Alexander Larman is an author and the US books editor of The Spectator.
This week, in homes across the land, there is one guarantee: somewhere, someone will be watching one of the Indiana Jones films, and it’ll likely be the first or the third in the series. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are little less than perfect seasonal comfort food: witty, exciting, stuffed full of indelible
When the incendiary story about Lady Susan Hussey’s ill-judged remarks broke this week, a detail that many were quick to spot was that Lady Hussey had been the person responsible for giving the Duchess of Sussex ‘protocol lessons’ when she first became part of the Royal Family. Defenders of Meghan Markle (who do exist, if
From our US edition
Can celebrities use an autopen? The times, they are a-changing
‘Why did you want to make this documentary?’ That is the question – over portentous piano chords – that begins the trailer for the next instalment in the apparently endless Sussex saga, Harry and Meghan. The answers that the viewer might supply: publicity-seeking on a grand scale; unbelievable narcissism– are not uttered. Instead, over stylised
From our US edition
Harry Potter’s older actors are speaking out in her defense, while the young ones attack
It’s a story that sounds as if it could have come from half a century ago, rather than today. Ngozi Fulani, the head of the London-based domestic and sexual abuse charity Sistah Space, was at Buckingham Palace yesterday for a reception hosted by the Queen Consort, with the stated aim of stamping out ‘a global
From our US edition
Play your cards right, and you might even sit next to a prince in a cocktail bar
From our US edition
The holiday lacks the magic of Christmas and already has too much drama
From our US edition
His stature as rock music’s greatest iconoclast shows no sign of being threatened
From our US edition
He has given the art of cinema more than virtually any other filmmaker
King Charles has announced, to mark his 74th birthday, that he will be asking Parliament to amend the Regency Act to increase the number of counsellors of state who can conduct official public business while the monarch is overseas or otherwise indisposed. He has asked that it now include his sister, Princess Anne, the Princess
From our US edition
Surrender is full of wry asides on fame, faith and self-flagellation
Novels about art are often strange, vain affairs. After all, writing about artists, especially fictional ones, can seem like a strained exercise in trying to yoke together two irreconcilable mediums. It is to Anthony Quinn’s credit that his ninth novel, Molly & the Captain, not only succeeds admirably as a centuries-spanning account of the influence
From our US edition
Factual inaccuracies aside, the fifth season sits very well in our current time
From our US edition
Reality, alas, will always struggle to improve on fiction
From our US edition
His memoir suggests a kernel of decency that saw him through his dark nights of the soul
From our US edition
Scorned at the time, it’s today recognized as The Godfather of vampire movies
The title of Prince Harry’s long-awaited memoir will be enough to make the royal family nervous. Spare, which was originally due out this year, will be released in January. ‘His Words. His Story,’ the tag-line of the book promises. The Queen’s death this year – and the coming together of the Royals in their shared
After Just Stop Oil’s recent attack on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery, the group has become emboldened by the international publicity their actions have earned. This is clearly the explanation for today’s field trip to Madame Tussauds where, after buying tickets like good little anti-capitalists, two of its activists covered a waxwork model of
The fifth series of Netflix’s The Crown will soon be upon us. Scripted, as ever, by Peter Morgan, the show will cover the travails of the royal family throughout the 1990s, spanning everything from the then Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marital difficulties and eventual divorce to the rumours of Prince Philip conducting an affair with a