Charles Moore is The Spectator’s chairman.
He is a former editor of the magazine, as well as the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020.
Would you like to be called Charles or Mr Moore?’ my bank asked me when I rang with a query. In the past I have always responded ‘Charles’, because it sounds pompous to insist on one’s surname. But the truth is that I would much rather be called ‘Mr Moore’, or ‘sir’, or ‘mate’, than
World leaders are preoccupied nowadays with what is known as their ‘legacy’. In practice, this means being linked with moral-sounding projects, rather than embedding clear achievements. Barack Obama is even more obsessed with legacy than his predecessors. What might be his final way of showing this? Some suggest he will order the United States to
My invitation to the Pink News dinner (where David Cameron won an award) on Wednesday night promised ‘an inspirational evening’ which would be a ‘celebration of the contritions of politicians, businesses, and community groups’ after ‘another historic year for LGBT equality’. I assumed, at first, that ‘contritions’ was a misprint for ‘contributions’, but maybe not.
The French are trying to seduce the British to come and work in Paris. A video hymns the delights of La Defense, the Gallic Canary Wharf. It is a healthy Brexit effect that the French now feel that they can no longer fight the City of London solely by trying to regulate it, and must
Vote Leave was the most successful electoral campaign in British history. Against the opposition of all three political parties, it won, achieving the largest vote for anything in this country, ever. But voting to leave is only the essential start, not the fulfilment, and now there is no Vote Leave. After victory, the campaign’s leaders
Given all the outrageous things that Donald Trump has done and said already, why has he got into so much worse trouble for dirty remarks about women taped more than ten years ago? He gets away with dog whistle politics but not, seemingly, with wolf whistle ones. Some might say this is because of political
Given all the outrageous things that Donald Trump has done and said already, why has he got into so much worse trouble for dirty remarks about women taped more than ten years ago? He gets away with dog whistle politics but not, seemingly, with wolf whistle ones. Some might say this is because of political
The sad news that King Bhumibol of Thailand is no longer of this world is causing considerable perplexity, because even when it became clear the King was ill, it was not possible for Thais to talk about his death. It seems that this is partly because it is a form of treason in Thailand to
People attack the whole business of having an EU referendum, but one of its pluses was that it invited millions of people who had never before been asked to form an opinion on the European question to do so. They responded thoughtfully — perhaps more thoughtfully than people do in general elections when a sizeable
Mrs May’s plain style may well come to irritate people in a few months, but just now it is extremely popular. The lack of glamour, soundbites, smart clothes, and ministerial overclaiming is a blessed relief. I can’t pretend that I find Mrs May an endearing figure, but when she said in her speech that Britain
Birmingham Checking in to my hotel room on the 18th floor, for the Conservative party conference here, I opened the door and bumped into a workman on a stepladder. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘They shouldn’t have let you in. All the water came through from the room upstairs.’ He was painting over the damage. Then he
Matt Ridley, well known to Spectator readers, is giving the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Annual Lecture on 17 October, at the premises of the Royal Society. The venue has annoyed New Scientist magazine. How dare the great home of science give house room to ‘those who deny climate science’, asks the paper’s ‘biology features editor’,
The Spectator Book of Wit, Humour and Mischief (Little, Brown) is just out, launched at a party at the paper’s offices where — wittily, humorously and mischievously — no copies were available. I have now procured one and can report that I laughed a lot when reading it. In his introduction, the book’s editor, Marcus
Mathias Döpfner, the extremely tall, extremely intelligent head of Axel Springer, is unusual in the generally conformist German business elite because he is not an unqualified believer in the German economic model. I have known him slightly for about 20 years and have always been interested by his questing, speculative mind. We have had conversations
Mathias Döpfner, the extremely tall, extremely intelligent head of Axel Springer, is unusual in the generally conformist German business elite because he is not an unqualified believer in the German economic model. I have known him slightly for about 20 years and have always been interested by his questing, speculative mind. We have had conversations
Hillary Clinton hazarded that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are a ‘basket of deplorables’. The Kaiser called the BEF a ‘contemptible little army’, Aneurin Bevan called the Tories ‘lower than vermin’ — and in both cases, those so named took up the insult as a badge of pride: the Old Contemptibles, the Vermin Club. I
A Methodist church in Hinde Street, London, is exhibiting ‘You cannot pass today: Life through a dividing wall’, a reconstruction of a border control point between Israel and the occupied territories. The purpose, needless to say, is not to show how to deal with a terrorist threat, but to attack Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. A
When I read that Martin Roth, the director of the V&A, was resigning from his job because of Brexit, I sensed it was not quite true. I did not doubt the sincerity of Dr Roth’s views: he has his German generation’s horror of anything which could be presented as ‘nationalism’. It was rather that it
When I read that Martin Roth, the director of the V&A, was resigning from his job because of Brexit, I sensed it was not quite true. I did not doubt the sincerity of Dr Roth’s views: he has his German generation’s horror of anything which could be presented as ‘nationalism’. It was rather that it
The Twelfth of August was heralded for me by an email from the RSPB. ‘RSPB warns driven grouse does not have a future without change’. Jeff Knott, the head of the society’s nature policy, goes on to say that ‘The illegal killing of birds of prey like the hen harrier must end, and sadly this
