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.
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In the magazine this week I have a piece on learning poetry by heart. Spectator readers will remember that Michael Gove received some flak from teaching unions earlier this year when he suggested that British schoolchildren should be able to recite a poem by heart. In the piece I try to explain why this is
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Earlier this year the Education Secretary Michael Gove suggested that primary school children ought to learn a poem by heart. Even if the teaching unions had not objected I would have needed no further convincing. I was converted to Gove’s idea years ago, by Terry Waite. Having haphazardly discovered poetry on my own at state
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Julian Assange is one of my best enemies. For my part it was hatred at first sight. He was only slightly slower on the uptake. Our relationship was consummated last year when we debated in London, and he fluttered those strange dead eyes at me, and threatened to sue me, and then didn’t, and I
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The same problem keeps occurring for the megaphones of Iranian propaganda in the West: they keep being let down by their own side. Every time another op-ed appears in the Guardian or Nation arguing that Iran isn’t seeking a nuclear device (and even if was it would never use it, and even though it doesn’t
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I do not necessarily wish to imply I have the gift of prophecy. But this is either uncanny or part of some cosmic plan to aggravate me. Three years ago on an edition of Question Time, alongside the then Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, the panel was asked whether we regretted bidding for the Olympics (since
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Last night the BBC aired a brilliant horror-movie (viewable on iPlayer) called ‘Young, Bright and on the Right.’ It followed two young men, one at Oxford the other at Cambridge, trying to make their way in student Conservative party politics. One of the stories – of a young man from a one-parent family in Yorkshire
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A fascinating column in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday by Peter Hitchens asks ‘Am I an “animal”, a “cow” — or just another victim of BBC bias.’ The spur for asking this otherwise surprising question is a BBC radio programme presented by the former New Stateman writer, Mehdi Hasan. While presenting ‘What the Papers Say’ a
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Despite having carried out terrorist attacks for the last thirty years and killed hundreds of people around the world, the terrorist group Hezbollah is, unbelievably, still not on the European Union’s list of banned terrorist organisations. In today’s Wall Street Journal. Daniel Schwammenthal lays out the imperative case for putting them on that list. Officially
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It is becoming increasingly clear that Twitter might be the greatest threat to civilised life in Britain. Take just 24 hours of news: A 17 year-old has been arrested (and is currently being detained) in Weymouth for sending unpleasant tweets to the nation’s Olympic hero Tom Daley. Rio Ferdinand has been charged by the FA
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Some conservatives have been accused of ‘politicising’ the Olympics by daring to say anything negative about the opening ceremony. Having begun by attacking an obscure back-bench MP, these accusations are now being aimed at Conservatives in the cabinet. Yet it is not conservatives, but the organisers of the opening ceremony who politicised the event. Naturally,
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Until last night I thought Danny Boyle was the respected director of a film about smack-heads. But after seeing the Olympics opening ceremony I now realize ‘Danny Boyle’ is the nom de guerre of the satirical team of Rod Liddle and James Delingpole. In their capable hands what might have been merely an opportunity to
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My blog on last week’s bombing in Bulgaria and convictions in Manchester provoked a response from my colleague Martin Bright which I should like to respond to in turn. In his post Martin writes: ‘You won’t hear me say this very often, but I don’t think Douglas has gone far enough. For once, I think
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Two events this week have highlighted, from very different places, an identical problem. In Bulgaria on Wednesday a bomb was detonated on a tour bus carrying Israelis. Six people were killed and many more badly injured. On Friday a couple from Oldham, Mohammed Sadiq Khan and Shasta Khan, were sent to prison for attempting to
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As the world turns to London it may still imagine us a serious, taciturn people. If so, the world is in for a shock. For Britain has become a land all but denuded of grown-ups. We are in the grip of a full-scale, double-dip regression. We were not surprised that our Prime Minister should be
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I have a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about the case for prosecuting certain of the Bloody Sunday soldiers. I am aware that it is not a popular argument, and one that most British people tend to shy away from. It also seems to provoke a certain amount of confusion. On a radio programme
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The journalist Tom Gross notes a story that you may have missed. One hundred and twenty families in Gaza have lost their homes. ‘Ma’an and other Palestinian news agencies report that the Hamas government in Gaza has renewed its policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinian families in order to seize land for government use.
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So the 2011 census results for England and Wales are out. And sure enough it turns out that the last decade has seen the largest population increase in any decade since records began. Twice that of the previous decade. Woe betide anybody who does not welcome this with a punch in the air and a
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Jonathan has already mentioned yesterday’s Fiscal Sustainability Report from the Office of Budgetary Responsibility. He appears to welcome mass migration both now and as an inevitable part of our future. Perhaps I could put a dissenting view? Migration itself can be a good thing. But mass migration (in the numbers it has happened in recent
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My Spectator comrade James Delingpole has many talents. Among them is his skill as a podcast-presenter for an American conservative website called ‘Ricochet’. Yesterday he asked me to join him for his latest, deeply irregular, instalment of ‘Radio Free Delingpole’. It was without question the most anarchic 40 minutes I have ever spent on air
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Leafing through a pile of Economists I’ve just caught up on a Bagehot column from last month which inadvertently demonstrates exactly where UKIP’s opponents go wrong. The very final lines of the piece explain: ‘Mr Farage’s real dream is to reshape Britain, by pulling the Conservatives to the right and bouncing Mr Cameron into a
