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Louvre incursion Jewellery once belonging to Napoleon’s family was sprung from the Louvre. In 1911 the ‘Mona Lisa’ was stolen by an Italian glazier, Vincenzo Peruggia, who worked there and who managed to slip the painting under his smock. Two years later he was caught when trying to sell it to an antiques dealer in
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In Silicon Valley there is a simple mantra that drives innovation: You Can Just Do Things. Wait for permission from the system, the bureaucrats or, worst of all, your lawyers, and nothing ever happens. Incumbents want inertia not challenge. Progress depends on movement. Nowhere does the PM seem so adrift than in the area he
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Watch Piers Morgan in conversation with Andrew Doyle to discuss Piers’s provocative new book, Woke Is Dead, and share their unfiltered views on the state of the world today, exclusively for Spectator subscribers. Rather than celebrating the death of woke, Piers’s book advocates for the return of common sense and a less divided, more sensible society. Piers Morgan: Woke
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Rough justice Sir: The Church Commissioners’ plan to establish a £100 million (rising to £1 billion) fund for ‘reparative justice’ is indeed ‘the most egregious example of lanyard Anglicanism’ as your leading article says (‘Laud’s prayer’, 11 October). It is deeply flawed in conception, substance and process – and is especially ill-judged when parish clergy
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King’s speechless There will be no state opening of parliament this year and consequently no King’s speech. This is only the seventh year since 1900 in which this has happened: the others were 1915, 1925, 1949, 2011, 2018 and 2020, though 2019 saw two state openings in just over two months, on 14 October and
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‘SWEAR’ ( 31D) is uttered thrice by the ghost of King HAMLET (3D) who was the victim of ‘MURDER MOST FOUL’ (37A/34D/9D) where his FRUIT (14A) grew (his orchard). His son, whose tragic friend was OPHELIA (36A), addresses the ghost as ‘OLD MOLE’ (18D). See Hamlet I.v.145-162. First prize Cathy Staveley, London SW15 Runners-up Mick
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Exactly a year ago, this magazine warned that ministers were showing a dangerous naivety towards China. We revealed that the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister were all intent on cosying up to Beijing. They were scornful of the wariness Conservative ministers had shown towards the Chinese Communist party. The Labour leadership believed
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Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, praised President Donald Trump for the Gaza ceasefire agreement while in India accompanied by a trade delegation of 126. He then flew off to Egypt for the summit at which the peace declaration was signed. Sir Keir asserted that the dropping of a prosecution against two men for
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I am floating on heather again. A fleece unshorn for fifty years slips off me, rolls down the hill. Its tumbleweed won’t stop till the village where Gary and Bill wait for me and Emmy unlocks the corrugated hall and Stahl repairs his Morris outside Nancy’s shop. It’s early May. The bleating fields and the
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Watch Spectator chairman Charles Moore and assistant editor Isabel Hardman discuss Charles’s new Centenary Edition of Margaret Thatcher’s biography, exclusively for Spectator subscribers. Charles will reflect on Thatcher’s legacy, draw sharp parallels with today’s political landscape and ask where conservatism – with its split between the Conservatives and Reform – goes from here. Beforehand, Charles,
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Zero chance Sir: In Tim Shipman’s wide-ranging article on Kemi Badenoch (‘I have a lot of self-belief’, 4 October), she claims that net zero has become just a slogan and that we can’t tackle climate change alone. In that she is right, but she fails to recognise that unless we can be seen to be
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Out of office French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu resigned after just 27 days – making his time in office 22 days shorter than that of Liz Truss. But even Lecornu doesn’t hold the record for Europe’s shortest-lived PM. – That honour belongs to Magdalena Andersson, elected Swedish PM on 24 November 2021. She lasted just
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The list of 21 letters comprises abbreviations, listed in Chambers. First prize Alan Norman, Impington, Cambridge Runners-up Peter Chapman, Edinburgh; David Tatarata, London WC1N
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There have been 106 Archbishops of Canterbury since Gregory the Great declared Augustine his ‘Apostle to the English’ in 597. Their number has included Catholics and Protestants, progressives and traditionalists, academics, politicians, even a tank commander. But none had ever been a woman. Sarah Mullally’s appointment is a historic moment for the Church but it
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Home Two men at a synagogue at Heaton Park in Manchester were killed on Yom Kippur when Jihad al-Shamie, 35, drove a car at bystanders and went on the attack with a knife. He was a British citizen of Syrian descent, on bail after being arrested on suspicion of rape. He was bravely prevented by
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Moscow mule Sir: While visiting Russia, James Delingpole learned from the patriarchate’s press officer that under communism the Russian Church wasn’t allowed to exist (‘Letter from Moscow’, 27 September). However, that doesn’t accord with my own experience of being in the USSR during the Brezhnev era. As a student, I visited the 14th-century Zagorsk monastery
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Park life Locals were angered by the closing off of 1,500 acres of Windsor Great Park to create a secure area around Forest Lodge, the new home of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Medieval residents of Berkshire would have been in sympathy, as William I had the entire park closed off to the public
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Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, addressed delegates at the Labour party conference in Liverpool who had been issued with little flags of the home nations to wave. He said Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, ‘doesn’t like Britain, doesn’t believe in Britain’. He had earlier put forward the difficult argument that Farage’s
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Unclued lights all follow MAGIC. (41A MOUNTAIN and 42A FLUTE should be preceded by ‘The’). First prize Ronnie Hind, Llandygwydd, Cardigan Runners-up Deirdre Hartz, Medstead, Hampshire; Stephen Rice, London SW1
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Questions of identity permeate our politics. What is it to be English, to be British? The Prime Minister sought to reclaim patriotism for the left in his conference speech, but his invocation of football stadium flag-waving and Oasis swagger was a remix of Britpop themes which were tinnily jarring two decades ago and beyond tired