Spectator Life

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.

The British shows beloved by Europeans

Forget the sausage war; could the real Brexit battle be over streaming services? After all, surely even hardened Remainers will have been appalled by the European Commission’s plan to make it more difficult to stream British shows on the continent. Will it happen? Only time will tell. But here are eight shows that are a hit

Five years later will we ever truly move on from Brexit?

13 min listen

It’s the five year anniversary of when the UK decided to leave the European Union and while the opposition are looking to try and put the referendum behind them, the government still seems keen to put any UK success squarely on the shoulders of Brexit. ‘There is an asymmetry in British politics now between about

What Sci Fi novels can teach us about uncertainty

In times of great uncertainty – and Eurovision humiliation aside, 2021 surely qualifies – many are tempted to examine ‘speculative fiction’ from the past, to understand the present. 1984 has had a good year, and seems much less dated than anything actually from 1984, such as Wham!, The Karate Kid or Roland Rat. Huxley’s Brave

How to protect your finances against inflation

The economist Friedrich von Hayek once likened the control of inflation to the act of trying to catch a tiger by its tail: an impossible task with savage consequences for our macro and personal finances. Judging by the most recent inflation statistics, the big cat is already out of the bag. So how can we

Who's being hurt by 'white privilege'?

14 min listen

While Labour are shuffling people round yet again.. ‘There needs to be a change in messaging from the leader’s office, because otherwise it just looks like he’s rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.’ – Isabel Hardman And the DUP are getting ready to welcome in their third leader in less than a month… ‘Donaldson is actually in

The problem with 'just' another four weeks

When the government announced an extension of lockdown restrictions I was furious. Furious for political reasons. Furious for economic and libertarian reasons, but – if I’m completely honest – mainly furious because I had tickets to see The Shapeshifters to do a DJ set on Saturday 26th June. However, I have to admit that on

Why do footballers equate health with virtue?

Last Tuesday, the great footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, captain of Portugal, removed two bottles of Coca-Cola from a table in front of him, and tens of millions of pounds of sponsorship money went down the plughole. Ronaldo was at a press conference for the Euro 2021 Championship, in which Coca-Cola had invested heavily – and, as

The joy of second hand books

There are few aesthetic and literary pleasures that compare to browsing in a second-hand bookshop. While it is more or less a given what books will be found in a new bookshop, one of the chief joys of going second hand is that it’s entirely unpredictable what you’ll emerge with. Sometimes, the browser will leave

The rise of the retronym

‘Should I pay in actual money, in-person, in the shop itself?’ I asked my husband incredulously the other day. Yes, he replied, sounding rather bored. Prior to the pandemic such an exchange would not have taken place. I would have simply gone to the shop with no thought of government restrictions to my personal liberties,

10 films about space

As Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark prepare themselves to fulfil many a little boys dream and become real life astronauts on rocket-ship New Shepard, here’s a look at space flight in the movies. No doubt part of the fun for Jeff will be tweaking the noses of fellow space rival billionaires Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Unless

The new leviathan: the big state is back

48 min listen

It seems we are in a new President/Prime Minister alliance of big government spending, should we be excited or concerned? (00:44) Also on the podcast: Are the UK tabloids going woke? (15:00)? And in the wake of the pandemic are we ready to have a grown up conversation about death?(31:11) With Spectator Political Editor James

Euros 2021: can Scotland beat England?

If you’d like some idea of how Scotland’s long-awaited return to an international football tournament is going, consider this: it took less than an hour of play before the image of goalkeeper David Marshall leaping, despairingly, into his own net in a doomed effort to stop the Czech Republic’s Patrik Schick scoring a goal from

How do politicians switch off?

