Mary Wakefield is commissioning editor of The Spectator.
Until last month I hadn’t seen a hedgehog for close to 30 years, though they were part of everyday life when I was a child. In the school holidays, we’d rush first thing to the nearby cattle grids to check for animals who’d fallen in overnight. It’s what passed for fun back then: picking damp
In those moments when I most fear that the West is on the skids, I find it helps to make a list of end-time signs, phenomena that indicate decay, like sparks along a piece of faulty wiring. So far my list goes like this: NFTs; babyccinos; liver-flavoured ice-cream for dogs; the fashion for encouraging children
Fourteen years ago, my then boss, Matt d’Ancona sent me off to interview Gore Vidal. I’ll always be grateful to him for the opportunity. D’Ancona could have gone to meet the great man himself, but he knew I was a fan so he let me go. Is there anything hopeful in American politics then? I
Katia and Maurice Krafft were both born in the 1940s in the Rhine valley, close to the Miocene Kaiser volcano, though they didn’t know each other as children. They met on a park bench when they were students at the University of Strasbourg, and from that moment on, according to their joint obituary in the
17 min listen
On this week’s episode: Leo McKinstry on the worrying rise of apostrophe laws (0:31). Mary Wakefield on why we should resist Stonewall’s gospel (07:02) and Melanie McDonagh on the lost art of letterheads (13.33).Presented and produced by Natasha Feroze.
47 min listen
In this week’s episode:The knives are out in the Tory leadership fight, who looks likely to make the final two?Fraser Nelson writes this week’s cover piece about the Tory leadership race. He’s joined by the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson (0.49).Also this week:Mary Wakefield challenges Stonewall’s guidelines for parents with trans children. One of these parents is
I think by now it’s becoming horribly apparent to parents of every political persuasion that we can’t sit out the culture wars. You might call yourself progressive, loathe the Tories, but still… the ideological tide is rising, and when it laps at your own child’s feet, everything changes. It becomes impossible to ignore the fact
24 min listen
On this week’s episode: Mary Wakefield asks why no one’s mentioning the cult Tom Cruise belongs to (00:54), John R. MacArthur asks if Macron should be scared by an ascendant Jean-Luc Mélenchon (06:58), and Daisy Dunn orients herself after listening to the Gucci Podcast (17:57).
37 min listen
In this week’s episode:Why is there a lack of faith in western leaders? Spectator deputy editor Freddy Gray, Callum Williams from the Economist & Harvard professor Barbara Kellerman discuss why the world feel so leaderless. (00:44) Also this week:How do you escape the Church of Scientology? Spectator Columnist Mary Wakefield talks with former scientologist Claire Headley
I keep reading that Tom Cruise is the Last Great Movie Star, as if he’s some noble but endangered animal. I think his people must be putting it about as part of the PR for Top Gun 2, though Lord knows what his peers make of it. Think of Tom Hanks, Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep,
Sometimes an event or a phenomenon is so perplexing and so terrible that it’s best not to deal with it too directly and for too long. Best to look at something tangentially related, which is why I’ve spent so much time recently worrying about Kirrin Medcalf’s dog. Kirrin is head of ‘trans inclusion’ at Stonewall,
24 min listen
On this week’s episode, we’ll hear from Melissa Kite on the ambitions of Ben Wallace. (00:48) After, Mary Wakefield on our misplaced faith in forensics. (09:35) And, to finish, and James Heale on Eton’s great ‘awokening’. (16:33) Produced and Presented by Sam Holmes Entries for this year’s Innovator Awards, sponsored by Investec, are now open.
I grew up in the golden age of forensic science, at a time when expert witnesses were becoming celebs, each with their special little area of crimebusting know-how. The papers were full of excited talk about hair microscopy, ballistics and fibre analysis. Crime scene investigators were hot as pop stars. My brother and I had
I think it’s time we stopped scaring the children. I think they’ve had enough. They’re at breaking point now, every generation more anxious than the last – and anxious younger, too. There’s a record number of British children diagnosed with anxiety, and a record wait – two years – for therapy, though I’m not at
29 min listen
On this episode of Spectator Out Loud, Douglas Murray starts by explaining why C. S. Lewis was right about war. (00:56) Mary Wakefield is up next, looking at the founding myth that Russia and Ukraine are fighting over. (10:18) Nicola Shulman finishes the podcast, reading her piece about Philip Larkin’s big problem. (16:53)
It seems strange now that any of us ever imagined that Putin might not invade. He thinks of Ukraine as rightfully Russia’s, heart, mind and soul. It’s there in that essay he wrote last year: Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people’, he said, meaning not that they’re brothers so much as that Ukrainians have no
21 min listen
On this week’s episode, we’ll hear from John Keiger on Emmanuel Macron’s brand of performative diplomacy. (00:53) Next, Mary Wakefield on the few pros and many cons of the lady carriage. (10:30) And finally, Sean Thomas on how learning to work from home opens the door to working in paradise. (16:17) Produced and presented by
35 min listen
In this week’s episode: What does Putin really want for Russia? For this week’s cover story, Niall Ferguson writes about how Putin seems to be trying to recreate the Russia of the Past, while this week’s diary by Timothy Garton Ash says the West has misunderstood his intentions, Niall and Timothy join the podcast along
Sooner or later, somewhere in the UK, we’ll have trains with women-only coaches. It’s an idea which keeps rolling around, and though the train people complain — it’s unworkable, unenforceable — it makes no odds. It’s too seductive an idea for a progressive politician. Jeremy Corbyn was tempted by it back in 2015, and now
Almost everyone here that I’ve spoken to about it assumes that the opioid crisis in the United States won’t ever come to the UK. Yes, the problem there is accelerating. Drug overdose deaths in America are now at more than 100,000 a year. A few days ago the Lancet predicted 1.2 million dead by 2029
