Alexander Larman

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

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Greggs’ security crackdown is a sign of broken Britain

Greggs is a great British success story. The ever-popular bakery chain provides good-quality (if, admittedly, rarely healthy) treats for millions of satisfied Britons. Yet some depressing news has taken the joy out of visiting Greggs for a steak bake and an iced doughnut. The chain has become a Mecca for shoplifters, who refuse to pay even its modest prices. To deter thieves, Greggs is resorting to desperate measures To deter thieves, Greggs is resorting to desperate measures: ditching its self-service fridges and keeping sandwiches and bottled drinks behind the counter. The crackdown will be trialled in five stores, the Sun reports.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Hasn’t Salman Rushdie suffered enough?

From our US edition

I used to run into Salman Rushdie at London literary parties a couple of decades ago, before he became a US citizen in 2016 and largely made his life there afterwards. He was always charming and likable company, during the brief conversations that we had, and the worst that I would say of him is that he was all too aware of his own fame and reputation. Certainly, I was not the only one in a long line of admirers and acolytes wishing for a couple of moments with the great man, and Rushdie certainly paid rather more attention to the attractive women or girls than he did to the rather gauche young men who had read Midnight’s Children or The Satanic Verses.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning isn’t very good

From our US edition

“And now, the end is here, and so I face the final curtain”... If Tom Cruise isn’t quite Sinatra performing “My Way,” then the long-anticipated, much-hyped apparent finale to the Mission: Impossible series has a similarly valedictory feel to it. Ever since a youthful Cruise first took to movie screens in 1996 in the first, Brian de Palma-directed film – which those with long memories might recall was unfairly criticized on release for being virtually incomprehensible – the movies have been a welcome part of the contemporary movie-going experience.

mission: impossible
win butler arcade fire kanye west
Alexander Larman

Kanye West and Arcade Fire: a tale of two cancellations

From our US edition

At first glance, Kanye “Ye” West and the Arcade Fire’s lead singer Win Butler might seem to have little in common. Ye has built his increasingly deranged career on provocation and confrontation, and that has now reached its nadir in his latest single, “Heil Hitler,” in which he declares that “All my niggas Nazis, nigga Heil Hitler.” After listing the various perceived wrongs that have been done to him, Ye states, all too accurately, “So I became a Nazi, yeah bitch, I’m the villain.” Inevitably, it ends with the song sampling a Hitler speech, in which the Führer cried that, “Whether you think my work is right... if yes, then stand up for me as I stood up for you.” The song has attracted outrage, upset and genuine confusion as to Ye’s mental state.

Friday

Alexander Larman

King Charles did Britain proud this VE Day

The two years since the coronation of King Charles have been largely disappointing ones for the royal family. A great deal of this was due to factors that none of its senior members could have had any control over – Harry; the Duke of York; cancer. But, in these pages, I have also expressed doubts that the King has been fully in control of the public aspects of the role. Compared to his mother, he has often seemed a tentative, slightly querulous presence on the throne: a figure who had longed to rise to the highest level of responsibility for all his adult life, and was found wanting when he finally became attained it. But in a week in which the King has been very much on display during the country’s VE Day celebrations, he has been magnificent in two separate regards.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

No memorial to Elizabeth II is better than these monstrosities

After Elizabeth II died on 8 September 2022, it became of paramount national importance that a suitable memorial was constructed in memory of her and her unparalleled reign. Since it was announced that some of the leading architects in the country would be in competition to come up with something that would act as a fitting testament to her, there has been fevered speculation as to which design would be triumphant. Something suitably stately and reverential, perhaps, to remember the late Queen as a public figure? Or perhaps something brilliantly daring and unusual, which would have the artistic establishment in raptures at its encapsulation of the country’s greatest ever monarch? After all, if a terrible idea has come this far, what is to stop it going all the way? Alas.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

King Charles’s reign has begun poorly

Today marks the second anniversary of King Charles’s coronation, but celebrations are likely to be rather limited this time around. In truth, it is hard to call the past two years a particular success for the Royal Family. The king has suffered from cancer, for which his debilitating (and, it has to be said, ageing) treatment is still ongoing, as has his daughter-in-law. His younger brother has continued to bring shame upon the institution of the monarchy, most notably through shady financial dealings that have invited interest in his relationships with rumoured Chinese spies. His younger son has sold his birthright from his Montecito mansion, and complained vociferously about the privations that he has endured while counting the millions he made by betraying his family.

