Alexander Larman

Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Will Prince Harry keep quiet about his meeting with King Charles?

From our UK edition

The King received a man at Clarence House yesterday afternoon who has a justifiable right to be aggrieved with the ill treatment that has been meted over to him over the years. He has been unfairly discriminated against for reasons that are not his fault, and he has dealt with the opprobrium that has been hurled his way with dignity, maturity and personal righteousness. If he has a persecution complex, then he can hardly be blamed for having developed such a thing. He deserves our respect and admiration. Yes, King Charles’s encounter with Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, for whom he performed an investiture, was important and no doubt affecting for both men.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

‘Modern pop makes me want to kill myself’: Neil Hannon interviewed

From our UK edition

Search for a successor to Tom Lehrer, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any decent candidates. One of the  few, however, who can match the wit and sophistication of the late musical satirist is the Northern Irish musician Neil Hannon. The 54-year-old is the sole permanent member of his band the Divine Comedy, and his elegant records mix Lehrer-esque wordplay with swooning orchestral pop that is in equal measure Dusty Springfield, Scott Walker and Michael Nyman. But matters have darkened somewhat on his newest LP, Rainy Sunday Afternoon. Here, we are far from the cheeriness that many will remember on his 1990s records Casanova and Fin de ​Siècle.

Alexander Larman

Why does an American billionaire want an Oxford pub?

From our UK edition

If you’re a fan of American billionaires buying up much-loved British institutions, then you, too, might be rejoicing at news that Larry Ellison has set his sights on purchasing much of Oxford. The squillionaire owner of the software technology company Oracle (net worth: $270 billion, or thereabouts) has started relatively small, however. In addition to spending a huge amount of money on the Ellison Institute of Technology in the city’s Science Park, he has also paid a supposed $10 million for one of its best-known and most-loved alehouses, the Eagle and Child, aka ‘the Bird and Baby’.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Is this the end of the Murdoch drama?

From our UK edition

So at last, the vexed question of who is going to succeed the now 94-year-old Rupert Murdoch has been settled. A deal has been announced that reveals that Murdoch’s eldest son Lachlan, the chairman of News Corp and CEO of Fox Corporation, will now be taking control of the family business. His siblings – sisters Prudence and Elisabeth and younger brother James – will each surrender their shares and any influence in the company to him, in exchange for a pay-out estimated at just over a billion dollars each. This concludes a torrid saga that was widely believed to be the major inspiration behind Jesse Armstrong’s acclaimed show Succession – and has ended in a surprisingly similar fashion.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Prince Harry returns, but does Britain want him back?

From our UK edition

“Success”, Winston Churchill was once reputed to have said, “is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” By this metric, Prince Harry must be about the most successful figure in public life today. Despite a series of myriad embarrassments and humiliations, which have included his Sentebale charity descending into chaos, his well-publicised legal shenanigans (which, apparently, cost him over a million pounds, for little reward) and a consistent ranking as Britain’s third most unpopular royal (ahead only of his disgraced uncle and perennially disliked wife), he is returning to Britain this week, for his first significant visit to 2022.

Friday

Alexander Larman

The Paper is really, really bad

Making a spin-off of a spin-off is the trickiest task on television, not least because it assumes that the audience is sufficiently fond of the original and the reinvention alike to be happy to go steady with the third round, too. In all fairness, the new workplace-themed sitcom (although on the evidence of this first season, comedy-drama is probably a more accurate designation) The Paper is only a callback to the US The Office, in that its premise is that the same documentary crew that captured the bewildering banality of life at Dunder Mifflin has headed to Toledo, Ohio, there to follow the travails of a once-proud, now-flailing newspaper, the Toledo Truth-Teller.

Alexander Larman

It’s a pity David Bowie never finished his Spectator musical

From our UK edition

Anyone who’s remotely interested in music, fashion, cinema, literature or indeed any of the things that make life worth living, will know that the late David Bowie bestrode all these areas, and more, like a particularly well-dressed South London colossus. But what passed undeservedly unnoticed during his lifetime, and beyond, was that Bowie was also a fully paid-up admirer of Britain’s greatest magazine. Indeed, he was so impressed by it – and its colourful and decidedly storied history – that it has been revealed that a musical that he was working on at the time of his death in 2016, set amidst the rogues, vagabonds and literati of the eighteenth century, was to have been titled The Spectator.

