Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.
Rosé wine is, I know, considered naff. Were you unaware of this you’d fast conclude as much from the incidence of lifestyle commentary informing us that rosé is newly smart. As with those columns advising that everyone is drinking sherry now, or that some prosecco is actually OK, or that men will be wearing skirts
Enoch Powell has been in many minds this month. It’s the 50th anniversary of his famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and I took part in a BBC radio programme discussing this — and hearing the speech itself read superbly by the actor, Ian McDiarmid. The small campaign against the very broadcasting of the speech fizzled
I was back at the tip on Sunday. I cannot help it. What art galleries or rock concerts or online porn are to some, Derby-shire County Council’s dump at Rowsley is to me. I can’t keep away. Any excuse will do, and on Sunday it was a bit of cardboard and a broken fan heater.
The decision to release John Worboys has been overturned in a ruling by the High Court, which said that the Parole Board must reconsider its verdict, and also make its decision transparent. In the piece below, which was first published in the Spectator in January, Matthew Parris questions whether parole boards’ decisions should be open
When Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, ejected from the aeroplane he was flying solo to Scotland, he parachuted to the ground and, injured, was taken to the local police station. This was 1941 and he had come on a doomed mission to draw the United Kingdom into peace negotiations. Hess’s aim was to deliver his proposals
As I write, a great gale is blowing in from Lake Turkana. The dry hills on the other side, always faint, have disappeared. Sheets of warm rain lash our tent, rollers crash on to the white sandy shore, huge pelicans struggle against the wind, the flamingos are gone, and fishermen like thin black sticks —
Few readerships of any intelligent national magazine will be more alive to the perils and downsides of 21st–century cyber-life than you, fellow Spectator readers. Many of you might share my use of the generalised expression ‘the internet’ for the whole damn thing — while not being quite sure what we’re referring to. Few, on the
Every now and then one suddenly misses somebody. I miss Bron, who died 17 years ago last month. There’s an Auberon Waugh-sized hole in British satirical journalism. Listening to the radio last week — it was all about famous women, women in history, women’s suffrage, sexual harassment of women, equal pay for women at the
This piece first appeared in last week’s Spectator. Britain does not have a housing shortage. We have a problem with the cost not the availability of homes. This can’t be solved by building more houses, because it is not caused by an insufficiency of houses. I’m no economist. My understanding of the dismal science is
Britain does not have a housing shortage. We have a problem with the cost not the availability of homes. This can’t be solved by building more houses, because it is not caused by an insufficiency of houses. I’m no economist. My understanding of the dismal science is rudimentary. I may be shot down in flames
Last week Nigel Farage described the deal we’ve done with France over the refugee camp near Calais as a ‘humiliating capitulation’. His was the most disgruntled voice among a number of others. The disgruntlement arose from the ‘Sandhurst’ deal struck with France during President Macron’s visit to Britain. The Prime Minister had agreed (at Sandhurst)
Hard cases make bad law. The release on parole of the ‘black cab rapist’, John Worboys, is a hard case. But ministers should not be panicked into throwing open parole board decision–making to public inspection. The police have blundered, the sentence was surely too lenient, and the failure to inform his victims was disgraceful. But
I return often to Cambridge and was there recently. Julian Glover, my partner, was talking to the History Society at Trinity about his new biography of Thomas Telford, the 18th-century roads, bridges and canals engineer. We spent the night at Trinity, and I had time to update my acquaintance with this fast-changing city. ‘Fast’ hardly
Prince Harry does not exist and soon Meghan Markle will cease to exist too. None of the royal family exist. This truth, which has come to me rather late in life, has taught me how to stop worrying and love the monarchy. Despite my boyhood admiration for King Sobhuza II of Swaziland, I was always
There are four of us in this relationship: my partner and I, his horse and my truck. His horse is 12, my truck 18. I’m jealous of his horse. He’s beastly about my truck. In our household Julian has only to say ‘nitrogen dioxide’ over dinner and my jaw tightens. ‘Particulants’ saps my appetite. ‘Scrappage scheme’ will drive
There are three reasons why Britain’s political and media world finds itself in the present ludicrous uproar over sexual misbehaviour at Westminster, and only one of them has anything to do with sexual misbehaviour. But let us start with that. And, first, a caveat. Can there be an organisation anywhere in discovered space which, subjected
‘I was last night sent officially to witness the execution by harakiri (self-immolation through disembowelling) of Taki Zensaburo… As the harakiri is one of the customs of this country which has excited the greatest curiosity in Europe… I will tell you what occurred…’ In The Spanish Ambassador’s Suitcase, my anthology of dispatches from British diplomats abroad,
As from the Manchester conference hall I watched Theresa May’s big moment falling apart, as I buried my head in my hands while her agonies multiplied, I suppose I thought this could spell the end for her premiership. But even as I thought that, then reminded myself that the same failure of the larynx has
The Brexit crowd are right to smell a rat. In any great national debate a columnist may feel tempted to go beyond openly rooting for one side. Rooting for one side is acceptable, of course. Though some Brexiteer readers do struggle with the idea it could be legitimate for a columnist to dis-agree with the
Entering the Bulawayo Club, you step out of the blinding African sunshine on that safe and friendly city’s wide streets, and into the cool of a generous, mahogany-lined reception hall, its glorious art-deco doorways and fittings taking you back to another age: the early 1930s when the Club, already about 40 years old, rebuilt the
