Mary Wakefield is commissioning editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
Mary Wakefield meets Dom Hugh Gilbert, the Benedictine Abbot of Pluscarden — said to be the Pope’s ‘dark horse’ candidate to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor What is holiness? How do you spot it? I’ve come to Worth Abbey in Sussex to meet a monk often described as ‘holy’ — Dom Hugh Gilbert, OSB, Abbot of
From our UK edition
So Dave has let cameras into his house, to show that ‘the anxieties of parenting are universal’. And what cosy fun the clip is too, and how lovely Sam looks first thing, (what about a fulltime SamCam?). But though the trials of parenting are universal, the cost of soft furnishings are not. So let’s all
From our UK edition
Who else reckons that Mr Darling’s plodding budget could have used a lively soundtrack? Well, here’s my recommendation: Goody Two Shoes by Adam and the Ants. The lyrics pretty much sum up the whole sorry affair! “Put on a little makeup makeup Make sure they get your good side good side If the words unspoken
From our UK edition
Mary Wakefield talks to Eileen Atkins about acting as an out-of-body experience. Eileen Atkins opens in The Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 23 January. The Eileen Atkins experience — the word ‘interview’ doesn’t even begin to describe it — starts for me at about 3.30 on a brilliant, sunny afternoon in December. There
From our UK edition
Come on Londoners – it’s judgement day! Now that the new designs for the Fourth Plinth are on display, I think it’s time for us all to have our shout about Thomas Schutte’s Model for a Hotel – that stack of neon plexiglass, to the north-west of Nelson’s column. Well – here’s my shout anyway:
From our UK edition
Last Tuesday at nightfall, as the servants of democracy fled SW1, a young Somali woman stood spotlit on a stage in Westminster. Behind her was the illuminated logo for the Centre for Social Cohesion: a white hand reaching down across England to help a brown one up; in front, an audience of some of Britain’s
From our UK edition
Act one, scene one The curtain opens on the offices of The Spectator magazine, London SW1, where a woman stands, stage left, staring at a telephone. A clock on the wall says 7.15. Something about the woman’s demeanour suggests it to be p.m. How long can she look at a phone? Just as the audience
From our UK edition
Bill Clinton looks down at me with that famous, lazy grin. His perfect American teeth show bright white and his blue eyes lock on to mine. I take a few steps forward (who wouldn’t?) but as I draw closer something odd happens to Bill: his face blurs, its outline distorts, wobbling as if underwater. A
From our UK edition
A light rain drifts down over Kintbury village, blurring the surface of the Kennet and Avon canal. It gleams on the railway tracks, pools into fat drops under the roof of the station shelter on the London-bound platform and drips on to Robert Harris’s new suede shoes. Look, I say again, please don’t wait. I’ll
From our UK edition
Have you Herd? If you haven’t already done so, buy a copy of Mark Earl’s Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour By Harnessing Our True Nature It sounds sinister, but there’s not much harnessing in it and lots of exciting ideas about what it is to be human. Mark’s thesis is that we’re basically group
From our UK edition
Mary Wakefield talks to Jonathan Kent about his plans to jump-start the West End Something is rotten in the West End. It’s not just the sour smell of lager, or the Saturday night binge drinkers. It’s more that as I walk up St Martin’s Lane, through what should be the beating heart of theatreland, there’s
From our UK edition
6.57 a.m. I wake up three minutes before the alarm is due to go off, aware that I have slept badly: dipping in and out of consciousness. All night I’ve been fretting, imagining the various ways in which I might kill myself on the mountain today. I am not a good skier. I often fall
From our UK edition
I’m tempted, just for a second, to feel sorry for Clarissa Dickson Wright. There she is, with her back to me, 15 feet away, at a table in Valvona & Crolla — a refined little deli/café full of focaccia and Parmigiano Reggiano tucked in beside the lager shops on Edinburgh’s Leith Walk. There she sits,
From our UK edition
Now that the Fed has introduced a temporary reduction in interest rates, and my selfish fear has subsided, I’ve become obsessed with the debt-ridden or bankrupt souls that we now know to call sub-primes, because loans they take out are risky or sub-prime. And the more I read about sub-primes, the sorrier I feel for
From our UK edition
Dr Salvatore LaSpada (what a lovely name) had a plaintive piece in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph about how little we Brits give to charity. America gives away 1.7 per cent of it’s GDP to good causes, he says, so what’s with our pitiful 0.7? Giving is great! says LaSpada encouragingly, “It’s the best fun you’ll ever
From our UK edition
The road was cordoned off by Horse Guards parade on Friday afternoon, because of some ‘function’ on the pavement beside the Treasury building: squat little marquee, squat little men drinking warm champagne and 30 odd police officers standing around in the street with truncheons. As I herded with the crowd along the pedestrian detour I
From our UK edition
Sitting opposite Ed Miliband MP in a large and airy office, the sort of office that befits the Minister for the Third Sector, I suddenly have the surreal impression that I’m at the doctor’s. It’s the medicinal green of the carpet but, more than that, it’s Ed’s demeanour. There he is on the sofa, all
From our UK edition
How do you react to the news that Kay Hartenstein Saatchi, ex-wife of Charles, the woman who helped to discover (or invent) the original Brit Art brat pack, is putting on a exhibition of London’s best young artists this week? Perhaps your eyes have already begun to widen with excitement? Perhaps you feel a sudden
From our UK edition
Well, so long, after not so long to Michael Meacher, a man who was never leader, nor was meant to be. ‘Pleased to’ Meacher was his nickname around here, because he was, invariably, pleased to meet you and pleased to talk at length to you too, which is why it was quite clear that he
From our UK edition
Sometimes you absolutely know, beyond the gentlest breath of a doubt, that you’re not going to like a person; something you’ve heard, or read about them, has tipped you over into a flinty conviction that they’re not your type. I took a preconception of this sort with me to meet the cult film-maker Julien Temple.