Reassessing Jerzy Kosinski
From our US edition
Why did the Being There writer’s life come to resemble a fairground rollercoaster?
Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.
From our US edition
Why did the Being There writer’s life come to resemble a fairground rollercoaster?
Along with Aston Martin and Rolls Royce, Jaguar is, for most people, one of the great British blue chip motoring brands. When Inspector Morse drove around the not-so-mean streets of Oxford in his burgundy Jaguar Mark II, the implicit association between the terribly English detective and the quintessentially stylish car was one that lingered on
Gore Vidal once sighed that ‘every time a friend succeeds, I die a little’, and there is inevitably a sense that when some idiotic blockbuster makes $1 billion worldwide, our collective intelligence loses a couple of IQ points. It’s a relief, then, when the worst examples of their kind, made at enormous cost to negligible
From our US edition
There may come a point that Dune fatigue sets in — and we may pinpoint this series as that very situation
From our US edition
He is an inspired choice
From our US edition
The final few episodes of Yellowstone may offer an experience akin to watching King Lear without the king
If this year’s Remembrance Sunday was unusually affecting, it was in large part due to the presence of both the King and the Princess of Wales at the service. After one of the hardest years for the monarchy in living memory, surpassing even the so-called ‘annus horribilis’ of 1992, there is hope that, as 2024
For all his wealth and privilege, it is hard to imagine wanting to be Prince William. Not only was he irrevocably changed by his mother’s tragic death when he was aged 15, but the past year alone has seen his wife and father diagnosed with cancer. His ongoing estrangement from his embarrassing younger brother continues
From our US edition
He delighted and occasionally shocked the world throughout his seventy-five-year career
Since King Charles became monarch in September 2022, after the death of Elizabeth II, he has received reasonably warm treatment from the press. It is easy to forget that, for much of the 1990s and 2000s, he was seen as an unpopular figure, lambasted by the Diana-supporting tabloids for being an adulterer (never mind his
If there is one thing that Paul French’s forthcoming book Her Lotus Year should put right about Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, it is that her so-called ‘lotus year’ in China in the 1920s was not the sexual bacchanal that it has been painted as by the prurient and the envious. Instead it was
From our US edition
Come for the outrageousness and scandal, stay for the surprisingly sweet heart at its center
For his first formal address as head of the Commonwealth, King Charles would probably have preferred to veer away from controversy. Unfortunately, delivering an anodyne and people pleasing speech was not on the agenda. Ever since it was announced that Samoa would be hosting a gathering of the 56 Commonwealth countries, it was inevitable that
From our US edition
Sex, death and wealthy people being vile to one another — what’s not to like?
Politicians are said to campaign in poetry and govern in prose. In the case of Keir Starmer, he campaigned in the most uninspiring, plodding prose imaginable, and has now chosen to govern in what might politely be compared to a child’s first attempt at poetry. It is all word-vomit and incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo. The country needed
From our US edition
The French city is rich in history, culture and class of all kinds
From our US edition
Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump drama The Apprentice has flopped
The news that the Princess of Wales has been able to return to public-facing duties is both hugely welcome and, after a lengthy period out of the limelight due to her cancer diagnosis, a reminder that she remains the most dutiful and committed of all the members of the royal family. Yet her first official
From our US edition
Joker: Folie à Deux has flopped, and then some
From our US edition
Her death represents the passing of a generation