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Spectator Life
An intelligent mix of culture, food, style and property, plus where to go and what to see.
Bring back the art of formal greeting
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The Classic Car Bore
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Why are we still seduced by wealth?
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Two weekend tips and one for Royal Ascot
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Cotswold house prices deserve to fall
From Spectator Life‘We failed,’ wrote Stefan Zweig in The World of Yesterday, ‘to see the writing on the wall in letters of fire.’ Looking back on the twilight of Habsburg Vienna, Zweig marvelled at how an entire civilisation could remain so certain of itself just as the ground began to give way beneath it. The same sense of elegiac anxiety now drifts over Chipping Norton, although its prophets are chiefly property correspondents. According to a recent report in the Times, house prices in parts of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire are beginning to soften. This comes as a surprise. The Cotswolds has spent the past decade attracting the sort of wealth that normally regards gravity as an optional extra.
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Magazine
This week's magazine
Forever war
Is an exhausted peace looming?
Forever war: will Zelensky and Putin be brought to an exhausted peace?
Volodymyr Zelensky stood proudly on the steps of 10 Downing Street this week, flanked by Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Germany, ready to discuss Europe’s latest package of support for Ukraine’s ongoing war effort. Though the conflict has, as of this week, lasted longer that the first world war, Zelensky is in some ways in the most heroic period of his presidency. Ukraine not only continues to stand firm against intense Russian assaults but also seems to be regaining a strategic advantage with its long-range drone strikes. Europe has stepped up to replace US funding and diplomacy and the fall of Hungary’s Viktor Orban has unlocked a €90 billion loan package. Yet it is also the most sordid period of Zelensky’s presidency.
Forever war: will Zelensky and Putin be brought to an exhausted peace?
Volodymyr Zelensky stood proudly on the steps of 10 Downing Street this week, flanked by Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Germany, ready to discuss Europe’s latest package of support for Ukraine’s ongoing war effort. Though the conflict has, as of this week, lasted longer that the first world war, Zelensky is in some ways in the most heroic period of his presidency. Ukraine not only continues to stand firm against intense Russian assaults but also seems to be regaining a strategic advantage with its long-range drone strikes. Europe has stepped up to replace US funding and diplomacy and the fall of Hungary’s Viktor Orban has unlocked a €90 billion loan package. Yet it is also the most sordid period of Zelensky’s presidency.
Culture
The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
‘I think I’ve found a real paradise’: David Hockney interviewed
From the magazineDavid Hockney has died, aged 88. During lockdown in 2020, Martin Gayford, the author of ‘Conversations With Hockney’, spoke to him for the magazine. Spring has not been cancelled. Neither have the arts ceased to function. David Hockney’s marvellous exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery may be sadly shut, but the artist himself is firing on all cylinders. ‘I was just drawing on this thing I’m talking to you on,’ he announced when I spoke to him via FaceTime the other day. He was sitting in the sunshine outside his half-timbered farmhouse in Normandy. ‘We’re very busy here,’ Hockney explained, ‘because all the blossom is just coming out, and there’s a lot more to come. The big cherry tree looks glorious right now.
Spielberg fumbles his final sci-fi
From the magazineMichelle Terry is ferocious in Brecht’s simplistic tutorial
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The liberating delights of Aldous Harding
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Another thriller, another teenage incel
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Delightful Rossini at Glyndebourne
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This Lucian Freud belongs on the compost
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Cartoons
‘‘You have the right to remain silent.’’
Cartoon
‘‘Oh no! There’s no longer one born every minute.’’
Cartoon
‘‘Do you ever get the feeling we’ve been forgotten about?’’
Cartoon
