Mary Wakefield

Mary Wakefield

Mary Wakefield is commissioning editor of The Spectator.

There’s no need to tell children about terrorists

Saturday evening in Durham. My in-laws and I had just begun our usual postprandial shout about Donald Trump when my niece appeared at the door, pale and serious. ‘There’s been another terrorist attack in London,’ she said. ‘I’m scared.’ The veins of the men in my husband’s family run with a sort of event-activated coolant.

Why do nurses quit? Because they care

Sometimes, on Sundays, I visit Richard, a friend who’s 95 and lives alone. The idea originally was that I’d be doing Richard a favour, but the truth is he cheers me up far more than I do him. I visit because I like him, but as the weeks go by, I’m afraid I’ve also developed

At the cutting edge

There’s a graveyard inside Henry Marsh’s head, though you’d never guess it to look at him. There he sits in his elegant flat in a small castle on a small island in the Oxford Thames: 67, attractive, restless. There he sits with the world all around him: Persian rugs, French tapestries, Japanese prints and his

Who dares face down the teenage gangsters?

The baby, unbothered by diesel fumes, enjoys an outing down the main road through London N1. Each passing bus is marked by a fat and pointing finger: ‘There!’ On the way to our local park last Thursday, we had just begun to cross the road, pointing up at the green ‘walk’ man, when a scooter

The mad, bad crusade against ‘cultural appropriation’

It’s usually best to ignore the indignant fury of the 21st-century young. We’re used to them now, these snowflakes, posing as victims (though they’re mostly middle-class), demanding ‘safe spaces’, banning books and speakers. Best to rise above them, deadhead the camellias. Attention, especially from the press, acts on entitled millennials like water on gremlins —

The mad, bad war on ‘cultural appropriation’

It’s usually best to ignore the indignant fury of the 21st-century young. We’re used to them now, these snowflakes, posing as victims (though they’re mostly middle-class), demanding ‘safe spaces’, banning books and speakers. Best to rise above them, deadhead the camellias. Attention, especially from the press, acts on entitled millennials like water on gremlins —

Redemption for the Ripper

In the autumn of 1888 London was in a state of terrified excitement over Jack the Ripper. There had never been a killer like this in England before, wrote Meredith Townsend and Richard Holt Hutton, the joint editors of The Spectator. They congratulated the British public on not succumbing to the continental habit of lynching

What will you do in the gene-editing revolution?

The only time I ever saw a wolf in the wild, a small one, I was so frightened that I closed my eyes. It was a useful insight into the depths of my own cowardice. Every day, with each new story about the exciting breakthroughs we’re making in genetic engineering, I feel that same shameful

Why wouldn’t our NHS saints help a dying man?

We all think pretty highly of ourselves these days, free from old-fashioned ideas about sin. We’re good people. And yet… I read in a letter in a local newspaper recently a description of an event in the writer’s own home which shows that we might also be becoming monsters. The letter-writer, Jane, was a lady

As the cab doors locked, I wanted to get out

I meant to get the bus, but by the time I arrived at the stop at 5 p.m. last Tuesday, I was running late. I was relieved to see a Tic Tac of orange light floating towards me through the evening. The taxi stopped, I climbed in and said: ‘Just north of Angel please.’ Then: ‘I’m

Why I’m telling my son about the sky fairy

After we were married, my husband and I went on honeymoon to Mexico. We drove across country east to west, then north to Mexico City, to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe where I prayed for a baby. My husband, the least judgmental of atheists, sat happy in the babble of ladies all talking

Mary Wakefield

The unkindest cult of all

When I was 22 I met a man called Yisrayl Hawkins who said his coming had been prophesied in the Book of Isaiah. Yisrayl (born Bill) lived with his many disciples and several wives in a compound carved out of the red dirt scrub near Abilene, Texas. His cult was called the House of Yahweh,

My husband’s ‘gay affair’ with Gove

A few weeks ago I discovered that while he should have been focused on the fight of his life during the referendum campaign, David Cameron was instead obsessing over whether or not his justice secretary, Michael Gove, had had an affair with my husband, Dom Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave. The story was in

How clever are ravens? I asked at the Tower

On Tower Hill, by the east wall of Beauchamp Tower where Robert Dudley was imprisoned for a year, a raven called Merlin hides behind a yucca plant. I know she’s there because the Ravenmaster told me. He knows she’s there because Merlin (a female) and he are bonded and they keep tabs on each other

When the fear of racism trumps everything else

Do you remember Alan Kurdi, the poor, drowned three-year-old whose photograph provoked a wave of sympathy for migrants almost exactly a year ago? Social media lit up with outrage — something must be done! — as millions shared the picture back and forth. A Facebook share is a pretty easy way of caring, but even

The Boris-bashers should be ashamed

Throughout this fractious summer, one thing has united all the warring pundits and politicians. Left, right; Leave, Remain, everyone at least agrees that it was crazy to leave the country in Boris’s hands. He’s not serious, they say, looking, as they make this pronouncement, jolly pleased with their own relative gravitas. They should instead be

Pokémon Go? I wish it would

Monday morning: one hand trapped beneath the fat and guzzling midget, with the other I idly opened the gates of hell — meaning I downloaded the game Pokémon Go. Pokémon Go is an ‘augmented reality’ game. It requires you to trot about in the real world, staring at your smartphone so as to find and

What’s to blame for a generation’s desperation?

Youth is wasted on the young, for the most part, and thank God for that. There’s nothing grislier than a teenage girl aware of her hypnotic effect on men, or a youngster who begins his important thoughts: ‘As a young person, I…’ These days, though, it’s not youth that’s wasted on the young so much