Inside the BBC’s impartiality crisis
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Israel’s Arab voters could decide this election
Pedestrianising Oxford Street is part of the war on common sense
St Crispin’s, the changing clocks and the meaning of time
James Heale
Nigel Farage: ‘Kemi has had the easiest ride of any Tory leader in my lifetime’
Nice work / Remembering the Big Bang, forty years on
Defence / The stakes in the High North are getting higher
Portrait Of / The Wild Swimmer
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All the latest analysis of the day's news
Pedestrianising Oxford Street will be good for business
Bring on the SUV tax
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When police officers become desensitised to death
Class war in the civil service
Spectator TV Presents
France is heading for revolution – and Marine Le Pen will win | The Edition | with Louis Sarkozy & Loyd Grossman
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Spectator Life
An intelligent mix of culture, food, style and property, plus where to go and what to see.
Two tips for Cheltenham this weekend
From Spectator Life
Oxford has fallen. Blame the traffic filters.
From Spectator Life
Fashion has never had a conscience
From Spectator Life
Are we in a global whisky recession?
From the magazine
The Wild Swimmer
From Spectator LifeRosie smiles when her nephew asks her if she’s still swimming in the sea in October. It is, in fact, when she starts enjoying it again. July and August are all very well, but her spot behind the harbour wall fills up with holidaymakers, annexing the rock where she likes to change, having picnics and jumping into the sea with their children, as if they were swimming for fun. It’s not Cold Water Swimming if the sea feels warm, even to tourists who aren’t swimming mindfully. A few of these incomers stick it out for September but October is what separates the men from the boys. Or the women from the girls, rather. For nine months of the year, Porthemmet Beach is as empty of men as Rosie’s pottery class.
The town where Europe committed suicide
From Spectator Life
Magazine
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Revolting France
Revolting France: The riots are driving the country’s politics to its extremes
Paris The wonderful thing about electric bikes, if you are fighting with French riot police, is the way they burn. You skid your Lime or Vélib’ into the middle of the Boulevard de Magenta, which leads from the Gare du Nord down to the Place de la République, and set it alight along with a pile of ordinary bikes, and soon you have a conflagration of rubber and battery chemicals. During the weekend’s street protests, the fires provided cover for rioters breaking into mobile phone, vape and jewellery stores and the money-transfer shops which serve the many immigrants who work in eastern Paris. By Monday morning, a vicious guard dog stood outside an Intermarché supermarket, snarling at customers coming in one by one.
Revolting France: The riots are driving the country’s politics to its extremes
Paris The wonderful thing about electric bikes, if you are fighting with French riot police, is the way they burn. You skid your Lime or Vélib’ into the middle of the Boulevard de Magenta, which leads from the Gare du Nord down to the Place de la République, and set it alight along with a pile of ordinary bikes, and soon you have a conflagration of rubber and battery chemicals. During the weekend’s street protests, the fires provided cover for rioters breaking into mobile phone, vape and jewellery stores and the money-transfer shops which serve the many immigrants who work in eastern Paris. By Monday morning, a vicious guard dog stood outside an Intermarché supermarket, snarling at customers coming in one by one.
Culture
The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Don’t miss this Cherry Orchard
From the magazineWhere are we? That’s the question raised by Ian Rickson’s version of The Cherry Orchard adapted by Conor McPherson. The setting appears to be a capitalist Russian society that never existed. The young characters wear casual 1950s gear – T-shirts, wristwatches and sunglasses – but the older men can recall a time before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Slightly confusing. Has the revolution happened or not? It might be simpler to set the play in 1903 when it was written. The high-status characters use posh Home Counties accents while the servants and hangers-on seem to hail from Scotland, Ireland and Germany. That chaotic set-up works better than it might. The show never fully coheres and it almost feels like three separate plays.
Nureyev was a lousy choreographer
From the magazineA new BBC series that captures some of the channel’s old values
From the magazine
The problem with the Beatles
From the magazine
Ali G isn’t satire
From the magazine
Opera’s obsession with the Eastern bloc
From the magazine
The RA’s triumphant new exhibition
From the magazine
Cartoons
‘‘Luckily I was too busy defending cryptobillionaires to be racist or sexist.’’
Cartoon
‘‘Remind me, what did we come to see?’’
Cartoon
‘The judge felt compelled to direct the jury again.’
Cartoon
