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Myanmar's junta has stooped to a new low

Myanmar's junta has stooped to a new low

Myanmar’s junta has once again shown its true self: calculated, despicable, and violently unrestrained. Last night, warplanes dropped two 500-pound...

yesterday 20

The Spectator

Caleb Quinley

The Great Lie / Don't listen to those who tell you America is over

The Great Lie / Don't listen to those who tell you America is over

What has gone wrong for Americans? To listen to an increasing number of politicians and pundits on both sides, from Tucker Carlson to Alexandria...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Ben Shapiro

Why the McDonald’s AI ad flopped

Why the McDonald’s AI ad flopped

Be afraid, be very afraid. That’s what we’d been told in the advertising and commercial production industry. AI is coming for your job. It’ll be...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Paul Burke

Cosy crime for Christmas: a choice of thrillers

Cosy crime for Christmas: a choice of thrillers

Christmas is prime time for cosy crime and the excellent thriller writer Nicola Upson offers a short, pleasing contribution with The Christmas Clue...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Andrew Rosenheim

Rory Stewart’s romantic view of Cumbria is wide of the mark

Rory Stewart’s romantic view of Cumbria is wide of the mark

It’s tricky for writers to gather up pieces of old work and collect them in significant literary form. It’s risky for former politicians to publish...

yesterday 9

The Spectator

Sarah Hall

Santa Pants: a cocktail recipe by Matthew and Camila McConaughey

Santa Pants: a cocktail recipe by Matthew and Camila McConaughey

Our Santa Pants cocktail is one of our go-to holiday pours when hosting at this time of year. Made with our organic tequila and ginger beer,...

yesterday 9

The Spectator

Matthew And Camila Mcconaughey

The Spectator's Notes / Should I wear a burka in the House of Lords?

On Advent Sunday, our grandson Christian became a Christian. He was baptised, sleeping, in the font of our parish church. On the whiteboard in the...

yesterday 9

The Spectator

Charles Moore

The evasions of smalltown Alabama: The Land of Sweet Forever, by Harper Lee, reviewed

The evasions of smalltown Alabama: The Land of Sweet Forever, by Harper Lee, reviewed

Harper Lee’s writing career was brief, but her single novel became one of the most famous in American history. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) won the...

yesterday 9

The Spectator

Sarah Churchwell

The cartographer’s power to decide the fate of millions

The cartographer’s power to decide the fate of millions

I had searched for it for the better part of 20 years. An enormous trove of lost maps, the 800 or so sheets of an immense and madcap Victorian...

yesterday 9

The Spectator

Simon Winchester

Don't listen to those who tell you America is over

Don't listen to those who tell you America is over

What has gone wrong for Americans? To listen to an increasing number of politicians and pundits on both sides, from Tucker Carlson to Alexandria...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Ben Shapiro

Peril in Prague: The Secret of Secrets, by Dan Brown, reviewed

Peril in Prague: The Secret of Secrets, by Dan Brown, reviewed

Robert Langdon is a symbologist, and that is the meta joke – the only joke – of Dan Brown’s series of blockbusters, of which this is the sixth....

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Tanya Gold

What humans can learn from mice about monogamy

What humans can learn from mice about monogamy

Time was, we took lessons from brute creation. Medieval bestiaries, books of beasts, weren’t simply descriptions of animals; these compendiums of...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Melanie Mcdonagh

Songs of murder, rape and desertion

Songs of murder, rape and desertion

A century ago, the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown was settling into his first term at Stromness Academy. His schooldays were to prove a dismal...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Maggie Fergusson

How the Queen is spreading the joy of reading

How the Queen is spreading the joy of reading

Gyles Brandreth has narrated this article for you to listen to. Queen Camilla loves a book. Almost any book will do. ‘There’s something so tactile...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Gyles Brandreth

My favourite books to give at Christmas

As Christmas approaches and we wrack our brains to find something that suits everyone, there is no present quite like a book. Whether it’s an...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Her Majesty The Queen

'I’ve been allergic to AI for a long time': an interview with Peter Thiel

'I’ve been allergic to AI for a long time': an interview with Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel has been described variously as ‘America’s leading public intellectual’, the ‘architect of Silicon Valley’s contemporary...

