Sydney Sweeney, Gwyneth Paltrow and the misogynists
The American Eagle ad campaign is a societal Rorschach test
Alexander Larman
Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.
Sunday
Friday
Will Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight ruin James Bond?
From our UK edition
Up until yesterday, I was beginning to feel cautiously optimistic about the new James Bond film. After a long hiatus in which the franchise’s new owners Amazon and the previous Bond producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, seemed unable to compromise, the matter was settled. Broccoli and Wilson were paid a Jeff Bezos-sized ransom,
Thursday
Is Stephen Fry the right choice to play Lady Bracknell?
From our UK edition
Last year, the National Theatre staged The Importance of Being Earnest in a new production by Max Webster. It attracted mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike, who applauded its determination to do something new – to re-queer Wilde for a younger audience, if you like – but also dared to suggest that Ncuti Gatwa,
Monday
RIP Tom Lehrer
The musician-comedian spread like herpes, rather than Ebola
Princess Diana and Jeffrey Epstein
On the enduring appeal of conspiracies, theoretical and otherwise
Friday
Why are the Macrons suing Candace Owens?
From our UK edition
As bizarre conspiracy theories go, the rumours about France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron take some beating. The stories that have been circulating about her in the murkier corners of the internet generally suggest that she was born a man under the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux, that she and the French President Emmanuel Macron are related
Wednesday
The trouble with Gillian Anderson
From our UK edition
Imagine, for a moment, that a respected middle-aged British male character actor – Jason Isaacs, let’s say – had been cast in the lead role of a sex therapist in a popular, Gen Z-focused Netflix series, called something like Love Lessons. Then imagine that Isaacs had become seemingly so obsessed with blurring the lines between
Tuesday
RIP Ozzy Osbourne
There will never be another Ozzy
Sunday
The sad saga of Lena Dunham
If Dunham was, once, the voice of her generation, that that torch has long since passed to other, more interesting talents
Friday
Captain Britain was an embarrassing superhero
From our UK edition
The news that the latest Superman picture has been an enormous hit in the United States, but has been received rather more tepidly here, has been taken in many quarters to mean that there is an anti-American mood at large. Maybe this is dictated by America’s choice of president and administration, which means other countries
Wednesday
What do the Emmy nominations tell us about television?
Hollywood could use a little anarchy
MasterChef must die
From our UK edition
As Oscar Wilde didn’t quite put it, for one MasterChef presenter to depart because of a scandal may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness. After Gregg Wallace received his P45 from the long-running BBC cookery show, his co-presenter John Torode has also been given the boot, having allegedly made a
Tuesday
The enduring brilliance of C.S. Lewis
More than 60 years after his death, the Oxford literature professor and writer is everywhere
Monday
King Charles and Harry won’t be reconciling any time soon
From our UK edition
The news that appeared in the Sunday newspapers was intriguing, to say the least. A meeting has taken place at (appropriately enough) the Royal Over-Seas League club between Meredith Maines, the latest in Prince Harry’s apparently endless line of California-based press officers, Liam Maguire, who has that similarly thankless task in this country, and Tobyn
The resistible rise of Pedro Pascal
Why is it so hard to warm to him?
Wednesday
King Charles’s bromance with Macron is true soft power
From our UK edition
As the once-promising bromance between King Charles and Keir Starmer appears to be fading, the monarch has found another leader on the world stage with whom he has a greater amount in common. As the state visit of the French President Emmanuel Macron gets underway with much earnest discussion about what this particular cross-Channel ‘special
A memoir doesn’t always have to be true
From our UK edition
The news that Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir The Salt Path may not have been the whole truth has been met with a mixture of outrage, hilarity and ‘I told you so’. Many readers have smugly informed the world that Winn’s journey along the Salt Path with her husband Moth (Moth!) was so obviously a work
Tuesday
Is this the end of the Jeffrey Epstein case?
Americans remain rightfully suspicious
Wednesday
Elio and the decline of Pixar
What explains the studio’s latest flop?
Diddy is finished
He avoided the most-serious charges, but his image will never recover