Berlin Staatskapelle in Elgar’s Second Symphony and Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, with Martha Argerich as soloist (if she doesn’t cancel yet again, in which case I assume Barenboim

The audio anoraks bringing the great vintage recordings back to life

If there’s one thing people find annoying about classical music anoraks, it’s our passion for vintage recordings. ‘Listen to that ravishing rubato,’ we gush, as an elderly soprano swoops and scoops to the accompaniment of what sounds like a giant egg-and-bacon fry-up. And if non-anorak listeners do manage to ignore the pops, scratches and static,

Damian Thompson

Eight remastered classical recordings you need to hear

In the magazine this week I’ve written about spectacular new advances in the art of remastering vintage classical recordings. Many restoration engineers are removing hiss and correcting pitch so that historic performances are no longer muffled or distorted. But one of them stands out from the rest: Andrew Rose, whose Pristine Classical label is more interventionist than

Look at this cheap trick the Tories tried to play on me

‘Mansion Tax Revaluation Information’, said the letter that came through my letterbox, in an envelope that screamed ‘council’ or ‘taxman’ or something alarming. The letter inside was carefully formatted to look official. ‘Your property has been identified as one which could be affected by Ed Miliband’s “Mansion Tax”. This could leave you with an additional

Edward Stourton just can’t stop bashing the bishop

I’ll keep this brief, but can the BBC please replace Ed Stourton as presenter of Radio 4’s Sunday programme? He is an old Amplefordian from one of the great recusant families who, like many elderly Catholic toffs, holds ‘progressive’ views on faith and morals (though not education – he sent his sons to Eton). Fair enough, but

Solved at last: the mystery of David Cameron’s generous waistline

Why is the Prime Minister inviting everyone into his kitchen, asks Isabel Hardman. Good question. Doesn’t he realise that for those of us fascinated by Dave’s struggles with his waistline, a glimpse inside his fridge – provided courtesy of the Sun – is the perfect opportunity for a snoop? Disappointingly, there’s no custard on display. In my days