‘Like a sea beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it […] And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue – out of charity and out

Frank Skinner: 'I could never be a poet'

There’s a little fact about Frank Skinner that you might have heard before. That before his big television break, the future comic and Three Lions scribe had a rather different vocation: as an English teacher in an FE college. Throughout his time in the spotlight, it’s been one of those things that gets brought up

A Quiet Place 2: cinema's tensest moments

John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place (2018) and its sequel, released this month, ratchets up the tension, as the hapless Abbott family once again silently contend with homicidal creatures possessing hypersensitive hearing who will strike at the smallest of noises. As the new film hits our screens, you’ll be able to hear a pin drop in cinemas everywhere.

The secret to beating Croatia

First things first: don’t get your hopes up. England don’t have a bad team. In fact, this year they’re pretty good; not quite the ‘golden generation’ of 2006, but good enough to win the tournament. That very fact ought to sound a note of caution: we’ve been down this weary road before. After the year

10 iconic films about news rooms

This month sees the debut of GB News, the new free-to-air 24 hour news channel, a competitor to the big fish BBC and Sky. The most recent broadcaster to enter the arena was ITV in 2000, whose underfunded ITV News Channel lasted five short years, shutting up shop on 23rd December 2005, when Alistair Stewart

Hawkwind: a very British tale

18 min listen

In this week’s edition of The Green Room, Deputy Editor of The Spectator’s world edition Dominic Green meets DJ Taylor, who writes in the June edition of Spectator World, about Hawkwind, unlikely champions of the British rock underground. Less a band, more a way of life, the fascinating story of Hawkwind veers from the radicalism

The Polly Morgan Edition

34 min listen

Polly Morgan is an artist whose trade is taxidermy. She recently won the First Plinth Award, and in her time has sold to celebrity clients including Kate Moss and Courtney Love. On the podcast, she tells Katy about her unusual childhood growing up on a farm with ostriches, goats and llamas; why she got fired

A family affair: who's who in the G7 entourage

It’s all eyes on Cornwall today as the G7 summit kicks off, bringing the leaders of the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan to Britain.  The various heads of government, having spent months in lockdown, will no doubt be brushing up on their small talk ahead of their various diplomatic meetings, with leaders’ spouses set to

Tennis has always been a game of psychological warfare

There was a time when having a nervous breakdown on a tennis court was called a hissy fit. Watch John McEnroe shouting at the umpire during the 1981 Wimbledon Men’s Singles first round match against Tom Gullikson for the masterclass. Strutting over to the umpire like an angry bird, his trademark headband doing anything but

With Craig Brown

24 min listen

Craig Brown is an awarding winning critic, satirist and former restaurant reviewer. His most recent book One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. On the podcast, he talks to Lara and Olivia about the horrible food at Eton, his utter failure to bake a cake, and proposes

The perils of auditioning on Zoom

So we can hug and kiss each other, but facemasks could be here to stay. There are some people I would rather never hug and kiss again. Nor am I sure I want to socialise in big groups, outside or inside, now that I have become accustomed to cosy nights in. My husband, Harry, calls

Stephen King on screen: 10 films to rival Lisey's Story

To his many readers, Stephen King is the Dreamcatcher; to others, less keen on his prodigious output, Doctor Sleep may be a more fitting appellation. On Friday 4 June, Apple TV+ will debut King’s own 8-part adaptation of his 2006 best-seller Lisey’s Story. Reportedly one of King’s favourite books, the novel harks back to both Misery and The

Bring me sunshine: 8 novels about heatwaves

‘Freezing winter gave way to frosty spring, which in turn merged to chilly summer,’ was how Jessica Mitford recalled her Cotswolds childhood in her memoir, Hons and Rebels. Our inclement climes have rarely been as hard to bear as they have this year, with the unusually cold, grey spring — coupled with the prospect of

What's the problem with 'literally'?

How does the word ‘literally’ make you feel? For a lot of language-lovers, the answer will be somewhere between mildly irritated and fist-gnawingly furious. It’s the misuse of the word that most perturbs. It has a habit of lurking where it has no place to be, taking a perfectly acceptable (if conventional) metaphor and turning into nonsense.