yesterday 7

The Spectator

William Atkinson

'We must not be the Tory party 2.0': Nigel Farage on his plans for power

'We must not be the Tory party 2.0': Nigel Farage on his plans for power

Nigel Farage is signing football shirts when I arrive at Reform’s campaign headquarters in Millbank Tower, the building where New Labour prepared...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Tim Shipman

The little imps who pretended to be poltergeists

The little imps who pretended to be poltergeists

It comes as a surprise for anyone assuming that ghosthunters are easily fooled scaredy cats to learn that there was once a Society for Psychical...

yesterday 8

The Spectator

Suzi Feay

Sandie Peggie and a chilling step backwards for women’s rights

Sandie Peggie and a chilling step backwards for women’s rights

A woman confronts a biological man in a female changing room. She is later found to have harassed him because he identified as a woman. Many...

yesterday 10

The Spectator

Lara Brown

What an Odyssey / The pleasure of not knowing

A few years ago the podcaster Lex Fridman published a list of books that he was hoping to read in the year ahead. It included works by George...

yesterday 5

The Spectator

Douglas Murray

Is the superflu really ‘unprecedented’?

Is the superflu really ‘unprecedented’?

The NHS is facing a ‘worst-case scenario’ for flu this winter. That was the verdict of Professor Meghana Pandit, national medical director for the...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Michael Simmons

Survival here is about logistics: Disneyland Paris reviewed

Alcoholics know that hell is denial, and there is plenty at Disneyland Paris in winter. This is a pleasure land risen from a field and everyone has...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Tanya Gold

One of the joys of wine is the people who make it

Towards the end of the war, a young Guards officer met some Italian aristocrats. They had much in common. Robert Cecil was the heir to a...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Bruce Anderson

I'll miss the unintended hilarity of the round robin

‘Dearly beloved friends and family, well, what a year it’s been! Where to start?! The big event for us – aside from nurturing our preternaturally...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Flora Watkins

How London became the best place in the world to eat out

How London became the best place in the world to eat out

London has become the best place in the world to eat out. Of course, there are a thousand other cities with marvellous food, but for organic...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Stephen Bayley

The charming side of elections in the Falklands

The charming side of elections in the Falklands

It’s election time in the Falklands, where every four years we choose eight members of the Islands’ legislative assembly. They say you don’t...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

A.s.h. Smyth

Christmas notebook / I stand with Nigel Farage

Christmas notebook / I stand with Nigel Farage

I have sweet memories of Christmas. My dad is proper old-school and would set up the video recorder. I don’t think we’ve ever watched the footage;...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

Bonnie Blue

The ups and downs of high-rise living

The ups and downs of high-rise living

‘On BBC 2 last Monday,’ noted the Sunday Telegraph’s TV critic Trevor Grove in February 1979, ‘the return of Fawlty Towers was immediately...

yesterday 6

The Spectator

David Kynaston

Seasonal jeer / The joy of a miserable literary Christmas

A Christmas Carol is pretty well unavoidable around now, with Little Women trailing somewhat behind. There’s no shortage of alternative literary...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Philip Hensher

Diary / My farewell to In Our Time

I set up In Our Time 27 years ago. I had been shunted from Start the Week to what was cheerfully known as the ‘death slot’, 9 a.m. on Thursdays,...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Melvyn Bragg

Letter from Washington / Trump has made D.C. safe again

Letter from Washington / Trump has made D.C. safe again

In August, the President of the United States declared a crime ‘emergency’ in my home town of Washington D.C. Donald Trump rules by declaring ‘...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Andrew Sullivan

Object lesson / The scientific case for the existence of intelligent alien life

Avi Loeb has narrated this article for you to listen to. The foundation of science is based on the humility to learn, not the arrogance of...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Avi Loeb

Turning point / The year wokery went into decline

We will remember 2025 as the year that a madness which had gripped us for a decade finally succumbed to that most irritating of things, reality –...

yesterday 0

The Spectator

Rod Liddle

Reform support in Scotland rises again

Reform support in Scotland rises again

Another day, another bad poll for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party. With less than six months until the Scottish parliament election, pollsters are...

previous day 5

The Spectator

Steerpike

Keir Starmer is not waving but drowning at PMQs

Benjamin Disraeli once observed that the difference between a misfortune and a calamity was that if Mr Gladstone fell in the Thames it would be a...

previous day 30

The Spectator

Madeline Grant

Will Australia's social media ban work?

