England is a mystical place, and its epicentre is Glastonbury, known by its pagan residents as Avalon, the mythical island of the Arthurian legend. It has sacred springs, the supposed tomb of King Arthur, the Tor and ruined tower, proximity to Stonehenge and now a thriving, sprawling community of pagans, with dozens of denominations from druid to water-witch.
Russell Brand always seemed repellant to me, but that had little to do with the fact he became famous in the noughties. And yet, since allegations have emerged, we keep being told repeatedly that Brand is a typical toxic product of the early years of the new millennium. ‘Resurfaced clips give a sobering reminder of
Every now and again, my alma mater is in the news, and why wouldn’t it be? Britain is obsessed with schools and class. Bedales provides ample fodder for both: the boarding school in Hampshire is famously ‘liberal’ – and was so even when England was famously illiberal. Bedales, whose graduates include Lily Allen, Kirstie Allsopp
The roads around Monmouth are quiet but have their attractions; they cut through valleys and woods, past castles and churches. My host, soignee interior designer Neil McLachlan, explains that this part of the world is a well-kept secret, popular with minor gentry and Londoners in the know but protected from the crowds that flush in and
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On the podcast this week: In his cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray says that he was hardly surprised that Donald Trump chose not to participate in last night’s Republican candidates debate. He argues that Trump no longer needs the TV networks and joins the podcast alongside Douglas Murray, who profiles the
Rat girl summer is a typically absurd TikTok meme that most women –indeed, most humans – born before 1990 would probably struggle to understand. But it’s a thing. And here’s what it means, according to the Washington Post: it is ‘a TikTok movement that emphasizes living like a rat: scurrying around the streets at all hours of the day
There’s something embarrassing about Rishi Sunak’s plan to revive chess in Britain. The PM is set to announce half-a-million pounds funding for the English Chess Federation. The money could be used to send teams to international tournaments, install chess tables in parks and teach the game to school kids. But Rishi’s cheesy cheerleading for government-sponsored
Some of the ways the rich can amuse and refresh themselves today include spas in the Maldives with glass floors offering views of brightly coloured fish during treatment, private retreats in the mountains of St Lucia costing thousands per night, and fabulous overnight trains through Rajasthan. But the last word in luxury is still to
The financial crash of 2008 didn’t kill the boozy lunch outright, but it took the wind out of its sails. Ever more Americanised work styles further deflated the tradition, before Covid stamped on it. But the boozy lunch is back. It’s certainly surprising. After all, we are in the middle of a cost-of-living squeeze and
Some years ago, on a trip up America’s Pacific Northwest, I spent a night in Portland in a hotel that was depressing in the way that not-quite-posh, not-quite-cool hotels can be. As part of its attempt to inject a sense of pizzazz into my cavernous room, there was a welcome pack whose starring feature was
Swift and sure, the guillotine blade came down on Russians in the West on 24 February last year, the day Russia invaded Ukraine. The logic was clear as concerned Putin loyalists; cutting them off from western gravy trains in the face of their dear leader’s grotesque aggression made some sense. They could bed down with
In the days since Martin Amis died at 73 of oesophageal cancer, the papers have been full of tributes. Mostly by men, mostly admiring, and clearly envious of Mart’s gutsy, mad way with words and his lusty, hard-living literary life, full of the cigarettes that killed him and more booze and women than today’s young
Miriam Cates and I have a different idea of what Thatcherism was all about. To me, the Lady T era was more feminist than any other before or after because it included all people, including women, in its vision of work, wealth, power and success. It did so without all the carry on about menstruation
I refuse to get Amazon Alexa, and never use Siri, because I find the concept of human-style interactions with robots somewhere between the unhealthy and the grotesque. And almost always more hassle than they’re worth because they don’t actually ‘understand’ what you’re telling them. But I don’t find them sinister, and find myself sceptical of
Designs for a tower block in Ealing just for women – the first in Britain – have been given the thumbs up by planners. On the surface of it, the scheme, proposed by the Women’s Pioneer Housing association, which was founded in the 1920s by women’s rights campaigners, sounds rather good. It offers a permanent, refuge-style living
As the pandemic roared through India, I wondered when tourists like me would be able to return to a country so central to the traveller’s imagination. When we did return, would it show the scars of the hideous death toll and extreme burden of suffering? Would we feel safe? Finally, nearly three years since I
In June last year, King’s College Cambridge made more than £1 million from an auction of just 41 lots from its wine cellar. Not bad for a college that until just a few years ago had a hammer and sickle flag hanging in its student bar. But the Marxist sympathies of some of its legendary
This, we are told, is a very bad time to be a woman. When young, we’re warned that we are sexual prey, privy to a misogynistic ordeal both on the streets and in the sheets, courtesy of the jungle of app-mediated romance. Despite being slaves to the gym and learning to pole dance, we still
I recently had a call with my accountant, a miniskirt-wearing, swashbuckling bon vivant and wine connoisseur. To soothe myself before we rang off – tax is always depressing – I brought up Waitrose, saying by way of apology for my erratic finances that most of my money went in the supermarket, a large branch of
Love of dogs is hardly new in Britain. There is a growing strand of research exploring the shared history we have with our canine pets. There is some lovely work on Victorian pet cemeteries and dog breeding, while an excellent little series by Kathleen Walker-Meikle includes the indispensable Dogs in Medieval Manuscripts, which chronicles the prominent if exotic
