Angus Colwell is The Spectator’s daily newsletters editor, and lead author of Morning Press. Sign up here.
From our UK edition
Across the border from San Sebastian, just down the beach, is France. I never got over that. San Sebastian is so effervescent, so tropical, so fast, that its proximity to the surlier Gauls seems strange. French cooking is the best in the world and there is no point arguing. But somehow it’s been eclipsed by
From our UK edition
51 min listen
It is undoubtable that – under the leadership of Zack Polanski – the Green Party have soared to new heights. Having won their first parliamentary by-election in February, polls consistently show them as a force to be reckoned with on the left of British politics. Much of their success has come at the detriment of
In the summer of 1972, Lesley Whittaker walked into a pub in rural Warwickshire. She had something for her husband Tony. It was a copy of Playboy magazine. In that issue, there was an interview with the biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, who died this month aged 93. In it, he repeated the thesis of his
From our UK edition
34 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Ruaridh Nicoll reads his letter from Havana; Angus Colwell takes us through an A-Z of London horrors; Mary Wakefield points out the glaring flaw in Keir Starmer’s ‘cohesion plan; Philip Hensher reviews an increasingly reflective Alan Bennett; and finally, Nicholas Farrell reflects on Jeffrey Epstein, Silvio Berlusconi – and nudists
From our UK edition
An interesting new perspective on London is doing the rounds. Our capital city is being advertised as a paradise. London, it seems, is suddenly a place where every building is a Wren, where every sunset is a Turner, where every neighbourhood is Notting Hill. The sentiment has even got a name – ‘Londonmaxxing’. It’s been
From our UK edition
26 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Angus Colwell ponders why young Brits seem to aspire to be more Australian; Paul Wood analyses the daring plan to reclaim the Chagos islands; Andrew Rule explains why to read is to love; and finally, Jonathan Meades declares that John Vanbrugh defies taxonomy as events kick off to mark the 300th anniversary
From our UK edition
Catherine and Heathcliff. These are surely roles that every attractive British actor should aspire to. Why mope between auditions for years if you don’t think it could be your windswept hair decorating bus posters one day? So the British director Emerald Fennell’s casting of two Australians – Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie – to play
From our UK edition
Melvyn Bragg’s first ever intro to In Our Time in 1998 clocked in at 21 seconds. Misha Glenny, meanwhile, took one minute and four seconds to get through his. The initial public reaction to Glenny taking over from Bragg was positive. The prevailing sentiment was ‘thank Christ it isn’t Stephen Fry’. But now you felt
From our UK edition
What does it mean to be a ‘good’ sports presenter? Really, it should mean nothing. They aren’t important. They should have a sense of perspective, a sense of remembering that they are peripheral to the most popular consumer product and human activity that we have come up with. Of course, it doesn’t work like that.
From our UK edition
40 min listen
The Spectator’s bumper Christmas issue is a feast for all, with offerings from Nigel Farage, Matthew McConaughey and Andrew Strauss to Dominic Sandbrook, David Deutsch and Bonnie Blue – and even from Her Majesty The Queen. To take us through the Christmas Edition, host Lara Prendergast is joined by deputy political editor James Heale, associate editor Damian
The Amazon reviews for David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity don’t alert you to the fact that this is a book on theoretical physics. They sound more like a weepy divorcé’s YouTube comments below a Mark Knopfler guitar solo. ‘I didn’t so much read it,’ says one. ‘It read me.’ ‘I was honestly sad when
From our UK edition
There are few culinary experiences like the first bite of a Domino’s pizza. The finest N25 caviar or a perfectly seared lobe of foie gras surely can’t compare to the ecstasy that comes from that mouth-cutting cornmeal that they sprinkle all over the base, or that sweet, cloying ‘cheese’, or those tart, dancing cups of
From our UK edition
Of all the moronic decisions made by cultural organisations over the past 50 years, probably the most insulting and retrograde is the decision, in 2021, by Unesco to strip Liverpool of its world heritage status. Unesco said the development of the docks amounted to an ‘irreversible loss’. The regeneration of the waterfront, including the building
From our UK edition
Football has a problem: there isn’t enough football. The world’s most popular thing is too popular. Fans seem to find it ludicrous that our entertainment is constrained by flesh and blood, that we can’t – like with everything else – just watch live football when we feel like it. It started to get like this
From our UK edition
38 min listen
‘The Ultras’ are the subject of The Spectator’s cover story this week – this is the new Islamo-socialist alliance that has appeared on the left of British politics. Several independent MPs, elected amidst outrage over the war in Gaza, have gone on to back the new party created by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and
‘I’m expecting to see a savage Carbone review anytime soon’
From our UK edition
25 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale says that, for Labour, party conference was a ‘holiday from reality’; William Atkinson argues that the ‘cult of Thatcher’ needs to die; David Shipley examines the luxury of French prisons; Angus Colwell provides his notes on swan eating; and, Aidan Hartley takes listeners on a paleoanthropological tour
From our UK edition
How to react to Nigel Farage’s suggestion that immigrants are killing and eating swans? You can react like LBC’s Iain Dale, who said that ‘Reform UK might have peaked in the polls’. You can react like Times Radio’s Adam Boulton, who said that Farage was ‘in danger’ of repelling voters by ‘copying memes’ from Donald
From our UK edition
31 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Matthew Parris reflects on the gay rights movement in the UK; faced with Britain’s demographic declines, Stephen J. Shaw argues that Britain needs to recover a sense of ‘futurehood’; Henry Jeffreys makes the case for disposing of wine lists; Tessa Dunlop reviews Valentine Low’s Power and the Palace: The
From our UK edition
37 min listen
First: who has the Home Secretary got in her sights? Political editor Tim Shipman profiles Shabana Mahmood in the Spectator’s cover article this week. Given Keir Starmer’s dismal approval ratings, politicos are consumed by gossip about who could be his heir-apparent – even more so, following Angela Rayner’s defenestration a few weeks ago. Mahmood may
