Mary Wakefield is commissioning editor of The Spectator.
The road was cordoned off by Horse Guards parade on Friday afternoon, because of some ‘function’ on the pavement beside the Treasury building: squat little marquee, squat little men drinking warm champagne and 30 odd police officers standing around in the street with truncheons. As I herded with the crowd along the pedestrian detour I
Sitting opposite Ed Miliband MP in a large and airy office, the sort of office that befits the Minister for the Third Sector, I suddenly have the surreal impression that I’m at the doctor’s. It’s the medicinal green of the carpet but, more than that, it’s Ed’s demeanour. There he is on the sofa, all
How do you react to the news that Kay Hartenstein Saatchi, ex-wife of Charles, the woman who helped to discover (or invent) the original Brit Art brat pack, is putting on a exhibition of London’s best young artists this week? Perhaps your eyes have already begun to widen with excitement? Perhaps you feel a sudden
Well, so long, after not so long to Michael Meacher, a man who was never leader, nor was meant to be. ‘Pleased to’ Meacher was his nickname around here, because he was, invariably, pleased to meet you and pleased to talk at length to you too, which is why it was quite clear that he
Sometimes you absolutely know, beyond the gentlest breath of a doubt, that you’re not going to like a person; something you’ve heard, or read about them, has tipped you over into a flinty conviction that they’re not your type. I took a preconception of this sort with me to meet the cult film-maker Julien Temple.
Help, please! Yes you – don’t pass me by, I have a problem and I need your advice. How can cyclists survive – not just physically, though that’s also tricky – but financially? We bike because it’s practical and ethical, and because we’re encouraged to by our political leaders, but why should we go on
Has anybody noticed that slowly, slowly, (little by little) short people are taking over the world? They took Hollywood many decades ago, beetling their way into the limelight with their bulging eyes and cuban heels. Then they quietly assumed the moral and spiritual high ground, with the truly minuscule Saint Mother Teresa and Gandhi. These
Mary Wakefield talks to Craigie Aitchison about Bedlingtons — and about his painting By five o’clock last Thursday evening, Craigie Aitchison and I had been talking about dogs for nearly an hour. It was grey outside but, inside, the pink walls of Craigie’s sitting room glowed in the orange light of an electric fire, and
‘Hello, anybody here?’ The gate into Antony Gormley’s studio had slid mysteriously open as I approached, but there was no one behind it — just a courtyard, a row of trees and two metal figures. ‘Hello, hello?’ I walked across the yard up to a vast warehouse, and peered in through the double doors. Still
Is it ethical to snoop around an Archbishop’s sitting-room? Surely, I decide, a gentle stroll around furniture is OK: past a gilt mirror and a large crucifix, past a picture book of the Jewish Haggadah and over to a baby grand tucked into the curve of a bay window. There are two piano pieces on
Mary Wakefield visits one of the group’s halls of residence and meets not albino assassins but a more pious version of Trinny and Susannah After three hours with Opus Dei women at Ashwell House in east London I wandered west, half-stunned, like a cat hit by a car. At Oxford Circus the usual loons were
Mary Wakefield looks back at our issue of 24 April 1926, and finds The Spectator reflecting on Mussolini, the brewing General Strike — and the off-side rule It was press day at The Spectator when Queen Elizabeth II was born. The printers had set the lines of type for the edition of 24 April 1926,
Everybody loves the Poles. Everybody loves reliable plumbers and natural-born nannies. Only Andrzej Tutkaj, of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, is sceptical about the benefits of the march from East to West. I spoke to Mr Tutkaj on the telephone this week and asked him how all the new Poles were faring in
An excited twitter filled the assembly room of the Eastside Young Leaders Academy (EYCA) in Plaistow, east London. ‘David Cameron’s arrived! He’s in the corridor! He’s nearly here!’ Day three of his leadership, and just the thought of Dave’s presence has the same effect on Tories as Will Young has on teenage girls. Middle-aged charity
It didn’t occur to me until a few weeks ago to question homeopathy. Of course it worked. I grew up with it; my aunt Liz was and still is a homeopathic practitioner and for us — my mother, father, aunts, uncles, brother, cousins — calling Liz was the natural reaction to the slightest swollen gland.
Sir Denis Mahon arrived at The Spectator 40 minutes before he was due to be interviewed. While I scuffed around in search of tape recorders and sensible questions, Britain’s most distinguished collector and historian of Italian art sat in the editor’s office, waiting. Every now and then I looked at him through the door jamb.
The sky was already murky at 4 p.m. when I locked my bike outside Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. Inside, it was even murkier: wood-panelled corridors stretched off into the gloom, men in grey suits were wedged together, smoking Bensons and drinking bitter. No one looked even slightly like an Arch Priest of
On Friday morning I was drinking a cappuccino in the Piazza del Gesu in Naples with my friend Angus. The sky was free from clouds, the streets were free from other tourists, and no one seemed to care that I had parked my car illegally, facing the wrong way in the middle of a busy
At nine in the morning, Cumnor in Oxfordshire looks like the setting for a Miss Marple mystery. Cotswold cottages run around the outside bend of a narrow high street and on the other side a grassy bank rises up to a graveyard. Nothing moves except the tops of fir trees growing among the tombstones. Standing
Alexander McCall Smith counts Donald Rumsfeld and The Red Hot Chili Peppers among his fans, and has a very cool cat. Mary Wakefield talks to him about Africa and ‘reality’ Alexander McCall Smith wants to show me his cat. ‘I think he’s asleep in the spare bedroom,’ says Edna, his cleaning lady, putting down a