Alexander Larman

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

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Can London’s favourite restaurateur save Simpson’s?

From our UK edition

When you think about Simpson’s in the Strand (never Simpson’s on the Strand), it is impossible to consider the 198-year-old restaurant without remembering its literary antecedents. P.G. Wodehouse praised it as ‘a restful temple of food’ in his 1910 novel Psmith in the City. It has popped up in everything from Sherlock Holmes to Howards End and, when that epitome of thespian Britishness David Niven wished, in the 1961 film The Guns of Navarone, to speak wistfully about a golden idyll to a dying friend, Simpson’s was the idyll he chose.  Yet all good things decline at some point. Before Simpson’s closed in 2020, another victim of the pandemic, it had been weakening.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Should we pay for Harry and Meghan’s security?

From our UK edition

After a period of several months in which attention has been mainly focused not on Prince Harry but on his uncle, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the pendulum looks as if it is swinging back to Montecito all over again. The news over the past week or so has not been good. Firstly, it was announced that the Sussexes’ much-ballyhooed deal with Netflix is spluttering to a close. Their last few projects have failed spectacularly, chief among them the ridiculed With Love, Meghan.  Secondly, Tom Bower’s latest exposé of all things Brand Sussex, Betrayal, is about to be published. Harry and Meghan have already denounced the book as a 'deranged conspiracy', but that hasn't stopped it selling briskly on Amazon.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

There’s no need to cancel Charles’s US state visit

From our UK edition

The so-called ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States seems to have reached a historically unspecial nadir, in large part because of the tensions between Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer over Iran. Amidst this, there remains one particular source of debate: whether King Charles’s state visit to America, scheduled for next month, should still go ahead. The visit is taking place as part of celebrations intented to mark 250 years since America achieved its independence. It has been suggested on both sides of the Atlantic that despite the President’s clear Anglophilia, manifested most obviously in his sincere love of the royal family, that it is taking place at an inopportune time and should be postponed, if not scrapped altogether.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Looking back at Eyes Wide Shut, after Epstein

The constant parade of shocking and disturbing revelations from the Epstein files has been going on for a considerable time now. It shows no signs of coming to an end. Just when we all think that we’ve seen the worst of it, another 10,000 documents enter the public domain. Even though the stories have been widely disseminated, the details of the abuse of young women by the wealthy and powerful remain just as distressing – and scandalous – no matter how many times they are repeated. At some point in the future, Hollywood – or a streaming service, or AI, or however we get our entertainment by then – will probably make a film about the Epstein scandal.

Monday

Alexander Larman

The Oscars was as exciting as a Keir Starmer speech

The results of this year’s Oscars were so predictable as to be entirely unexciting. Months ago, the pundits had called the major results: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another to win Best Film and Best Director, Jessie Buckley to win Best Actress for Hamnet, Sinners to win Best Original Screenplay. It wasn't hard to predict because they had won these prizes in ceremony after ceremony. And so, last night in Los Angeles, events unfolded with the grim pre-ordination of awards voters who had seen what they liked and liked what they saw. The Academy Awards 2026 had all the thrill of a Keir Starmer speech.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Will Iran scupper King Charles’s US state visit?

In April, King Charles is scheduled to visit the United States to mark 250 years since America achieved its independence. Given that Britain has hosted President Trump twice – once in each term – it seemed a relatively easy piece of reciprocity. Pageantry, pomp, the King and Queen smiling and waving a lot, photo opportunities with the President, Vice President and anyone else who wants something to show their grandchildren, and little of any lasting worth achieved. How things change. Now, after the beginning of the Iran war, there is a growing groundswell of support on both sides of the Atlantic for the state visit to be postponed, if not canceled altogether.

King Charles

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Bring back the book launch

From our UK edition

Last week, I had the pleasure of heading to the Freud Museum in Hampstead for the launch of Zoe Strimpel’s much-discussed new book Good Slut. Not only was the venue one of the most splendid I’ve been to for a party of this kind, but the guest list – which included The Spectator’s esteemed editor – was suitably glittering for a Thursday evening in early March. Everyone was on top form, much jollity was had, and by the time the author gave a suitably witty speech from the top of the staircase that Sigmund Freud once ascended and descended, a fabulous time had been had by all.  Would that this was the norm for all book launches.

Monday

Alexander Larman

The awkward truth about Charles’s Commonwealth message

From our UK edition

Under normal circumstances, King Charles’s message to the Commonwealth would be a carefully crafted and anodyne series of platitudes, designed for little more than to fulfil its brief and to keep the other Commonwealth leaders happy. However, this year, the King is faced with two pressing issues. The first is international, in the shape of the war in Iran – something that Charles himself has little direct influence on. The second, however, is rather more personal and concerns the continued embarrassment that his younger brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has brought on the royal family.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Serge Gainsbourg would not survive modern France

From our UK edition

Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of the death of Serge Gainsbourg at 62 from a heart attack. The only real surprise is that he ever made it to such an age. Gainsbourg, whose unlovely but strangely beguiling countenance can best be likened to a garden gnome left outside in the rain for too long, was a performer and composer who epitomised French popular music of the 1960s and 1970s in all its bizarre contradictions. Compared to such wholesome British figures as Cliff Richard and Tom Jones, Gainsbourg was a seedy, almost sinister figure whose demeanour gave off an odour of stale aftershave, Gitanes and day-old red wine.  That he was also a songwriter of genius who has influenced countless other musicians – everyone from Jarvis Cocker and Radiohead to R.E.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Has SNL gone too far?