Edinburgh
Alexander Larman

A journey through Edinburgh’s gothic past

From our US edition

When Guillermo del Toro’s new film adaptation of Frankenstein makes its bloody advent on Netflix later this year, the backdrop for 19th-century body snatching and resurrection may look familiar to many viewers. It was shot last year on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and images from the set suggest that, as ever with del Toro, this will be a hallucinatory and haunting exercise in Gothic extravagance. If so, he has picked the perfect city on which to unleash Frankenstein’s monster. Edinburgh is a place that wears its long and often violent history like a velvet cloak.

Monday

Alexander Larman

The problem with Trump’s plan to make American movies great again

From our US edition

Donald Trump is a cinephile, of sorts. Not since Ronald Reagan has there been a US President so visible in theater, with Trump making cameos in everything from Home Alone 2 to Zoolander. Yet just as Trump has been steadfast in his determination to Make America Great Again, so he has been equally keen to Make Hollywood Great Again, too. Initially, he appointed Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight as “Special Ambassadors” to “a great but very troubled place.” Gibson and Stallone appear to have taken the honor on the chin, but Voight has been diligently organizing meetings and has now fed back his thoughts to the President. As a result, Trump has declared that he has his own, unorthodox plans to save the American motion-picture industry.

jon voight movies

Saturday

Alexander Larman

The revenge of Prince Harry

It was always unlikely that Prince Harry was going to take his latest and perhaps most humiliating legal defeat with calmness and equanimity, and so it proved swiftly afterwards. Not only did he give a lengthy interview to the BBC in which he alternated between anger and blame and claiming that it was his intention to reconcile with his family, and specifically his father – William may be a step too far - but he also released an emotive and angry press statement in which he talked about how the court ruling had uncovered ‘shocking truths’.

Friday

Alexander Larman

Is this Prince Harry’s most humiliating court defeat yet?

Well, what did Prince Harry expect? The Duke of Sussex has been involved in plenty of hubristic and pointless things since he decided to step down as a member of the royal family in 2020. But taking the government to court on the grounds that they were refusing to provide security to the levels that he and his family would expect, was perhaps his most pig-headed and idiotic publicity blunder.

Alexander Larman

McDonald’s isn’t worth it any more

When did you last eat at a McDonald’s? If I’d asked this question a decade or so ago, I imagine the answer would probably have been ‘more recently than I’d care to admit’. The Golden Arches were the ultimate fast-food guilty pleasure, where, for considerably less than a tenner, the hungry, hungover or intoxicated could gorge on burgers, chips, milkshakes and chicken nuggets – served swiftly and efficiently. It was never designed to be Michelin-star standard, but everyone knew what they were getting with a Maccy D’s: comfort food that hit the spot and did so with unerring, machine-like competence. Yet now the company seems to be caught in an inexorable decline, as consumers tire of the belly-filling delights.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

King Charles is the definition of ‘rebellious hope’

While the world continues to laugh (and, on occasion, groan) at the antics of the Duchess of Sussex, there remains a more serious ongoing issue at the heart of the royal family: the King’s health. As his treatment for cancer stretches on into its second year, with no clear end point in sight, he hosted a reception at Buckingham Palace yesterday for those who work with cancer patients and their families. This is, regrettably but obviously, a subject that he knows a great deal about, but it was still salutary to see how personal and emotive his words on the subject have been. In a booklet that was handed out on the night, Charles wrote: Each diagnosis, each new case, will be a daunting and at times frightening experience for those individuals and their loved ones.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Does Meghan Markle believe she’s still a royal highness?

