Lara Prendergast

Lara Prendergast

Lara Prendergast is executive editor of The Spectator. She hosts two Spectator podcasts, The Edition and Table Talk, and edits The Spectator’s food and drink coverage.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Would you have been let in to an ’80s club? 

People will go to extraordinary lengths to get into a nightclub. Nowadays you must wear something tight, and look slinky. But, as Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s at the V&A shows (until 16 February), a handful of Eighties doormen were into something a bit more deviant. The combination of a new London Fashion Week, a vibrant club scene and a coterie of ambitious designers emerging from the London art schools was potent. On Thursdays and Fridays, St Martin’s was deserted. Everybody was at home working on their costumes for the weekend. Over two floors, a mixture of clubbing outfits and catwalk designs are showcased. There is a mirror with the slogan ‘Would you let you in?’ stamped across it.

Monday

Lara Prendergast

Labels and gimmicks will not stop a stroke

Do you think that a McDonald’s Fruitizz drink contributes to your five-a-day? I only ask, because a recent newspaper investigation has shown that food companies are using the famous government-backed health campaign to sell us processed products that may have fairly tenuous links to fruit and vegetables. The five-a-day campaign started off with good intentions: to lower the risk of strokes, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. The premise is simple – eat five portions of fruit and veg, for health and vitality. But something has gone seriously amiss, if your five-a-day could theoretically comprise a Robinson’s Fruit Shoot, some tinned peach slices, a can of Heinz spaghetti hoops, a Yo Yo roll and a Kiddylicious Strawberry Fruit Wriggle.

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

The Turner Prize lives the myth of constant renewal

Let’s imagine for a minute that the Turner Prize is cancelled next year. Would anyone care? A few members of the artistic elite and a handful of artists perhaps, but beyond that? I don’t think they would. There are plenty of other valuable art prizes out there, after all. And no one has really taken it seriously for a while now. Each year the same, tired debates come out about how ‘art can be whatever it wants to be’, which is true, but also happens to be the least controversial thing you can say. So it’s off. Cancelled. No more queues of people waiting to see a light switch turn on and off. No more unmade beds. And no more sullying Turner’s name for the sake of a prize which once awarded first spot to a man dressed as a bear. Would it matter?

Friday

Lara Prendergast

Spectator archive: Political fanaticism was the real villain in JFK’s death

In the wake of President Kennedy's assassination, there was much speculation about whether it was politically motivated. As Robert Conquest points out, the real villain isn't political orientation, but political fanaticism. Here we reprint Conquest's notebook, from the week after Kennedy's death: November 29, 1963 (There is a) current tone of anti-Americanism, which implies they are a terrible lot because one of them killed the President. But quite a few millions didn't -- and indeed voted for him and supported his policies, or opposed them in a decent fashion. But an even more unpleasant and significant thing has been the way in which the killer's motives have been prejudged, over here as much as anywhere. to suit the political bias of the commentator. Before any actual.

Lara Prendergast

Spectator archive: There is no sensible way to measure JFK as a President

'How many years,' asks Murray Kempton 'before anyone would want to read a book about the day Mr. Kennedy was shot?'.  As it transpired, not many. Here we reprint his Spectator column, entitled 'The Roman Way', written in the aftermath of Kennedy's death: Washington November 29, 1963 Mile television, trying as all of us have and 1 failing as all of use must, ceased to talk late on a Saturday night and gave itself over to photographs of various corners and columns of the White House while a voice recited 'Oh captain, my captain, the fearful trip is done', which is Walt Whitman on Abraham Lincoln and the grand style. But no time is like the time one endures oneself; one's own time is personal not historical, one's house and not a temple, the ship has not weathered every storm. Mr.

Lara Prendergast

Spectator archive: JFK’s assassination was political nihilism in its purest form

The assassination of President Kennedy came just as the Christmas 1963 edition of the Spectator was going to press - we had to paste a new headline over a colourful, cover. Here we reprint our leader from this issue: The death of John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, inevitably produces banality in the leader- writers who have to comment upon it. The meaninglessness of the action is complemented by an inability to write meaning- fully about it. What we have seen in Dallas in the State of Texas is an expense of spirit in a waste of shame, political nihilism in its purest form with all the human suffering which nihilism entails.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

‘Miley Cyrus vs Lily Allen’ is not a worthy battle for feminism

If ever there was reason to believe that feminism has lost its way, then it is found in the current debate about bottoms. It all began with twerking – the sexualized dance that no one had heard of until popstar Miley Cyrus squeezed into some PVC underwear, and twerked to Robin Thicke’s song Blurred Lines. The term entered the Oxford Dictionary of English in August. Bottoms are now all over the place. Last night was the annual Victoria’s Secret show - and, much to the delight of news desks, there were bottoms aplenty. It has become increasingly difficult to open a paper without seeing news about belfies (bum-selfies), bum implants and of course, twerking.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

The Silk Road has been busted – but its legacy to the international drug trade will remain

Since 2011, the Silk Road has infuriated governments the world over by allowing digital pirates to operate above the law. It has been – in effect – an eBay for Afghani heroin, cocaine and all manner of illegal goods. Hosted in the virtual tunnels of the ‘Deep Web’, transactions are made in BitCoin and up until yesterday, it was doing roughly 60,000 a day. But now, it seems, the cops have swooped. Yesterday afternoon Ross William Ulbricht, known by the pseudonym ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ was arrested – on charge of being the owner. Drugs were the site’s bread and butter, making up 70 percent of sales. But you could buy all manner of items including art, erotica and jewellery; banned copies of 18th century literature occasionally circulated.