Angus Colwell

Angus Colwell

Angus Colwell is The Spectator’s daily newsletters editor, and lead author of Morning Press. He also reviews restaurants for the magazine.

Friday

Angus Colwell

‘It’s a cesspool!’ — What’s going wrong in Britain’s universities?

52 min listen

William Moore is joined by The Spectator’s associate editor Toby Young, commissioning editor Lara Brown and newsletter editor and restaurant critic Angus Colwell. This week: What has gone wrong with British universities? Lara unpacks the wider academic crisis in the wake of the Jason Arday scandal, from ‘surviving the apocalypse’ courses at Warwick to maths departments promising to ‘decolonise’ the subject. Has the sector lost its nerve? Also: Balding. Toby explains why he’s trying to talk his three sons out of hair transplants, while Angus and Lara weigh in on whether men vastly overestimate the importance of their hair on the dating market. Plus: is Indian the best cuisine?

‘It’s a cesspool!’ – Jason Arday & the death of Britain’s universities

Thursday

Angus Colwell

‘If you’re a lamb chop ultra, then start your car’: Koyal reviewed

One of the things I find most confusing is the practice of going for a curry when you’re hammered. Having tried this with friends a couple of times, I have concluded that anyone who likes the pints-then-curry act is a liar or feels so awful regularly that the feeling afterwards is nothing abnormal. There is no type of food I dislike more than bad Indian: the places where a vindaloo means three scoops of curry powder and a rogan josh means two; where onion is undetectable in the sunflower oil bhaji.

Friday

Angus Colwell

What ‘London-style’ pizzerias could learn from America

From our US edition

“London-style pizza.” People think there is such a thing. Somewhere over the past three years, the pizza hype in Britain’s capital city has gotten out of control. Our economy is struggling and chefs have turned to the food that literally nobody dislikes. Loads of new places have opened: we’ve had Vincenzo’s, Carmy’s, Breadstall, Gracy’s, Lenny’s, Dough Hands, etc. Can’t you tell they’re all incredibly different? All of them really (although they would quibble) have been putting out the exact same style of pizza. The problem is: what do you call it? It’s hard to describe. Critics say it’s “burnt.” There’s some truth to that.

london-style pizzerias

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

‘Thank goodness it’s not going for a star’: Rosina reviewed

The worst areas to eat in London are the best places to live. Hampstead, Chelsea, Chiswick, St John’s Wood: all would be lucky to have even one restaurant that would be an 8/10 in Hackney. This is disappointing because Hackney is annoying, but, hey, hipsters make good restaurants. I wonder why these areas are so lacking. Is it because St John’s Wood Man has an underpaid cook on speed dial? Is it because Belgravian Influencer orders a shawarma every night? Is it because Hampstead Family don’t eat where they sh– hmm, yes... A little bruschetta of chopped rabbit livers comes next, visible through a translucent sheet of lardo Whatever the explanation, the exception to this rule is Wandsworth Common.

Monday

Angus Colwell

Andy Burnham is not a literary PM

At what point, during Team Burnham’s preparations for government, did the overture to ‘Bus Aunty’ go out? Was she contacted before or after the editor of the Observer, one wonders? Was she approached before they had chosen a policing minister? Was she more important to win over than Al Carns? If you don’t know who ‘Bus Aunty’ is, that’s a shame, because Andy Burnham doesn’t care. He isn’t trying to talk to you. You, evidently, are a reader. You read pieces in The Spectator. Perhaps you listen to Times Radio, or even peruse our morning newsletter. Well, Andy Burnham’s done with all that.

Thursday

Angus Colwell

‘I hope Keir Starmer comes for the pints, not the food’: The Pineapple reviewed

It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’ve just walked into The Pineapple in north London, thus becoming the 4,825th journalist to do so since Keir Starmer became Labour leader. He once described this pub as his ‘church’. What that means is unclear. Does he take his sins here for absolution? Does he feel a sense of obligation to it? Does he come here on Sunday mornings? As the prime-ministerial handover takes place, it’s worth considering the old guy and the new guy’s approach to food and drink (this column thinks so, anyway). Starmer didn’t have a favourite novel and he didn’t have a favourite poem. But what he did like was food. He said he enjoyed going to Rossella, an Italian restaurant in Kentish Town. The tandoori salmon he made on Sunday Brunch actually looked nice.

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

The perfect sycophancy of an AI running coach

If there’s one thing more boring than people telling you about their dreams, it’s people telling you about their exercise. And if there’s one thing more boring than people telling you about their exercise, it’s people telling you about how they use AI. With that in mind, here’s how I’ve been using ChatGPT as my running coach. Stick with me.  Most runners now use an app called Runna, which creates personalised runs for you, according to your target race date, time you have to train, and what not. One friend who has recently started running – ‘I could barely drag my lardy arse around 5k at 6:00/km’ – managed to run a 55-minute 10K after just two months using it.