Will Australia's social media ban work?

It’s all too easy to get hooked by the online world, to fall headlong into it, to spend hour upon hour immersed in it. Cyberspace has its good, but...

previous day 10

The Spectator

Terry Barnes

Virtue signalling / The celebrity ECHR letter is pious posturing

Virtue signalling / The celebrity ECHR letter is pious posturing

Would someone please think of the luvvies? While the rest of the nation is furious about our out-of-control borders and the heinous crimes...

previous day 8

The Spectator

Tom Slater

Send up / The special needs racket is out of control

Send up / The special needs racket is out of control

We are, as vicars like to tell us, all special in our own way. But none so much as children in Scottish primary schools, 43 per cent of whom are...

previous day 4

The Spectator

Ross Clark

How an Iran-Egypt Pride match threw the World Cup into disarray

How an Iran-Egypt Pride match threw the World Cup into disarray

Fifa looks set to face its first major scandal of the 2026 World Cup – if you don’t count the exorbitant cost of the tickets, that is. The...

previous day 5

The Spectator

Philip Patrick

Rachel Reeves: There were too many Budget leaks

Rachel Reeves: There were too many Budget leaks

There were ‘too many leaks’ ahead of the autumn Budget, Rachel Reeves admitted this morning as she faced MPs on the Treasury Select Committee. The...

previous day 6

The Spectator

Lucy Dunn

Pantone’s choice of white as colour of the year isn't racist

Pantone’s choice of white as colour of the year isn't racist

For those of you dreaming of a white Christmas, here’s some advice: keep your thoughts to yourselves. Or at least select carefully who you share...

previous day 5

The Spectator

Patrick West

Mahmood should not waste her chance to reform the police

Mahmood should not waste her chance to reform the police

The Home Secretary is feeling the collars of our 43 chief constables. Shabana Mahmood has let it be known that she favours a dramatic reduction in...

previous day 5

The Spectator

Ian Acheson

Keir Starmer's call for ECHR reform is a risky gamble

Keir Starmer's call for ECHR reform is a risky gamble

Ahead of a Council of Europe summit in Strasbourg today to discuss the future scope of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Keir Starmer...

previous day 4

The Spectator

Alexander Horne

Could Shabana Mahmood merge the police into 12 forces?

Could Shabana Mahmood merge the police into 12 forces?

‘The 43-force structure is no longer fit for purpose. In the interests of the efficiency and effectiveness of policing it should change.’ That was...

previous day 5

The Spectator

Danny Shaw

Badenoch still has a Herculean task ahead of her

Badenoch still has a Herculean task ahead of her

Kemi Badenoch’s good form at Prime Minister’s Questions continues. The Tory leader visibly enjoyed herself again today as she feasted on Labour’s...

previous day 0

The Spectator

Isabel Hardman

Will I ever be a juror?

Will I ever be a juror?

David Lammy’s proposal to do away with jury trials for all but the most serious offences has a consequence which hasn’t so far been aired in...

previous day 2

The Spectator

Ross Clark

Farage and Bardella's small boats pact

Farage and Bardella's small boats pact

What will European politics look like in 2029? Nigel Farage is hoping that it resembles something like the pictures he posed for in London today,...

previous day 10

The Spectator

James Heale

Europe's kind words and bear hugs can't save Zelensky

Europe's kind words and bear hugs can't save Zelensky

If bear hugs were army divisions and brave words cash euros, Volodymyr Zelensky would have ended his tour of European capitals this week the best-...

previous day 3

The Spectator

Owen Matthews

Harry Potter doesn't need a trigger warning

Harry Potter doesn't need a trigger warning

Take my advice and steer clear of your local university. It is not just the flu that’s spreading on campus. Last month, an outbreak of trigger...

previous day 8

The Spectator

Joanna Williams

Bardella and Le Pen are closer to power than ever before

Bardella and Le Pen are closer to power than ever before

The 20 days that Nicolas Sarkozy recently spent behind bars have been turned into a book published today. The 70-year-old former president of...

previous day 7

The Spectator

Gavin Mortimer