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle staged their dramatic departure from the royal family five years ago, there were various conditions attached to their ‘Megxit’. One of the most insistent was that the pair were no longer allowed to use their HRH, or Royal Highness, titles. These were solely reserved for those working royals who are expected to perform often arduous and tedious duties, rather than a pair of chancers who saw the opportunity to monetise their birthright (him) and the chance to cash in on an advantageous marriage (her).

Monday

Alexander Larman

Are we at Peak Movie Theater?

From our US edition

On paper, last weekend shouldn’t have been any great shakes for movie theater attendance. Audiences were offered, respectively, the second weekend of an African American-targeted horror picture; the fourth weekend of a video game spin-off; the re-release of the final George Lucas Star Wars picture, Revenge of the Sith, which has somehow turned 20 this year; and the major new release of the week, the sequel to the Ben Affleck vehicle The Accountant, which was only modestly successful upon its original release in 2016. None of these should have been particularly notable, and the weekend might have been expected to be another grim disappointment.  Well, this has not happened.

theater
Alexander Larman

Did Terry Pratchett really write classics?

The news that Terry Pratchett’s 2002 novel Night Watch has joined the ranks of the Penguin Modern Classics series may seem, to the Pratchett uninitiated, something of an eyebrow-raiser. Penguin has proudly announced that the book ‘which draws on inspirations as far ranging as Victor Hugo and M*A*S*H, is... a profoundly empathetic novel about community, connection and the tenacity of the human spirit’ and that it was ‘written at the height of Pratchett’s imaginative powers’. All this may very well be true. But many people, even those millions well disposed towards Pratchett, might be asking another question: why this book, and why now?

Saturday

Alexander Larman

Virginia Giuffre was a victim of careless cruelty

The death of Virginia Giuffre by suicide at the age of 41 brings to an apparent end one of the grimmest and saddest sagas that has unfolded in public life in the past few decades. Giuffre, who came from a troubled and unhappy background and later became prey for both the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his enabler Ghislaine Maxwell, was one of the classic ‘small people’ who is used and discarded by the powerful and perverted. It is hard not to remember the famous lines from The Great Gatsby when thinking about her fate: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Andor is Star Wars for grown-ups

From our US edition

The critical reception to the second series of Andor has been nothing short of ecstatic. At the time of writing, it has a hugely impressive, near-unprecedented 99 percent “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, far in excess of any other Star Wars movie or television spin-off. Its creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy, who has been open in the past about his relative disdain for fantasy in general and Star Wars in particular, has been doing the interview circuit and making it clear that he has no interest in fan service. He told the Daily Telegraph, “Some people have a problem: ‘It’s not for kids. There aren’t enough creatures in it.’ Well, I don’t make that show. Sorry.

andor
Alexander Larman

Putin’s tacky gift to Trump reveals his dark sense of humour

For all his many faults, Vladimir Putin is not without a jet-black sense of humour. The Russian president has given Donald Trump a painting. Many might have expected this to be a traditional piece of Russian art, depicting some rural scene, or perhaps something more avant-garde, from the contemporary Moscow movement. But no; Putin has instead sent Trump a picture of the aftermath of his assassination attempt last July. The portrait, by Russian artist Nikas Safronov, is not what most people would call tasteful or accomplished. It depicts the president (notably slimmer and younger-looking than in reality) holding up a clenched fist in a gesture of defiance.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Prince Andrew’s Easter appearance was a royal blunder

Every Christmas, Easter and other public gathering, the Royal Family are faced with an unfortunate choice: what to do about the two pariahs in their midst? One of them, Prince Harry, is sulkily ensconced in Montecito, and tends mainly to pop up in this country when he’s fighting yet another legal battle. The other, however, who has been even more of a public embarrassment over the past six years, resists any entreaty to remove himself from the spotlight. Should the Firm simply throw Prince Andrew out altogether, or allow him to tag along whenever they’re all assembled, and hope for the best? It was the latter option that the royals took this Easter Sunday.