Features
The world has become strangely numb to terror. Sometimes an atrocity will be sufficiently horrifying – the murder of Charlie Kirk, say – to cause mass shock and anguish. Yet now reports of car rammings or knife rampages or foiled Islamist plots feel almost routine. We have become inured to ideological violence. In the quarter-century
Features
I’ve never cared about a football team larger than my high school’s. Even when my cousin walked out with the Alabama Crimson Tide a decade ago, the Southeastern Conference meant nothing to me. I saw photos of his championship ring on Instagram, shiny as a bride. Then I married a University of Texas graduate. My
Features
Once upon a time, the export crop of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket was whale oil. Nowadays it is money, harpooned by visiting campaigns from deep-pocketed donors at anchor in their summer seaside retreats. In the peak season of July and August, the islands’ social rhythms are dictated by money-harvesting events, wrangled by local hosts jostling
Features
America’s war with Iran is in its eighth month and stuck. On September 26, Donald Trump confirmed that he had rejected Tehran’s offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in return for lifting the American naval blockade and easing sanctions. He has reportedly told his staff that renewed bombing is likely after the midterm elections
Features
“Cases of Black people found hanged in the US South are a reminder of nation’s lynching history,” read an ABC News headline last month. That phrase – “lynching” – has been used again and again in reporting on the death of a woman in Mississippi. The Associated Press used the word, as did the British
Features
I suppose you could say that the Trump decade began on June 16, 2015, when Donald and Melania Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the presidency and the birth of MAGA, the “Make America Great Again” movement. There are, however, a few problems with that start date. For
Features
The past two centuries have been the era of mass production, of people as well as things. To a degree unimaginable before the Industrial Revolution, all of life has become standardized. Politics is no exception. It has come to be characterized by one set of rules piled atop another, positive law on top of the
Features
The past year has turned out to be the most important of Donald Trump’s political life. It loosened the ties that had constrained his character – and Trump’s character is the key to his political project. There is no sillier exercise than trying to sum Trump up in ideological terms – calling him a conservative,
Features
American higher education is in retreat. It’s shrinking. The for-sale signs have gone up. It’s time for “inventory reduction.” Forty-nine colleges have closed since 2020. Forty others have merged with neighbors. The Huron Consulting Group says that 400 colleges are at risk of closing in the next decade. The prospect of insolvency has now moved
Features
Pilates has long been mocked as the regimen of middle-aged Manhattan neurotics. Samantha from Sex and the City was an adherent and today social media is awash with so-called “Pilates princesses.” Stefon Diggs, the 6ft, 191lb Washington Commanders wide receiver, has been filmed stretching on – and falling from – a reformer Pilates machine. Since
Features
On September 14, the United States announced it had deployed a space weapon to Earth’s orbit. US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink declared it a response to “evolving threats.” But what is a space weapon, and what are these threats? The truth is we still don’t really know. The weapons are classified and
Features
I was honored to speak with Malcolm Guite, a poet and Anglican priest, about storytelling, attention and contemporary life. Guite’s latest project is a retelling of the Arthurian legends in verse, beginning with Galahad and the Grail. Arthurian legend might seem an unusual place to start for a conversation about technology. But I believe that
Features
A remarkable weather record was broken recently. The equinox came and went this September and yet not a single hurricane had formed all year in the entire Atlantic Ocean. It’s the first time this has happened since 1914 – which was back before the satellite era, when hurricanes were more likely to go unrecorded. September
Features
The Special Relationship has seen more special days. Earlier this year, President Trump delivered his verdict: “How is the relationship? It’s the relationship where, when we asked them for help, they were not there. When we needed them, they were not there. When we didn’t need them, they were not there. And they still aren’t
Features