Alexander Larman

Is Austin Butler a movie star?

In the old days of Hollywood, stars and starlets alike were anointed as “It” girls and men. Nobody was ever quite sure what “It” denoted – star quality, sex appeal, charisma, a willingness to sleep with studio executives – but when they were told they had “It,” their careers appeared made, for the present time at least. Today, however, with Marvel and superhero films largely making the idea of the movie star irrelevant, the concept of “It” is ever decreasing. I am sure that David Corenswet, this year’s Superman, is a lovely man, but I would struggle to recognize him if I passed him on the street without his Super-costume on. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt aside, it seems as if the era of the old-school male leading man is past us now.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

The style and influence of Giorgio Armani

From our UK edition

When I was younger, I once saw an Armani overcoat in the window of the company’s store in London and vowed that I would do everything I could to buy it. It seemed to me the quintessence of sophistication and style, being a beautifully cut, long, dark coat that flattered its wearer’s body shape and gave them the look of being classy and well-heeled. A year or two later, I was able to buy it in the New Year sales. I remember feeling like a million dollars every time I wore it. Perhaps as a precaution, I even bought another, inferior overcoat for everyday wear, so as to preserve my favourite.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

In praise of Tony McNamara

American audiences did not exactly flock to the Benedict Cumberbatch-Olivia Colman comedy The Roses last weekend, but those who did may have been pleasantly surprised, as well as appalled. Although the publicity and trailers took care to stress that it was the new film from the director of Meet The Parents – and certainly some of the more elaborate set-piece slapstick scenes bear the hallmark of the filmmaker Jay Roach – the true auteur of the picture should be regarded as the screenwriter Tony McNamara, who was previously responsible for the Yorgos Lanthimos collaborations Poor Things and The Favourite, both of which saw his screenplays Oscar-nominated. The 58-year-old McNamara is an unlikely late bloomer in Hollywood circles.

Tony McNamara

Monday

Alexander Larman

Is it possible to learn anything new about the royal family?

From our UK edition

Another week, another round of royal revelations. Following swiftly on from the publication of Andrew Lownie’s bestselling denigration of the Duke and Duchess of York – Entitled, there is now another tell-all account of the royal family: Valentine Low’s Power and the Palace. It has recently been serialised in the Times (appropriately enough, given that Low is that newspaper’s royal correspondent) and purports to offer a well-sourced and factually accurate account of the relationship between politics and the royal family over the past few years.

Saturday

Alexander Larman

Is Taylor Swift’s love life too good to be true?

From our UK edition

After years of dating effete Englishmen, Taylor Swift has finally found her man. The singer is engaged to Travis Kelce, that rugged all-American specimen of manliness. Their announcement has united the United States in joy: even her former nemesis Donald Trump rather surprisingly described the forthcoming union as taking place between 'a great guy [and] a terrific person.' But call me cynical: Swift's dating history has not just enriched her personal life – it has undoubtedly also helped advance her career. Her engagement is no exception.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Is Jack White washed up?

Once, it might have seemed strange for American politicians to use a rock star as a proxy means of sniping at one another, but these are not normal times. Gavin Newsom used the White Stripes’ song “Seven Nation Army” on Instagram to soundtrack various campaign posts, and the band’s songwriter Jack White commented that “Fans of this song and also democracy, notice that I'm ok with this track being used in this manner. Not so much when Trump and his gestapo try to use one of my songs. Keep hitting him back Gavin!” For good measure, he also attacked Trump’s redesign of the Oval Office, calling it “disgusting... a vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler’s dressing room.

