Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
One of the things that lockdown allows you to do is not just to read but to re-read. Obviously the smart thing to do is to say that you are ‘re-reading’ vast books you haven’t actually read (Gibbon, Macaulay etc). Easier, and often more enjoyable, is to re-read pieces you remember but haven’t read for
17 min listen
The Spectator is meant for sharing. But in the age of coronavirus, that might not be possible. This new podcast will feature a few of our columnists reading out their articles from the issue each week, so that you don’t miss out. It’s a new format, so tell us what you think at podcast@spectator.co.uk. Douglas
Perhaps we are at least past the beginning of this crisis. The phase where the hunt for multipacks of loo-rolls briefly became the national sport. Now we are into the second, perhaps even less glorious stage, in which we all have to sit in our solitude and hope that the storm blows over us. And
At times of great stress it is necessary to find your enjoyments where you can. And as I mentioned in the magazine last week there are few joys in the world comparable with that which comes from watching the left eating itself. Which brings me to a small but diverting set of events which are
As coronavirus sweeps across the country, I am sure people will be reassured to know that the NHS is doing everything it can to address the pandemic, at such times when a health service’s resources are likely to be overstretched. So it must come as exactly no comfort to see what one section of the
At least none of us will have to pretend that we read Woody Allen’s memoirs. This week the publishers Hachette took that little responsibility away from us. After a staged walkout by staff in New York and Boston it was announced that the book (titled Apropos of Nothing) would be pulped rather than published next
The online world should be credited when it gets something right. And on Twitter an account titled ‘On This Day the IRA’ gets something very right. Granted, it’s not your usual internet fare. It includes no videos of cute animals sneezing. It is simply an archive-rich account which records what the IRA did on that
Last weekend’s papers claimed that the government desires a ‘massively pruned back’ BBC. Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green and someone called Huw Merriman spoke out against this, which allowed the BBC to put the headline ‘BBC licence fee: Tory MPs warn No. 10 against fight’ atop its characteristically impartial coverage. I suppose there are
Last weekend’s papers claimed that the government desires a ‘massively pruned back’ BBC. Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green and someone called Huw Merriman spoke out against this, which allowed the BBC to put the headline ‘BBC licence fee: Tory MPs warn No. 10 against fight’ atop its characteristically impartial coverage. I suppose there are
39 min listen
This week, has Mike Bloomberg blown his presidential hopes with a disastrous TV debate (00:50)? Plus, has the BBC really gone downhill (12:05)? And last, Toby Young reveals all about his first stand up comedy gig (26:30).
Every now and then someone asks me if I have ever thought of becoming an MP. My response tends to be a laugh so deranged that the question answers itself. When I manage to verbalise the answer it usually goes something like this: ‘No, because I enjoy saying what I think is true.’ Occasionally my
Every generation, and individual, has to rediscover the arguments for free speech for themselves. Some people learn from major incidents. Some when the censors come for someone close to them, or an opinion that they hold. Others come to believe in free speech because they realise that while being offended on occasion might be terrible,
Most people won’t have heard of Selina Todd. The only reason I had was because some years ago the BBC invited me to appear alongside her on one of those slots that used to be for intellectual discussion. ‘Would you be interested in coming on Radio 3 at about 10.30 p.m. to discuss class?’ I was
Here is a good test case going on before our eyes. The broadcaster Alastair Stewart has left his job of decades after sending a quotation of Shakespeare to a member of the public. The quotation (because it refers to an ape and the recipient happens to be black) is being interpreted as a sign of
‘Cancel culture’ is a horrible term because outside of a dictatorship nobody can actually be ‘canceled’ or otherwise ‘disappeared’. All that can happen is that people can be found to have trodden across one of the orthodoxies of the age. A small number of bullies then come for them. And a larger number of otherwise
In what turned out to be the last year of his life, Roger Scruton often mulled on the nature and techniques of twenty-first century denunciation. For Roger, like others who had seen totalitarian societies up close, knew what intimidation and officially-imposed forms of thinking were actually like. Which is not to say, of course, that
Sir Roger Scruton has died. Diagnosed with cancer last summer, he passed away peacefully on Sunday surrounded by his family. There will be a lot of things written and said in the coming days. But perhaps I could say a few things here. The first is to reiterate something that the Scruton family have said
We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 3: Douglas Murray on the shameful hounding of a distinguished philosopher: Sometimes a scandal is not just a scandal, but a biopsy of a society. So it is with the assault on Sir Roger Scruton, who in recent weeks has been
Sir Tom Stoppard is Britain’s — perhaps the world’s — leading playwright. Born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, his family left as the German army moved in. The Strausslers were Jewish. In adulthood he learned that all four of his grandparents were killed by the Nazis. His father was killed by the Japanese
Sometime around the start of this decade, before anti-Semitism was as cool as it has become, I was standing on a stage in London with a couple of rabbis and a Muslim. And if that sounds like the start of a joke then what followed wasn’t. We were there at the request of a new