After Andy Burnham’s speech at the Labour party conference last month, one veteran factionalist declared: “We are all Burnhamites now.” Romantics love the rhetoric; cynics respect the ruthlessness. “Game recognizes game,” says one Labour figure. The Prime Minister’s address was pitched at a wounded party seeking support. Emotive and personal, yet also intensely political, it
Features
It is repeatedly pointed out – I have probably written it myself – that the triple lock on the state pension is ruinous. There is a genuine difficulty, though, political and moral, about getting rid of it. No one likes to lose a benefit they already possess. The abolition will annoy 99 percent of its
Features
Behind the scenes of The Spectator’s wealth tax debate last month there were lots of nervous whispers. “Wealthy people we work with are absolutely terrified about an exit tax,” one Westminster figure remarked. The economist Arthur Laffer, one of the debate’s speakers, couldn’t believe a wealth tax was even being considered. Britain is already near
Features
MournMate is a new online market-place that promises to connect bereaved families and funeral homes with professional mourners in the US. It was advertising for its first “500 Founding Members” when I looked and, curious to know what it was all about, I signed up. The qualifications and requirements were surprisingly broad – the site
Features
The August 2004 cover of Playboy features a topless Eva Herzigova (“The supermodel is supernaked”) and promises a piece about “America’s 10 sexiest bartenders.” If that isn’t enough to excite you, another article is puffed, no less conspicuously: “Weird new casino games (and the men who invent them).” Turn to page 73 and a bald,
Features
“Journaling” is now a good thing, which we know because it’s part of Bryan Johnson’s morning routine, sandwiched between eating algae and sauna-ing with a Bryan Johnson-trademarked ice pack on his crotch. It’s nice to check in with Johnson – the tech millionaire who wants to “defeat death” – every few hours. This week I
Features
The spectacular fall from grace of Haitian-Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien in many ways resembles our own culture war over Jason Arday. The celebrated author, feted in TV studios and in the literary salons of Québec and Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés for his hard-hitting descriptions of the migrant experience, was accused on X both of serial plagiarism and
Features
I’ve always admired Diane Abbott, one of the most left-wing British MPs, though admittedly only for one thing. Many years ago she campaigned against private schools. As a good socialist this comes as part of the ideological package, and Abbott was more than happy to join in the class war against parents who are in
Features
On the morning of the 2005 general election, the young man who sat opposite me at work asked, “How did you vote?” “That’s none of your business,” I replied, in a silly, prim voice. A cruel look passed across his face. “You voted Tory, didn’t you?” he crowed. “That’s why you won’t say!” He started
Books and Arts
Canada is back, baby. Since Mark Carney’s election as Prime Minister in April last year, he’s projected an image of brawny, swaggering capability – another silverback statesman in a new, multilateral world. He’s tussled with Trump over tariffs; hobnobbed with autocrats including Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi and strongly criticized the US attack on Iran.
Books and Arts
It was Labor Day in Boston and the bronze ducklings in the city’s Public Garden were each wearing a fluffy autumnal scarf. Nobody seems quite sure who dresses them, but at various points they have worn party hats, festive knitwear and hot pink. When the Tartan Army arrived for the World Cup earlier this year,
Books and Arts
In the early years of the English Civil War John Milton turned his mind from the poetic arts and committed himself to writing some of the most searing pamphlet polemics of the 1640s. With the nation convulsed by violence, he set about finding causal explanations for the revolutionary ferment, and saw its roots in the
Books and Arts
It took six years, starting in the summer of 1784, for the Board of Ordnance to establish the baseline of its triangulation of Great Britain. First they used wooden poles, then glass tubes. After much clearing of furze bushes and anthills, the baseline ran for more than five miles from Hounslow Heath to Hampton Poor
Books and Arts
The elegant, charismatic and narcissistic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson wasn’t the average adventurer that Alaska attracted in 1912. When he arrived in Seattle from the Gold Rush port of Nome, he told journalists that he had discovered “a lost tribe of whites” in the uncharted High Arctic. He also sold politicians the vision of an undiscovered
Books and Arts
