Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.
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For future royal historians, the date 19 February may take on the same totemic significance as the abdication of Edward VIII on 10 December. It was the date that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, eighth in line to the throne, was arrested on the day of his 66th birthday – it is fair to surmise this wasn’t a
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The news that Oxford’s main Oxfam bookshop on St Giles in the city has been threatened with closure is one of the most depressing things I have heard this year. The building’s landlord, Regent’s Park College, has declared that it needs more space for its graduate students. This sums up everything that is wrong both
Ever since the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, no member of the royal family has been arrested, which makes this morning’s news that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been taken into police custody under suspicion of misconduct in public office all the more seismic. And with a certain grim irony, his arrest comes on his 66th
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The news that the Scottish beer company BrewDog has put itself up for sale has been greeted with a mixture of sorrow and shrugs by drinks commentators and enthusiasts. Those who have been stalwart fans of BrewDog – an organisation that always valued PR stunts as much as it did brewing –will mourn its diminished presence
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The death of the actor Robert Duvall at the age of 95 – almost exactly a year after that of his friend Gene Hackman – brings to the end another chapter of Old Hollywood. But unlike Hackman, who combined on-screen brilliance with a combustible, confrontational personality, Duvall was a thoroughly professional and popular figure who
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There are relatively few restaurants in London – or anywhere else, for that matter – that have made it to their centenary. There are even fewer that have been threatened with the closure of their premises in the precise year they are going to turn 100. And there are practically none so popular that news
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The sheer weight of allegations against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – all tawdry, all sordid – runs the risk of creating not so much outrage as weariness. It was clear months ago that the former Duke of York appeared to have been behaving in a way that brought shame not just on his family but on his country. Yet as the
Nothing has been as damaging for the British royal family as the unfortunate meeting of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein. Republican Thomas Massie and the Democrat Ro Khanna know this. In a press conference yesterday, they said they had been shown documents that have been otherwise redacted and withheld from the Epstein files. These documents
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The statement issued by Buckingham Palace last night, addressing the ongoing fallout from the latest release of Epstein files, was undeniably terse: The King has made clear, in words and through unprecedented actions, his profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct. While the specific claims in
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There has been much hand-wringing and drama about what the royal family should be doing – and criticism of what they are doing – about the former Duke and Duchess of York and their respective relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. But amidst all this, two of the most significant voices in the Firm have been conspicuously
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At first glance, there are few similarities between Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh’s classic 1945 novel – later adapted into an equally classic ITV series – of prelapsarian bliss in Oxford and Industry, the BBC’s adrenaline-fuelled show that exposes the dark iniquity at the heart of the financial industry. The one is a languid examination of (discreetly portrayed) same-sex love and Catholic
For any serious lover of cinema, the 1970s were both a golden decade and the beginning of the end of film as an art form. After the permissiveness and countercultural impact of the 1960s, a whole generation of new filmmakers emerged, many of whom remain household names. These men – and they were almost exclusively
This year marks the anniversaries of two of David Bowie’s most compelling and powerful albums: 1976’s Station to Station and 2016’s Blackstar. Given that they are often – rightly – described as Bowie’s crowning artistic achievements, amid severe competition from his other releases, they also have the intriguing fillip that both were originally released in
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The news that the disgraced former Duke of York has been turfed out of his home of Royal Lodge in the middle of the night and rusticated to a rather less grand property somewhere on the Sandringham Estate will not, perhaps, be greeted with particular sorrow by many. Ever since the latest and highly embarrassing
Since the latest tranche of the Epstein files was released over the weekend, the people who have been most embarrassingly affected by them include former British ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly styled Prince Andrew, Duke of York) and Bill Gates. Yet inevitably, attention has turned to Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of
For those of us who associate Wuthering Heights either with high-school English classes or Kate Bush caterwauling over the moors while exhibiting some remarkable interpretive dance moves, the news that the new Emerald Fennell-directed film of what she calls “my favorite book in the world” has become the subject of a race-based controversy may come
When Billie Eilish declared, during her acceptance speech for song of the year with “Wildflower” at last night’s Grammy awards, that “I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter,” she was speaking in the approved register. “Fuck ICE,” she added but it was
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When historians write the definitive biography of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the character of Peter Mandelson will prove a hard one to portray to those who were not around. Mandy, as he was semi-affectionately known, has undergone one of the most bizarre and humiliating journeys in British public life. Once, he was the
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If you had been fortunate enough to see the first night of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin at the Opéra National de Paris last week, then it might have been with a slight jolt of surprise that you saw a familiar face take to the stage as the cast took their bows. Ralph Fiennes, the award-winning actor, was not
It was widely suggested that many powerful people – from President Donald Trump downwards – would have preferred the notorious Jeffrey Epstein files remain sealed for years to come. Now, with the latest and perhaps most shocking release yet, the doors of his squirming transatlantic boys’ club have been blown open. Epstein had a rare
