Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
It must be a strange time to be Prince Harry. A year and a half ago, he was the most famous man in the world, thanks to the headline-grabbing publication of his autobiography Spare. Whether you thought it was brave, incisive and fascinating, or overwritten tawdry nonsense, it was hard not to have an opinion
It has the comforting throwback feel of a movie that could have been made virtually any time over the past few decades
If proper action is taken, then the situation is redeemable
From our UK edition
JK Rowling’s denunciation of Labour leader Keir Starmer marked a rare moment in the election – a campaign in which the celebs have fallen quiet. At the 1997 election, Labour’s landslide was accompanied both by explicit endorsements from the great and the good. Noel Gallagher and Geri Halliwell, those two Britpop icons, both appeared alongside
From our UK edition
This year has been one of the worst imaginable for the Royals. The King and the Princess of Wales are both battling cancer, and now Princess Anne has been hospitalised, suffering what is said to be ‘minor injuries and concussion’ following an incident involving a horse. The Princess Royal, who is 73, was rushed to
He was an actor who, even in the weakest films he appeared in, brought class and dignity
Over the course of 600-odd pages, Paul Murray marshals elements of tragedy, black comedy and drama with consummate skill
The producers will, you feel, be relieved today
From our UK edition
In any other year, the major story of the Trooping the Colour would be how grim and unseasonal the wet, cloudy weather was this June. How the cold and rain potentially rendered the pageantry and pomp of this historic affair somewhat anticlimactic – not that the countless spectators, in person and watching on television, cared.
From our UK edition
I have recently had the bad fortune to read a forthcoming biography of the Princess of Wales. Its greatest fault isn’t just that it’s poorly written, incurious or unrevealing, but that it came out at exactly the wrong time. What would, under normal circumstances, have been a harmless enough puff book now becomes irrelevant the
From our UK edition
The attack by animal rights activists on the new portrait of King Charles, currently on display at the Philip Mould gallery in London, is both depressing and predictable. It is depressing because it suggests that any work of art, whether historic or contemporary, is now fair game for a bunch of privileged, often spoilt young
Summer blockbusters in Hollywood have hope again, as does the career of the man once known as Big Willie Style
From our UK edition
Eighty years ago, in the run up to D-Day, King George VI and his Prime Minister Winston Churchill were caught up in an unseemly private squabble. Both men wished to accompany the combined Allied forces into battle, knowing that – as long as the initiative succeeded – it would be an unparalleled public relations coup.
From our UK edition
On 16 October 1946, the Duke of Windsor, the former Edward VIII, and his wife Wallis were visiting England for a short period. They were staying with their friends the Dudleys at Ednam Lodge in Surrey, and felt sufficiently comfortable not to store Wallis’s impressive collection of jewellery in the house’s safe room, but instead
From our UK edition
Touring the country’s literary festivals as an author isn’t glamorous. Like travelling salesmen, we get into our cars or board trains to head to destinations that are often hundreds of miles away to talk about our books for an hour or so. The audience – if the talk has gone well – will then hopefully
This is full-strength wackiness, removed from any need to conform to conventional ideas of what drama should or should not be
They think watching Lawrence of Arabia on an iPhone is acceptable
From our UK edition
The cliché about Oxford – and as a resident of the city, I have skin in the game here – is that it’s the most beautiful city in Britain. Think of all the writers and poets who have rhapsodised about its glories, from Evelyn Waugh immortalising (some would say fossilising) it in Brideshead Revisited to
Early word suggests that the Palme d’Or is likely to go to the French director Jacques Audiard
The eccentricity and idiosyncrasy of Britain’s most commercially successful duo should be cherished and extolled
