menu_open
Arabella Byrne

Arabella Byrne

The Spectator

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Where posh kids go to pull

13.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Charlbury chic / Why do posh men love the Nehru jacket?

At a recent drinks party in Oxfordshire, I counted five men wearing Nehru waistcoats. Not one of these men looked like he was paying homage to the...

06.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Wax and wane / Revenge of the rural Barbour

Time was, a Barbour meant one thing: the classic Beaufort model that stank of wax, wet dog, and had pockets stuffed with cartridges from a shoot....

22.11.2024 20

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Puffed up / The anti-smoking drugs don’t work

Ten years ago, I decided that I should stop smoking. Before this decision, I had never given it a second thought. ‘Want to step outside for another?...

13.11.2024 6

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

An ode to Boden

Way back in the noughties, Charles Moore observed that the Conservatives could learn a lot from the Boden story. ‘An individualistic,...

04.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Brought to book / The pitfalls of the Accelerated Reader programme

To my enormous pride, my six-year-old daughter is an excellent reader. In Reception, she raced through the colour-coded chart of Biff & Chip books...

09.09.2024 7

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Parental guidance / How to survive the start of the school year

At long last, the day has come. After nearly two months of summer holidays, institutions beckon their children back for another school year. The...

03.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Doing the bins has become an unbearable faff

Benjamin Franklin famously observed that there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes. But there are in fact three certainties: death,...

02.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

RIP / Alain Delon seduced us all

In a 1962 interview, Alain Delon pushes aside a carafe of red wine and explains that when offered his first cinema role, he didn’t really want it:...

19.08.2024 9

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Make politics fun again / Why is British political merch so bad?

Balanced rakishly on my late grandmother’s china parrot is a MAGA hat bought in 2016 when it seemed highly improbable that Trump would beat the...

16.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Big top / An alternative to Giffords Circus

I’ve never been seduced by the circus. As a motif in children’s literature, particularly taken up by Enid Blyton and Disney. In fact, as an...

13.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Baguette binge / Vive le Supermarché!

It’s 7.54 a.m. and we are waiting for the doors of the Intermarché St Remy de Provence to open. A vast sense of excitement is building within our...

05.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Drop it like it’s hot / The enduring appeal of Snoop Dogg

I’m in Provence for my annual jaunt to the land of bulls, Pernod and lavender. All over our small French village, fever for the Jeux...

26.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Election / The trouble with French rap

Last Monday, a group of 20 French rappers released a video entitled ‘No Pasarán’. Evoking the Republican resistance against Franco in the Spanish...

08.07.2024 4

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Childcare is mothercare

When I was a small child, my mother left me in the charge of an elderly neighbour so that she could write. My grandmother lived far away in Scotland...

04.07.2024 7

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Game, set, match / The unending pain of Andy Murray

Just after Andy Murray made the winning pass that won him Wimbledon for the first time in 2013, he looked up to the sky in pain. Not laughing with joy...

03.07.2024 5

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Horse play / When did Ascot become so naff?

I’ve never liked Ascot. On the occasions when I have dressed up and flogged across the south-east on a series of trains to get there, I have always...

21.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Have you had the school gate VAT chat?

Another day closer to the general election and I’m at my daughter’s prep school in Oxfordshire. As has come to be the norm, I’m having a ‘VAT...

06.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Frazzled / The desperate world of babytech

In the penumbra cast by the light of my phone, I can dimly see the wreckage of a night with a newborn baby: half-drunk bottles of milk, the...

07.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

Burning issue / Why Mummy smokes

It’s 7.02 p.m. and I’m standing outside my house by the bins smoking a fag. Upstairs, I can hear that my six-year-old is awake but I’m choosing...

18.04.2024 10

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

I’m trapped by the village WhatsApp

I live in a village in Oxfordshire. Before we moved here, a WhatsApp group was set up to help the community navigate the pandemic. It was, other...

13.02.2024 40

The Spectator

Arabella Byrne

343f52bdc27db76e3633be48d7405514