Some notable churches of London – and their peculiar tribes
On this great map our churches lie spires approaching London’s grey sky from steeple to steeple they finely trace a journey of faith through time and place
Features
Thursday
The assisted suicide bill should not survive
Until about six months ago, it would have been hard to find a more inoffensive politician than the Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater. A well-liked, upbeat, down-to-earth Yorkshirewoman, she entered politics because of a personal tragedy, the murder of her sister, the MP Jo Cox, in 2016. When asked on a Spectator podcast what was the
Would Trump really bomb Iran?
A satellite picture shows six American B-2 Stealth bombers parked on the runway at Diego Garcia. The planes – each with a distinctive flying-wing shape, like a bat – are sinister, otherworldly, and seem like a portent. Surely that’s the idea. Donald Trump has warned the Iranian leadership there ‘will be bombing the likes of
‘We’re going to a more radical place’: Wes Streeting on his plans for the NHS
A copy of a leading article from The Spectator is stuck to the wall of Wes Streeting’s office in the Department of Health. ‘Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the Health Service?’ we asked in October, warning against the perils of inaction. ‘We were so riled by it we stuck it there to hold ourselves
Thursday
Bring back gory book covers!
Looking for a light, breezy read? If you happened to be browsing the bestseller bookshelves this summer your eye might be drawn to a cover that shows two colourful beach chairs under wafting palms on a bright, sandy shore. The shadows cast by the chairs become those of two children – maybe it’s a story
Eco warriors are driving themselves to extinction
It wasn’t that long ago when the fashionable gathering place for young couples was a meeting of the National Childbirth Trust. I remember, in the early months of 1995, sitting in our instructor’s front room as she passed around a plastic model of a female pelvis while she asked us: ‘So how do you think
Saviour complex: Jonathan Powell is still trying to change the world
In 2011, the Hampstead theatre put on an autobiographical play about a marriage strained by lies, betrayal and, as the exasperated wife says, the presence of ‘three of us’ in the relationship. The play was Loyalty by the journalist Sarah Helm, the third person was Tony Blair and the principal male character was a barely
How Birmingham became the epicentre of Britain’s opioid crisis
Rats grown fat on refuse prowl the streets of Birmingham. Mounds of rubbish pile up outside houses. Desperate to avoid blame, the city’s politicians bleat about being held to ransom by a pesky union. ‘Welcome to Brum,’ one resident said as he caught me taking a photo of a bin mountain. Even CNN has a
In defence of benzos
In the latest series of The White Lotus – a moral fable about the narcissism and toxicity of the privileged class – Parker Posey plays Victoria Ratliff, a Southern matriarch routinely spaced out on the tranquilliser lorazepam. Her daughter Piper asks why she needs it. ‘Certain social situations make me anxious,’ she drawls. When her
Confessions of a middle-class jobseeker
Having been made redundant from a job in the City, I could have afforded not to sign on at all. But since my P45 showed I had paid well over £40,000 in income tax last year, I didn’t feel desperately guilty about clawing back £90 a week in New Style Jobseeker’s Allowance. I didn’t know
Has the Kremlin talked Trump out of sanctions?
After a two-hour phone call last month, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin announced that an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia ‘has huge upside’, including ‘enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability’. Days later, however, Trump said he was ‘pissed off’ with Russia over its foot-dragging on a ceasefire in Ukraine. Putin’s demand,
Would you steal from a restaurant?
‘You wouldn’t steal a car…’ began the early noughties anti-piracy video. ‘You wouldn’t steal a television… You wouldn’t steal a handbag.’ No, but it seems from reports from restaurants, you might slip some silverware into a handbag if you’re out for dinner. In February, Gordon Ramsay revealed that nearly 500 cat figurines had been stolen
Wednesday
Trump shock: is there method behind the madness?
A ‘black swan event’, as defined by the risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb in 2007, is a surprise occurrence that has a major impact on the global financial system and is rationalised after the fact as something that ought to have been expected all along. The 9/11 terror attacks are one example, the Covid pandemic
Thursday
AI slop is flooding the zone
There are two accounts of the negative effects for humanity of the explosion of generative AI: one minatory, one trivial. The minatory, the existential, version of it is that AI will poison the information ecosystems on which our democracies depend, crash our economies by doing a very large number of us out of a job,
AI will never write good fiction
Sam Altman, Dark Lord of Chatbots (or the CEO of OpenAI as he is more conventionally known), has released another version of ChatGPT. This one, he claims, can ‘write’ fiction. After being fed prompts, like ‘metafiction’ and ‘grief’, Sam’s bot, which has been trained on past literature, regurgitated a plausible-sounding chunk of prose. Nothing much
Is Britain ready for a patriotic theme park?
It is the early 9th century. Peace reigns in a small French village as they prepare for a wedding. Garlands are being hung, sheep are being shepherded, all is sunshine and smiles. Then, in a snap, this bucolic bliss bursts as Viking warriors invade the scene and unleash hell. The original Puy du Fou is
The day Bangkok crumbled
Last Friday I was on my 15th-floor balcony with an early afternoon coffee, watching dogs play among the banana trees below. It was strangely quiet. Looking across the skyscrapers that form my horizon, I noticed the 137 Pillars – a luxury high-rise hotel famous for its rooftop pool perched 37 storeys above my own street.
‘Trump is a coward’: meet the US soldiers who served in Ukraine
The Ukrainians of Alabama are not the kind of lobbyists whose visits strike fear into pro-Trump politicians in Washington. They are an ad hoc campaign group of expats and refugees who do their best to put Kyiv’s case politely to representatives of Congress and Senate. They do, however, have a secret weapon, in the form
Beware the £5 coffee
It wasn’t until I received a notification from the Monzo app that I realised I’d spent nearly £10 on two coffees. This wasn’t in the Wolseley or even within the M25, but in Two Magpies, a café in Holt, our local market town in Norfolk – for two regular lattes (admittedly with an extra shot,
How the French right can still win
Dixmont, Yonne It has been a terrible year for the Le Pen family. Jean-Marie died in the first week of January. He was the patriarch who in 1972 co-founded the National Front and grew it into a formidable political machine before handing over to his daughter. Marine took command in 2011 and, through a strategy