Camilla Swift is the supplements editor of The Spectator.
Yesterday morning, driving along the main road back to Tarbert in the Outer Hebrides, we came across a large group of people parked up by the roadside, accompanied by their cameras and waterproofs. Perhaps they’ve spotted the Sea Eagle, we thought, and went to find out. But no, it was the White-throated Needletail. This bird,
In this week’s lead feature in the Arts section, Tom Rosenthal explains just why he thinks the Lowry retrospective at Tate Britain is so long overdue. Lowry is one of our most popular artists – and it is exactly this that has been his downfall. ‘Can one disapprove of someone merely because he popular? Clearly
Sir Alfred Munnings lived his life in true bohemian style, ‘carousing with gypsies and horse-trainers, living rough and constantly on the road’. Summer in February is based on his early life living in Cornwall, with Munnings played by Dominic Cooper: ‘Irrepressible as an electric eel, and twice as dangerous’. But does the film live up
Coronation Day across the Globe was first broadcast in 1953, by the Home Service, and until last Sunday, it wasn’t broadcast again. In order to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the cororation, the BBC decided to delve into their archives and re-broadcast it. It might have been the first televised coronation, but the BBC’s radio
In April’s local elections, only one in three of those eligible to vote actually did so. What proportion of those voters were women? It’s difficult to get an exact percentage, but in most UK elections, women account for just under half of the turnout. In general elections, female turnout is just over 60 percent. Bearing
Christopher Purves began his musical career playing doo-wop and rock and roll with the band Harvey and the Wallbangers . These days however, the stages of Glyndebourne and La Scala are his new stomping ground. In this week’s magazine, Julian Flanagan chats to the baritone about his transition from pop to opera, the pivotal events of
This Saturday’s Eurovision contest was never going to be a triumph for the UK, that much was for certain. What was slightly surprising, however, was the Danish victory with their song Only Teardrops The song might have been one of the favourites to win, but the triumph of what Fraser Nelson described as a collaboration
It feels like the only film anyone’s been talking about recently is The Great Gatsby. Given that even the release of the films’ multiple trailers created international news stories, it seemed inevitable that not everyone was going to love it. So, what does Deborah Ross say to the film’s critics? ‘You can tell them to
Never accept meat from strangers. That seems to be the lesson of the horsemeat scandal – at least for the ex-commercial director of Freeza Meats. In September 2012, an Environment Health Officer arrived to inspect their meat stores. Discovering a large block of meat in one of their freezers, the officer decided to quarantine it. When
Mark Millar appears to be the typical Spectator reader until you discover – as Peter Hoskin did when he interviewed him for this week’s magazine – that he ‘spends most of his time on bizarre world in distant corners of the multiverse… surrounded by assassins dipped in blood’. Why? Because he’s a comic-book writer –
I’m So Excited is the latest offering from Pedro Almodóvar who, Deborah Ross says, she would usually love. But is I’m So Excited quite so, well, exciting? The trailer, which promises singing gay flight attendants, The Pointer Sisters, and plenty of booze, is below. And Deborah’s verdict? You can read it for yourself here. Do
Brian May dressed in a badger suit, singing a specially-composed ‘badger song’? That’s what we were promised on Wednesday morning, but alas, the stunt never pulled through. We did, however, see a flashmob of fifty ‘dancing badgers’ outside Defra HQ, protesting about this summer’s planned badger cull. So what, exactly, were they protesting about? Bovine
This weekend, Iain Duncan Smith sparked a furore when a Sunday Telegraph interview quoted him as saying he would ‘encourage everybody who reads the Telegraph and doesn’t need [their winter fuel allowance], to hand it back’. This morning, however, he appears to have offered a retraction, telling the Today programme that ‘I’m neither encouraging nor
Perched at number 3 in The Times’ ‘30 Richest under 30’ list this week were Fawn and India Rose James, aged just 27 and 21 respectively and with an estimated fortune of £329 million. Who are they, and how did they get on the list? Their grandfather, Paul Raymond, was dubbed the ‘King of Soho’
In a week where the news has been filled with stories about a certain ‘strong woman’, Kate Chisholm has found another strong woman to write about. In this week’s radio column, she argues that the radio presenter Sue MacGregor managed to be the only female presenter on the Today programme without the need to deepen
This year’s Grand National meeting attracted an exceptional amount of press attention, much of it due to a number of changes which were introduced in a bid to make the race safer. As a reaction to calls from animal welfare charities such as the RSPCA and Animal Aid – the latter of whom run a
When Lara Pulver hit our screens brandishing a whip and wearing little more than a pair of high heels in the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes-influenced drama Sherlock, she became something of a viral hit, with that episode becoming one of the most-watched items on the BBC website. Now she’s back, this time in Da Vinci’s Demons,
When shadow Defra minister, Mary Creagh, first raised the possibility four months ago that the veterinary drug phenylbutazone – aka bute – might be found in horsemeat in supermarket products labelled as ‘beef’, both the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the agriculture minister David Heath were quick to rubbish her statement. Heath placed his trust
If you succumbed to Downton fever, then the BBC’s latest period-drama, The Village, might have attracted your attention. But if it was Downton Revisited that you were after, you might have been sorely disappointed, says James Delingpole in his Television column. Set in 1914 Derbyshire, The Village is everything that Downton is not: ‘taut, spare,
Did you catch Dr Who over the weekend? Clarissa Tan, who wrote our latest TV column, was surprised that the Dr had to contend with ‘something in the wi-fi’. How’s wi-fi for a thoroughly modern enemy? Here’s the prequel to this week’s episode, The Bells of Saint John: Clarissa also watched Rachel Johnson learning to
