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Robin Ashenden

Robin Ashenden

The Spectator

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Help, I’ve become a news junkie!

Help, I’ve become a news junkie!
07.03.2025 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Why should Zelensky be grateful to Trump?

Why should Zelensky be grateful to Trump?
04.03.2025 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Britain is reliving the 1970s

Britain is reliving the 1970s
02.03.2025 20

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

What does it mean to be British?

What does it mean to be British?
01.03.2025 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Is Trump Putin’s useful idiot?

Is Trump Putin’s useful idiot?
28.02.2025 7

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Pen pals / The sad decline of stationery

10.02.2025 20

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Politics / Kemi Badenoch has a secret weapon in the fight against Nigel Farage

09.02.2025 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Kemi Badenoch has a secret weapon in the fight against Nigel Farage

08.02.2025 40

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Cold comfort / Italy is most beautiful in winter

28.01.2025 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Holocaust Remembrance Day isn’t enough

27.01.2025 20

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Double cross / Britain’s unending fascination with the Cambridge spies

18.01.2025 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Britain’s unending fascination with the Cambridge spies

18.01.2025 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Life is not a piece of cake

11.01.2025 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Vodka and the Beatles on a New Year’s Eve in Narva

Narva, the northern Estonian city right on the border with Russia, has been much in the news of late. Not only is it where the Estonians expect any...

31.12.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

The triumph of When Harry Met Sally

Look at any list of the ‘greatest ever romcoms’ and you’ll find When Harry Met Sally near the top of the list, if not heading it. This 1989 movie,...

28.12.2024 5

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Life lessons, from Orwell to Didion

Anyone without time to read an author’s long works (most of us these days) might want to consider simply going to the top of the tree and reading...

26.12.2024 2

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Keir Starmer, the Christmas Grinch

If someone were to read the runes, this first Labour Christmas would not augur well. Not only have we had Keir Starmer’s excruciating...

23.12.2024 5

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Cancel culture / In defence of Ben Judah

Readers of The Spectator may remember the 2021 defenestration of author and teacher Kate Clanchy, which saw her part company with her publisher Pan...

16.12.2024 8

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Only another Bill Clinton can save the Democrats now

In the weeks since Donald Trump won the US election, Democrat supporters, amidst much gnashing of teeth, have offered up a range of post-mortems....

15.12.2024 6

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

My Desert Island Discs

Withnail and I’s Uncle Monty found it crushing to realise that he was never going to be given the part of Hamlet – ‘I shall never play the Dane!’ –...

13.12.2024 5

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

The pundits’ attacks on farmers would make Alan Partridge blush

In the weeks since Rachel Reeves’s Budget and its shock attack on agricultural property relief, we’ve seen various armchair pundits pontificate on...

05.12.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Things can only get worse for Keir Starmer

Finally a date has been set – 29 January 2025 – for the government to debate points posed by the now infamous ‘Call a General Election’...

03.12.2024 20

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

What’s the best film about US politics?

After Donald Trump’s election-win, many junkies of US politics will be needing another fix. But if you’ve already overdosed on Megyn Kelly post-...

02.12.2024 4

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Cheap thrills / Blackpool is cheap, tacky and wonderful

Arriving in Blackpool by train is just as I’d always dreamed. At the Pleasure Beach station, I disembarked right by the roller coasters, which rear...

20.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Is it time to ban boxing?

This year, as almost every year, there have been calls for a complete ban on boxing. Two fighters, Ardi Ndembo and Sherif Lawal, have died as a...

16.11.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Kemi Badenoch’s early troubles are no reason to despair

A consensus seems to be forming, with unreasonable speed, that Kemi Badenoch isn’t exactly smashing it at Prime Minister’s Questions. Much of the...

15.11.2024 30

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Charisma code / The curse of cool

One of the freedoms of later life, if you’re not Keith Richards, is that you no longer have to worry about being cool. Cool, far more than money,...

05.11.2024 2

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Is Kemi Badenoch the new Mrs Thatcher?

