Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.
Strange though it might seem now, at the beginning of 2020 Boris Johnson came close to achieving his childhood ambition of being ‘World King’. Johnson had led the Conservative party to its first decent majority since 1987 the previous month, was in the process of ‘getting Brexit done’ with an ‘oven-ready deal’ and was airily
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There is a chronic lack of imagination
Say what you like about Steven Patrick Morrissey – lead singer of The Smiths, the Mancunian miserabilist, ‘the Pope of Mope’ etc – but he has a knack, nearly four decades after his band dissolved acrimoniously, for coming out with attention- and headline-grabbing pronouncements. At first glance these declarations might seem like revelatory news stories,
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If you’ve seen Scoop , you may feel that this is inessential and unrevelatory
The allegations against Mohamed Al Fayed are dreadful: the former Harrods owner has been accused of raping five women and sexually abusing at least 15 others when they worked at his department store. A BBC investigation, which detailed the allegations, claimed that this abuse took place from the late 1980s to the 2000s. The name
Sensational dramas about the Duke of York are rather like London buses: you wait five years for one, and then two come along at once. Amazon Prime’s three-part series, A Very Royal Scandal, which focuses on the notorious Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew, is released tomorrow. The show follows the perspective of both the journalist
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The Japan-set drama won virtually everything this year
If you’ve ever visited Starbucks, you may enjoy the overpriced coffees or bewildering assortment of half-sweet, half-savoury drinks – espresso frappuccino, anyone? But you may also agree with a mystery shopper who said: ‘It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic.’ Anyone with
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The notorious film may be the most expensive, most unpleasant adult movie ever made
An official tribute to the late, much-missed Queen Elizabeth II will, in years to come, be unveiled in London’s St James’s Park. But progress on the memorial is far from speedy. The design of the statue or sculpture will not be revealed by the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee until 2026. Even then, there is every
While the nation basks in the good news about the Princess of Wales in her battle with cancer, the Royals’ troubles are not entirely over. The not-so-grand Duke of York, Prince Andrew, remains a baleful, apparently ungovernable character. Andrew is no longer a working royal, and is rarely, if ever, seen in public (not even
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He, and his remarkable voice, will both be sorely missed
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a dismally confused hotchpotch that aims for a curious mixture of comedy
The Royal Family has not had much to celebrate lately, so the relief that the world will feel with the announcement that the Princess of Wales has completed a course of chemotherapy is going to be mirrored, and then some, at both Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace. Not only is it deeply welcome for both
Of all the people who might come forward to attack the memory of the late, lamented Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Ian McKellen – a CBE and Companion of Honour, no less – would not be high on the list. Yet in a candid interview that he has given to the Times, McKellen has labelled the
The Duke of Wellington famously suggested that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. To this day, something happens in the hallowed cloisters of the nation’s most famous public school that brings out qualities in its pupils that no other educational establishment can muster. I refer, of course, to those
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Mick Herron and Will Smith have a rug-pulling conceit that makes for high-octane viewing
Given my unequivocal feelings about the Oasis reunion, I was, apparently, one of the few people in Britain who was not attempting to obtain tickets yesterday for one of their stadium gigs next year. As is usually the case these days when a much-hyped act returns for a series of mega-concerts, the wall-to-wall publicity that the concerts
The video game Star Wars Outlaws is to be released this week. The game is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi – so in the universe of the original, still-greatest film trilogy – and has been several years in development. According to its ‘narrative director’ Navid Khavari, ‘We didn’t just
Twenty years ago, I suffered through seeing Oasis perform at Glastonbury. It remains one of the worst, if not the worst, large-scale gigs of its kind that I have ever been to. Liam Gallagher had all the animation and charm of an Easter Island statue, standing stock-still in the centre of the stage and looking