It has been a very long time since Saturday Night Live was in the headlines for a good reason (probably Nate Bargatze’s first hosting stint in October 2023), and those who have been wishing that the increasingly beleaguered show would be put out of its misery now finally have their opportunity to say so. In last weekend’s episode, one sketch in highly questionable taste revealed a gang of canceled celebrities – including Bill Cosby, Armie Hammer and Mel Gibson – as coming forward and explaining that their various controversial or criminal activities had been driven by their having Tourette’s.

SNL

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Why are Parisians so awful?

From our UK edition

I have recently returned from a fleeting visit to the City of Light. As usual, Paris itself was a delight. It is an architectural and historic marvel that nevertheless manages to offer the best food and wine in the world at all kinds of prices, and somehow also has a respectable number of quirky and interesting independent shops and boutiques amidst the more anticipated international names. In other words, any trip to the French capital should be an alloyed pleasure. So why, when I arrived back at St Pancras, did I all but sink to my knees in gratitude that I was once back in rainy old Blighty, and that the land of the Belle Époque was a distant memory?

Friday

Alexander Larman

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is on his own

From our UK edition

For future royal historians, the date 19 February may take on the same totemic significance as the abdication of Edward VIII on 10 December. It was the date that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, eighth in line to the throne, was arrested on the day of his 66th birthday – it is fair to surmise this wasn’t a coincidence – and taken to Aylsham police station. Before yesterday, Aylsham was an unexceptional North Norfolk market town, perhaps best known for the presence of a firm of fine art auctioneers. Now, it will forever go down in history as the place where the former Duke of York was taken, put in the cells, and interrogated.

Alexander Larman

The demise of the first Oxfam bookshop would be a catastrophe

From our UK edition

The news that Oxford’s main Oxfam bookshop on St Giles in the city has been threatened with closure is one of the most depressing things I have heard this year. The building’s landlord, Regent’s Park College, has declared that it needs more space for its graduate students. This sums up everything that is wrong both with Oxford University and Regent’s Park, a religious-oriented permanent private hall that I studied at just over two decades ago.

Thursday

Alexander Larman

The seismic arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

Ever since the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, no member of the Royal Family has been arrested. Which makes this morning’s news that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been taken into police custody under suspicion of misconduct in public office all the more seismic. And with a certain grim irony, his arrest comes on his 66th birthday, of all days. This arrest represents not so much the beginning of the end as the point at which the Rubicon has been crossed, forever This development had seemed inevitable for a considerable amount of time now. Remarks from both Buckingham Palace and Sir Keir Starmer in the past few days seemed to indicate that both the King and the Prime Minister expected that the once-unthinkable would happen sooner rather than later.

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Is BrewDog finished?

From our UK edition

The news that the Scottish beer company BrewDog has put itself up for sale has been greeted with a mixture of sorrow and shrugs by drinks commentators and enthusiasts. Those who have been stalwart fans of BrewDog – an organisation that always valued PR stunts as much as it did brewing –will mourn its diminished presence in our high streets and pubs, as well as the potential end of beers like Punk IPA and Elvis Juice. While those who viewed the company as a triumph of style over substance may now feel vindicated by their belief that the craft beer renaissance in Britain was always driven as much by hype as good drinks.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Robert Duvall was one of the Hollywood greats

From our UK edition

The death of the actor Robert Duvall at the age of 95 – almost exactly a year after that of his friend Gene Hackman – brings to the end another chapter of Old Hollywood. But unlike Hackman, who combined on-screen brilliance with a combustible, confrontational personality, Duvall was a thoroughly professional and popular figure who was a delight to work with, by all accounts.

Alexander Larman

The battle for Britain’s oldest Indian restaurant

From our UK edition

There are relatively few restaurants in London – or anywhere else, for that matter – that have made it to their centenary. There are even fewer that have been threatened with the closure of their premises in the precise year they are going to turn 100. And there are practically none so popular that news of their possible eviction has resulted in a petition with tens of thousands of signatures – which will be sent to the King in the hope he can reverse what would be a heritage-threatening disaster for one of the capital’s most historic establishments.  Such is the recent story of Veeraswamy, the country’s oldest Indian restaurant which was founded in March 1926 and has been a haunt of the beau-monde and demi-monde ever since.

Monday

Alexander Larman

Is it time to scrub Andrew from the line of succession?

From our UK edition

The sheer weight of allegations against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – all tawdry, all sordid – runs the risk of creating not so much outrage as weariness. It was clear months ago that the former Duke of York appeared to have been behaving in a way that brought shame not just on his family but on his country. Yet as the stories from the Epstein files continue to weave their insidious way into the public consciousness, the effrontery with which Andrew behaved seems quite unparalleled in any kind of recent history. Well, perhaps if we exclude the antics of Lord Mandelson, that is.  What is of most interest, at this demeaning point, is to examine the complex psychological relationship that appears to have existed between Epstein and Andrew.

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

What lies behind the royal redactions?

Nothing has been as damaging for the British royal family as the unfortunate meeting of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein. Republican Thomas Massie and the Democrat Ro Khanna know this. In a press conference yesterday, they said they had been shown documents that have been otherwise redacted and withheld from the Epstein files. These documents included mention of girls as young as 9 years old. Massie and Khanna are responsible for the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. They have said that the levels of redaction and secrecy are unacceptable, and that they will continue to challenge the Justice Department’s approach to the documents. And this, according to Khanna, is extremely bad news for the royals.

Alexander Larman

The royal family has entered uncharted waters

From our UK edition

The statement issued by Buckingham Palace last night, addressing the ongoing fallout from the latest release of Epstein files, was undeniably terse: The King has made clear, in words and through unprecedented actions, his profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct. While the specific claims in question are for Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor to address, if we are approached by Thames Valley Police we stand ready to support them as you would expect.  Its inference was every bit as clear as the Prince and Princess of Wales’s remarks earlier the same day.