Prior to her election as Conservative Leader at the weekend, Kemi Badenoch was, on numerous occasions, compared to Margaret Thatcher. Simon Heffer,...

04.11.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

What Gen Z need to know about the 1990s

‘Nothing,’ said Vladimir Nabokov, ‘revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it’. If smell is the most evocative...

03.11.2024 9

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Nightmarish / I fear for Georgia’s future

Following this weekend’s fraughtly awaited election ‘results’ in Georgia – as important for the country’s direction as any since the end of...

28.10.2024 4

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

The endless allure of the Shipping Forecast

The Shipping Forecast on Radio 4, 100 years old this October, seems to have achieved the impossible. Few people know the places it reports on when...

27.10.2024 2

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

John le Carré and the perils of resurrecting Smiley

Next week, a new novel comes out featuring George Smiley, John le Carré’s meek, mild, fiercely intelligent Cold War spymaster.  Karla’s...

20.10.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Only Ed Miliband would want to live next to an electricity pylon

Some find happiness through love, some through religion, others through their work or hobbies. But Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has recently...

13.10.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

London is a great Eastern European city

When, after three years of living in Eastern Europe, I came back to the UK, I found myself acutely nostalgic for the post-communist world. Life...

09.10.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Kemi Badenoch is a gamble the Tories must take

No, please no. Not again. Not again! As the Conservatives gear up to choose their final two candidates, and bookmakers place odds of 13/10 on James...

08.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

The 1990s were Britain’s sunset years

A myth seems to be developing about the 1990s. In a recent programme on Disney Plus called In Vogue: The 90s, a series of talking heads rhapsodise...

06.10.2024 4

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

James Bond is past his best

Is James Bond looking knackered, or is it just me? At 54, I’m at an age where I’ve given up on a lot of things. I lost interest in Question Time...

28.09.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Condensed classics / The best short novels for screen-addled minds

Who honestly has the time or inclination to finish long novels these days? I yearn for a serene period when I can read The Red and the Black or The...

23.09.2024 2

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Tinker Tailor / Why isn’t Gary Oldman playing Smiley again?

Following the huge success of the 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – from the book of the same name by John le Carré – there was much talk of a...

21.09.2024 9

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Oasis obsessives should broaden their horizons

For those of us not into Oasis in the 90s, the past month’s mania over their reunion has been baffling. Songs like ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t...

15.09.2024 8

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

A Shropshire dad / The timeless beauty of the county’s canals

Shropshire is a strange county, little known by those beyond its border, and perhaps that’s part of its appeal. It not only has no coastline, but...

04.09.2024 2

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

A tribute to the glorious heyday of smoking

When the revolting news broke that Keir Starmer – whingeing lovechild of Oliver Cromwell and Captain Mainwaring – could be about to ban smoking in...

03.09.2024 5

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Leaked photos / J.D. Vance was a weird teenager. So were most of us

Two photos from the youth of Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance have recently surfaced and are filling his opponents with glee. In...

20.08.2024 6

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

The enduring wisdom of Bill Brand

If Labour is taking us back to the 1970s – and the recent strike-secured pay rises and mass rage about immigration suggest more than a nodding...

11.08.2024 1

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Are the Great Novels worth it?

To finish or not to finish? The dilemma of whether to give up on books we aren’t enjoying or plough on to the end lasts a lifetime, but as we grow...

07.08.2024 3

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Kemi Badenoch’s time has come

The Tories are about to choose a leader once more, and this time cannot allow themselves any self-indulgence. In 2022, they sidelined Kemi Badenoch...

03.08.2024 2

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

On goulash / I miss the food of Eastern Europe

When you live abroad for long periods of time, you get accustomed to certain foods which, returning home, you can’t find anywhere, and the sense of...

22.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden

Books / The rape of Ukraine continues while the world’s sympathies move on

‘Write and record’ was the dying instruction of the historian Simon Dubnow – shot by Nazis in the Riga ghetto – and two books recently...

19.07.2024 2

The Spectator

Robin Ashenden