Some people swoon over film stars. I swoon over organists. Good organists, that is, not bad organists. Bad organists I refer to as ‘dominant males’, because the only two chords they play are the tonic and the dominant. Good organists are upholders of some of the highest musical expertise in the land. When you hear
I first heard the name ‘Dan Jarvis’ on a dance floor at a wedding in Bath. ‘Move like Jagger’ was thumping through the speakers, and most people had given up trying to chat, but I’d been collared by a cavalry officer who was damned if he was going to let disco get in the way
When my wife said she thought we should educate our three children at comprehensive schools, it was with a degree of trepidation that I went along with her. I was thankful to save the several hundred thousand pounds it would probably have cost to send them to fee-paying schools, money which I at least showed
I still don’t know whether I’ve been had I have been wondering what to do about Chris…. Well, I call him Chris, but the truth is that I’ve only met him once and I’d hardly say our brief acquaintance qualifies as friendship. How does one get oneself into these quandaries? Four weeks ago, I was
Here we go again. Like a macabre version of Groundhog Day, mass murderer Jeremy Bamber is making yet another bid for freedom. This nasty legal saga has been dragging on for almost 26 years, ever since Bamber was first found guilty of the savage massacre at his family’s farmhouse in rural Essex. By a majority
Are the young bearing the burden of the deficit? Should the older generation bail them out? Baby-boomers must pay up Daniel Knowles The baby-boomer generation is the most cosseted, untouchable, powerful generation in our history. To say so isn’t pensioner-bashing, but simply stating a fact. That is the lesson of the outcry over last week’s
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires is as exhilarating, as unpredictable, as stylish as ever. But the economic boom is over. Times are hard once again, more shops in Calle Florida are boarded up, the sales are pretty frantic. And so, as Jorge Luis Borges, the blind sage of Calle Maipu, just off the superb Plaza San
There’s nothing like a crisis to rescue an ailing candidate Yes, he’s back. Just when the French Socialists thought that they were jogging into the Elysée Palace for the first time in 17 years, a discredited president has remounted his favourite war horse, a national security crisis, and with three weeks to go before the
There is perhaps one thing that unites radicals and revolutionaries from all countries, and most ages: London. At some point or another, most of the great political dissenters and activists, Voltaire, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Sun Yat-sen and even Ho Chi Minh have found themselves on the streets of our capital, plotting and writing in
How to make our private schools open to all To look at David Cameron’s Cabinet is to see that Britain has a deep problem with social mobility. As in the Cabinet, the privately-educated are disproportionately represented in every sphere of British life, from politics to pop music. Almost three-quarters of high court judges, more than
It is hard not to see the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a judgment on the Anglican Communion. Here was an intellectually formidable, spiritually profound, morally courageous leader whose job was made unbearable by gangs of intolerant, uncharitable, divisive and squabbling intellectual minnows. The event should give the Church of England, and those
The Spectator recently held a debate at the Royal Geographic Society with the motion ‘Immigration: Enough is Enough’. Proposing it were Frank Field MP, Dominic Raab MP and Kiran Bali MBE JP. Opposing were Oliver Kamm, Jenni Russell and David Aaronovitch. Andrew Neil chaired. Here is Lloyd Evans’ review: ‘I’m a coward,’ admitted Frank Field,
The downfall of Bo Xilai has been the closest thing the Chinese get to a proper public scandal. Here was the attention-seeking boss of the mega-municipality of Chongqing, a colourful rock star in the country’s monochrome politics, sacked in mysterious circumstances that gripped a gossip-hungry nation. China’s authorities this week even felt compelled to ban
No place for him in Scotland’s new McCop megaforce Here is an intro to get all Scottish Nationalists fuming about London media bias: Alex Salmond is abolishing John Rebus. Well, all right — this recalcitrant Scots detective never actually existed in the first place. And even in fiction, he’s been drawing his generous public-sector pension
Carlsberg Special Brew is the beer of Churchill, Kingsley Amis – and me. They can’t ban it I have a confession to make: I am writing this article under the influence. As I tap away at my laptop, a can of lovely Carlsberg Special Brew sits on the table beside me, acting on my brain
How – and why – ten-year-olds are being taught to run a business There’s an excited buzz in the Year 6 class of Yeading Junior School, in outer London. The ten-year-olds recently set up a polytunnel in the school grounds, and now they’re deciding which vegetables to plant in the new polythene greenhouse. Their teacher,
One staple of our national comedy is that someone must always fill the role of ‘Barmy Bishop’. While at Durham David Jenkins occupied the position, as perhaps in recent years has Rowan Williams. Certainly Richard Holloway recalls the morning while Bishop of Edinburgh when he woke to discover he had become the incumbent. His liberal
Round a bend in the mountain path, between the flowering rosemary and the wild box bushes, above the spine of bare rock that stretched like a dragon’s tail hundreds of feet down into the valley of the unseen river below, someone had sprayed in black letters on the unsuitable surface of the ground: ‘Catalunya is
Having visited most of the islands of the Caribbean when they were British colonies and since they were granted independence, I am convinced that Grenada, in the far south-east, is the fairest one of all. Its volcanic origin created wonderfully varied landscapes, from mountainous rainforests down to fertile plantations and a palmy littoral, brightened by
This August, Jamaica celebrates the 50th anniversary of independence. Amid the bunting and parades, talk will be of Britain’s continued presence in the island and the role of the monarchy in particular. Jamaicans are often incredulous that Queen Elizabeth II should still be their head of state. The Jamaican prime minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, has taken