Alexander Larman

With Love, Meghan 2 is just as ghastly as season one

From our UK edition

Like death and taxes, the second instalment of With Love, Meghan has come around again, sloughing into view to the usual chorus of disapproval and confusion. The news recently broke that Netflix has deigned to allow Harry ‘n’ Meghan another five years of deciding not to make their future projects. In light of that, this second series of the hitherto unloved show – filmed at the same time as the first – has been presented to a previously indifferent global public in the hope that it will distract from many of the unflattering and embarrassing stories about the Duke of Sussex that have proliferated this year. This is brand reinforcement, pure and simple Harry is entirely absent from this series of With Love, Meghan, although he and the couple's children are often referred to.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Does Virginia Giuffre have the power to finish off Prince Andrew?

From our UK edition

There’s an old saying that revenge is a dish best served cold. The late Virginia Giuffre has gone a step further by serving up her final helping of vengeance against Prince Andrew by publishing her sure-to-be-revelatory memoir, Nobody’s Girl, from beyond the grave this October. Giuffre collaborated with the American writer Amy Wallace on a 400-page book that is expected to divulge in no doubt excruciatingly painful and embarrassing detail, the various relationships that she had with the notorious likes of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and – of course! – the Duke of York himself.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

The greatness of Bob Odenkirk

If viewers of Breaking Bad had taken bets during the show’s original run on which of the cast was likely to become a breakout action-film star a decade after the series finished airing, Bob Odenkirk would likely have been near the bottom of that list. The young actor Aaron Paul was perhaps the most obvious prediction, but Jesse Plemons, Dean Norris – even a grizzled and pumped Bryan Cranston – were all more predictable choices to do an alpha-male Liam Neeson-meets-Keanu Reeves act than the foppish comic relief Jimmy McGill, aka criminal lawyer (in both senses) Saul Goodman.

Bob Odenkirk (Getty)

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

I actually feel sorry for Prince Andrew

From our UK edition

‘Many would have preferred this book not to be written, including the Yorks themselves.’ So Andrew Lownie begins his coruscating examination of the lives of Prince Andrew and Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, which has excited significant media attention due to its scandalous revelations. Lownie, a historian and literary agent, has pivoted away from an earlier, more conventional career as a biographer of John Buchan and Guy Burgess to the self-appointed role of royal botherer-in-chief. After earlier, similarly scabrous books about the Mountbattens and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, he now finds his first contemporary targets, and the results are predictably marmalade-dropping.

Alexander Larman

John Boyne and the bitter truth about the Polari Prize

From our UK edition

The news that the Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ writing is not to be awarded this year after outrage that the novelist John Boyne was included on the longlist represents one of the more head-scratching reversals that the world of books has seen in a considerable time. Boyne’s novel Earth was selected on merit, but the Irish author, who proudly describes himself as a ‘Terf’ and has dared to be photographed with JK Rowling, the nemesis of the trans movement, was swiftly pilloried as soon as the longlist was announced on 1 August.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Alien: Earth is unfriendly and brilliant

Another day, another bunch of rampaging, acid-blooded xenomorphs. Noah Hawley’s new series, Alien: Earth, comes hard on the heels of the profoundly forgettable but commercially successful latest installment in the film saga, Romulus. That film got into trouble with certain viewers for its artistic necrophilia in the artificial-intelligence-assisted resurrection of Ian Holm’s character Ash from the first Alien film, as well as some rather laborious fan service in the repetition of various hard-as-nails catchphrases. But still, its box-office revenue indicated that there is still, after four and a half decades, a hearty appetite for audiences who want to be scared witless by rampaging extra-terrestrials: the very opposite of kindly, friendly ET types.

Alexander Larman

Terence Stamp bent the Swinging Sixties to his will

From our UK edition

There are two famous images of the late Terence Stamp, one taken from one of his films, the other from a photoshoot by Terry O’Neill in 1963. In the first, he is shown in his regimental outfit, in character as the dashing but weak Sergeant Troy from the 1967 adaptation of Far From The Madding Crowd, with his inamorata Julie Christie, who played Bathsheba Everdene, beside him. In the second, he is shown looking intensely directly into O’Neill’s camera next to another lover of his, the model Jean ‘The Shrimp’ Shrimpton, in a startlingly modern image that looks as if it could have been taken today. In both cases, Stamp looks like what he was: the single coolest man alive.