Friday

Angus Colwell

Max Jeffery, Gavin Mortimer, James Delingpole, Aidan Hartley & Angus Colwell

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Max Jeffery explains the truth about how the British Empire is taught in schools; Gavin Mortimer asks why Giorgia Meloni is courting Emmanuel Macron; James Delingpole reviews the World Cup; after 25 years, Aidan Hartley bows out as the Spectator’s Wild life columnist; and finally, the Spectator’s new restaurant critic Angus Colwell ponders how much discount you should get, if your father almost chokes to death on a lamb kleftiko. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Max Jeffery, Gavin Mortimer, James Delingpole, Aidan Hartley & Angus Colwell

Thursday

Angus Colwell

‘A contradiction in terms’: Zylia reviewed

Can there be, in Britain, such a thing as a destination Greek taverna? There are some cases where proximity is the most important thing: gyms, cafés, defibrillators. A Greek taverna falls into this category. All you need is harmless food and ambient fake vines for a catch-up with your relatives. But I’m in need of a new one. Lemonia in north London was a good option until halfway through my final meal there. A bit of lamb kleftiko decided it wanted to remain in the entrance to my father’s trachea. Choking, mouth frothing, screaming for help, oh thank God there’s a nurse over there, Heimlich, hospital, then, seven hours later, home.

Monday

Angus Colwell

San Sebastian is a culinary miracle

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 its neighbour on the Basque coast. Biarritz and Bayonne have nothing on this Spanish city that’s pretty much universally called the ‘culinary capital of the world’. Of course, it isn’t quite: that’s still Paris or maybe Tokyo. But San Sebastian might be the best place in the world to eat. There’s a difference. You can’t go to Paris just to eat: even by day two, un autre confit duck leg begins to make you feel sick.

Friday

Angus Colwell

Does British politics have a problem with the ‘omnicause’?

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 Labour, with disgruntled further-left progressive voices opting to vote Green. This, though, is a brand of eco-populism that comes at the expense of the Green Party's roots, or so argues Angus Colwell in the Spectator's cover article this week. Have the Greens ceded the issue of the environment?

Does British politics have a problem with the 'omnicause'?

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

How the Green party abandoned its environmental roots

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 1968 book The Population Bomb, where he wrote that ‘in the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death’. There were simply too many of us. Worldwide famine was imminent. Lesley and Tony were terrified. Along with a local businessman, Michael Benfield, and his future wife, Freda Sanders, they talked about it over pints at the Bridge Inn, becoming known as a ‘Gang of Four’. Over several months, they roped in 39 others, and set up the People party in 1973.

Friday

Angus Colwell

Ruaridh Nicoll, Angus Colwell, Mary Wakefield, Philip Hensher & Nicholas Farrell

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 in Italy. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

The perils of London: a beginner’s guide

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 invented by tech accounts on X who got excited by the long queues at AI events run by Vercel earlier this month. There has also been speculation that a disgruntled-with-Trump Anthropic could move to London. As much as I love London, like any true sceptical Londoner, I suspect bollocks. Look at the map by our resident artist J.G. Fox. Anyone considering the move should in fact be sniffer dog-aware of a multiplicity of perils.

Friday

Angus Colwell

Angus Colwell, Paul Wood, Andrew Rule & Jonathan Meades

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 of his death. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

Strewth! Australian culture is taking over Britain

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 these parts in ‘Wuthering Heights’ feels unfair. But her decision is canny. Elordi and Robbie are both gorgeous, of course, but they also come bearing a new type of cultural clout. Their perfect hair and facial symmetry are nothing compared with the quirkiness of their being Australian, the aesthetic that’s seducing young Brits most of all. The first clue was about five years ago, when many British men started looking ridiculous.

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

Our verdict on the new In Our Time presenter

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 as though you could hear two million people shouting ‘Get on with it!!’ at the radio as he stressed and elongated virtually every syllable. John Stuart Mill and his wife had been labouring over ‘On Liberty together for soooome yeeaarrss’. Then we were away. And he’s all right, thank God. With In Our Time, there is no upper bound on how haughty and arrogant a presenter should be I emphasise ‘all right’, though, because there were definitely problems.

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

The rise and fall of the football presenter

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. Look at Gary Lineker. The BBC paid him £1.3 million to ask Danny Murphy things like ‘Bournemouth look to have run out of steam a little bit?’ for 75 minutes a week. Such is our infatuation with sport that we end up really caring about who asks this kind of question. That person gets to be the highest-paid broadcaster in the country.

Friday

Angus Colwell

From The Queen to Bonnie Blue: The Spectator’s Christmas Edition 2025 

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 Thompson and writer of the Spectator’s new morning newsletter, Morning Press, Angus Colwell.

Saturday

Angus Colwell

David Deutsch: The Enlightenment, ‘irrational memes’ and how Wikipedia turned woke

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 it was over,’ writes another. ‘This book changed my way of seeing the world, politics, science and, most importantly, of seeing what I will understand as containing some truth.’ When I talk to Deutsch – one of the most sensationally interesting theoretical physicists of our age – on Zoom, I see two beady eyes peering at me over some non-spectacular spectacles under a mess of thin white hair, borne by a thin white man in a thin white shirt.