Melanie McDonagh is an Irish journalist working in London.
You wait ages for an intelligent, literate children’s book, then two come along at once. There’s Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field and Katherine Rundell’s The Poisoned King. Of the two, Rundell’s is easier on the wrist: 336 pages to Pullman’s 621. She is an accomplished writer, the author of a study of John Donne. A
Query: what kind of electoral landslide is it when most of the electorate doesn’t turn up? Not quite a landslide, I’d say – more the shifting of shingle. To put it another way, in the Irish presidential election, fewer than half of voters turned out (45.8 per cent). Three in four electors did not vote
We have it on the best authority that the meek shall inherit the earth and in the meantime in the case of Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, it’s the See of Canterbury. She is a modest, very nice woman. I like her. I’ve met her a few times and she was always pleasant, decent and
Goodness, isn’t there something a bit hoary about the notion that members of the Metropolitan Police may have to declare if they’re Freemasons? The idea has come up recently in the context of discussion on ‘declarable associations’ – those organisations you’re obliged to admit to belonging to if you’re a London copper. A spokesman for
The Pope has given his first interview, with the news agency, Crux, and the nice thing about it is there are no surprises. Pope revolted at obscene wealth and the growing gap between rich and poor? Jesus Christ wasn’t keen on the rich either. Or, as Leo put it when he was asked about growing
The education system may produce ignoramuses (my daughter finished school in June, never having been taught a thing about Napoleon, the French Revolution, Julius Caesar, the Industrial Revolution, or any basic geography), but there was solace out there for the unlearned and undereducated: they could always listen to In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg’s radio exploration
Punctuation is a gendered thing. I’ve been trying to stop myself overusing exclamation marks and it’s been difficult. Exclamation marks are girly because they’re a way of taking the sting out of what you say; they make any pronouncement seem more tentative, less serious. They’re the equivalent of a disarming smile, the marker that says:
Ditchling in East Sussex is a small, picturesque village with all the trappings: medieval church, half-timbered house, tea shops, a common, intrusive new housing developments down the road, a good walk from the nearest train station and the Downs on its doorstep. But the resonance of the place owes much to the remarkable artistic activity
The greatest living American until this week has died at the age of 97. I refer to Tom Lehrer, the finest satirist of the 20th century. He’s the one who observed that satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the genius who put the entire periodic table of
If we want to understand why thousands of women a year in England and Wales have an abortion – 251,377 in 2022, so probably way more now – we could do worse than consider the musings of the singer Lily Allen on the subject. In a podcast chat with her friend Miquita, this took a
It is not, it’s fair to say, a universal view among Catholic priests that MPs who vote the wrong way on assisted dying and the decriminalisation of abortion up to birth should be punished by excluding them from communion. But so it has turned out with Chris Coghlan, the Lib Dem MP for Dorking and
If yours is a sentimental bent, you’ll have been terrifically moved by the spectacle of Jess Phillips MP giving Kim Leadbeater a big hug after the Assisted Dying Bill was passed. Ms Leadbeater has a tendency to look agonised at the best of times. When MPs paid tribute to her in the course of the
Well, it’s hello to prenatal infanticide now that Tonia Antoniazzi’s amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill has passed the Commons after all of two hours’ debate with 379 MPs voting in favour. Can we get our heads round what that means? Nothing a woman does in relation to her own pregnancy can make her
Does anyone know what’s actually happening in Ballymena, in Northern Ireland? If you’ve just been following the news on the BBC, it’s actually quite hard to work out what has led to the violence which has injured at least 32 police officers. The initial news bulletins told us that there rioting youths were protesting about
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Olenka Hamilton ponders whether Poland’s revival is a mirage (1:24); Melanie McDonagh asks who killed the postal service (9:52); Hannah Moore argues that family cars aren’t built for families any more (14:35); James Delingpole reviews Careme from Apple TV and Chef’s Table from Netflix (21:15); and, William Atkinson provides his
Frankly, most people knew little about Robert Prevost before his election as pope, so there’s been a scramble to unpick Leo XIV’s past record to judge where he might take the papacy. ‘The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,’ he told journalists We know already that
In theory, we’ve got the first American Pope, Robert Prevost. Born and raised in Chicago, university educated in Philadelphia. Parents French/Italian and Spanish – hence his command of four languages. Did Leo XIV so much as mention the US during his first speech from the balcony? He did not. Maybe conscious that being an American cuts
Tried to send a parcel lately? Or a letter? If it involves a trip to a post office, all I can say is, give it time. A fortnight ago, I was posting a book to a friend and took it to the nearest post office – the central, City of London one. It’s housed in
In 1921, the sternly abstract cubist Albert Gleizes opened the door of his Parisian apartment to two young women in their twenties, the Irish artists Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett. They explained that they wanted him to teach them his method of ‘extreme cubism’. He wasn’t sure that he had a method, nor whether it
The Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s clarification of the Supreme Court ruling on what is a woman is not as clear as it looks. It says that trans people may not use single-sex spaces – notably lavatories – but must not be left without spaces to use. So, the hunt is on in hospitals, restaurants,