“I probably got one or two seconds look at him before he delivered the first blow,” recalls Sir Salman Rushdie. For the next 27 seconds, on August 12, 2022, the man whom Rushdie will refer to only as A. (“for asinine,” he explains) tried to kill the writer on the stage of the Chautauqua Institution
Books and Arts
The podcast audio-drama Sherlock & Co. is an updated version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories in which the great detective is neurodivergent and gay, Dr. Watson is a millennial who preaches against ethnic stereotyping, Lestrade is a woman who speaks with a Caribbean twang, and the society gossip Langdale Pike has morphed into a
Books and Arts
No critic sets out to be a reactionary, even though it’s much easier that way. There’s no real satisfaction in rejecting novelty on sight; no joy in measuring a living performance against your record collection and coming down, every time, in favor of the dead Nazi. I get that. Still, it’s a plain fact that
Life
You’ve probably heard of Bryan Johnson, the questionably rational entrepreneur and venture capitalist famous for his “don’t die” philosophy and for peddling anti-aging techniques that range from the psychedelic to the vampiric. Johnson, who’s 49 and bears more than a passing likeness to Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation (if Data was into Korean
Life
I have dengue, a vile and potentially life-threatening virus given to me by an Aedes mosquito. For good reason, it used to be called breakbone fever. It’s not the first time. I last felt my eyes swell and my joints being crushed five years ago, almost to the day. Dengue is common in Cuba, increasingly
Life
Summer’s over – so say the Cape, the Shore and the Sound. But summer homes in the country remain wide open. Is summer a season? Obviously. It’s also a vibe. And in seasonal towns, both end hard and fast on Labor Day – no more white, no more linen, certainly no more white linen. Morning
Life
Everyone knows the rules. London invented trains that run underground as well as the protocol that makes the system bearable. A London Tube passenger enjoys the same prerogatives as an evil tyrant in a fairy tale. Do not stare. Do not approach. Do not distract him in any way. Respect the cocoon of solitude that
Life
Provence “Would you like to meet Eric Idle? Don’t worry, he and his wife Tania are smashing.” This was 2009. I was visiting my old art teacher from school, Frank Docherty, and his wife, Chrissie, in the village of Montfort-sur-Argens. Eric had a house nearby, they said. They’d got to know one another a few
Place
It is difficult to discern a unifying cultural theme in Trenčín, a midsized Slovakian town with an imposing castle, a charming Habsburg square and a surplus of specialty coffee shops. This is a common feeling in many central and Eastern European cities, which have played host to various religions, ethnicities and foreign occupiers over the
Food and Drink
“Excuse me,” I said to the girl in the coffee bar on the Strand. “Do you have anything with pumpkin spice?” The signboard over the espresso machine was noticeably pumpkin free, though autumn was betokened both by the calendar and – come to think of it – the sudden coolness in the air. “I’m on
Food and Drink
Spring is the traditional season of rebirth and renewal. However my spirits are revived, not by budding flowers, but by flashes of yellow and red leaves and the touch of chill in the air that signals the arrival of fall. Fall, of course, means the return of college football – and that means the return
And Finally
It was early December 1973 and I remember my grandmother asking, “What would you most like for Christmas?” I knew in an instant: “One day, perhaps, it would be good if the weekly rates of my basic state pension were to increase by the greatest of three candidate measures, namely (a) the year-on-year growth in
And Finally
Q. I am a lifelong fan of J.K. Rowling’s work. I have read and watched everything she’s written and am so looking forward to December when the new Harry Potter TV series drops. My problem is that I’ve moved into a flat with a close friend who disagrees strongly with J.K.’s views on gender and
And Finally
While last month’s majority vote by the inhabitants of Piddington in Oxfordshire to seek independence from Britain was a stunt – albeit one making a serious point about plans to house more than 1,000 asylum seekers in an army base near the village – further afield, there are more concerted attempts to establish real micronations.
And Finally
Playbooks are proliferating. In the past few weeks I’ve come across the counter-hybrid playbook, the wartime playbook, the Coldplay playbook, the preppy-meets-sporty playbook, Hitler’s playbook and the nepo-baby playbook. I used to think that the rather thumbed metaphor of playbook referred to a book of words containing the script or libretto. After all, book of
