Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.
Swimmers, scanning the sea for signs of danger, look beyond what breaks the surface. It is by the slight but unexpected troubling of the waters that hidden peril is often best located. Where something jagged lurks beneath or where two currents collide, a sudden agitated choppiness in a small patch of sea may tell us
Limpopo Province, South Africa Ottoshoek means ‘Otto’s corner’ or perhaps more colloquially ‘Otto’s place’ in Afrikaans. But this cabin in the Soutpansberg mountains is not so much a den as a lookout. Perched on the very edge of a green, rocky ridge, it overlooks the bushveld plain at the range’s feet, stretching grey-brown to the
The view, I thought, appeared much as it would to a young barnacle goose. I was diving out of a blustery, dove-grey sky, my wing tips tipping cloud. Far below I could see the browns and greens, the heather and grass, of a big, low-lying Hebridean island. To the east lay the Scottish mainland. From
It was was pure coincidence that The Spectator should have landed itself with our own space correspondent — me — as chance witness to the launch of Europe’s first trip to the Moon last Sunday morning. I was visiting an old friend who now works in IT support at the European Space Agency’s headquarters in
A charge should be laid at the door of those who urged America onward into Iraq this year, and it should come not from pacifists, United Nations groupies or Uncle Sam-baiters, but from those on the Right who think that a great power does have special responsibilities, including – sometimes – a responsibility to intervene.
What, for her 77th birthday, do you give a woman who has everything? I do not mean that my mother is rich or lives in luxury, but that though we, her six children, have all our lives been the recipients of birthday gifts lovingly chosen by her – she never fails to think of something
In human governance, men matter as much as measures. If this is true for us in Europe, why should it be any less true for the occupying powers in Iraq? The governors whom America and Britain install there are not just ciphers or functionaries; their character, demeanour and local reputation will matter very much, and
Various explanations have been offered for the decision by the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, to leave for his summer holiday before the funeral this week of Dr David Kelly. Mr Hoon himself has let it be known via ‘friends’ that he would be in trouble with his wife Elaine if he delayed a holiday that
Let me tell you the story of the Docklands Eight, otherwise known as the Docklands ducklings. They came into my life briefly and by chance, ushered in by Kim. Kim helps me keep my London flat, by the Thames in Limehouse, clean and tidy. A great animal-lover, she comes in on Monday mornings bringing new
Has the power to curse lost its meaning for modern man? Might we, in losing it, lose something precious: the power to bless? I was made to think about this last week, in Bristol, recording for later broadcast a couple of programmes in a series I present for BBC Radio Four. Off the Page is
Why is it that not only I but millions (I suspect) of my fellow-countrymen too are left cold by the dispute raging within the Church of England about gay bishops? One has only to see the newspaper headline for the eye to slide away. It was not always thus. Such controversies used to fire many
What would you have done? Would you have left Saddam Hussein in power? The inquiry, familiar to all of us who opposed the war, is put in a finger-stabbing sort of way – as though that clinched it; as though the answer is so obvious that the peaceniks can only stammer. Just ask them what
Iain Duncan Smith and his party have thrown two big wobblies about BBC coverage in recent weeks. One episode occurred in the small hours of Friday 2 May when David Dimbleby compered BBC Television’s local- election-night programme. The other unfolded last Sunday lunchtime on Radio Four’s The World This Weekend as the presenter, James Cox,
Socrates was never wider of the mark than when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living. He brushes aside some of the best lives ever led – if, that is, by ‘best’ we mean productive and by ‘unexamined’ we mean unexamined by the individual himself. This reflection occurred to me as I
Imagine that opposite this page there were to appear an advertisement under the headline ‘Free Return Tickets to Cape Town’, worded something like this: ‘Hundreds of free flights to any destination served by South African Airways! Write to us with your preferred itinerary and a brief explanation of why you would like to visit the
Whenever I read of a great wave of public alarm,’ my grandfather used to say as he peered over the top of his Daily Telegraph, ‘I am gripped by a massive calm.’ I do not know what Grandad thought of the nuclear shadow said to be hanging over us through the Sixties and Seventies; indeed,
Last Sunday evening, weary from digging, I staggered in to wash and eat, and then, cup of tea in hand, slumped down in my kitchen chair by the Rayburn to listen to the radio. The clocks had gone forward and it was just after nine. I enjoy digging. Since early childhood I have been fascinated
The high-water mark for modish opposition to the invasion of Iraq may this week have passed. Those who, like me, remain unconvinced of the case for war should prepare for a spell of unfashionability. I write on Tuesday. I do not know whether by the time you read this the Iraqi defence effort will have
The Prime Minister is right. The whole credibility of the United Nations is at stake this week. If the Security Council buckles under the US blackmail to which it is now subject over Iraq, we can discount the organisation as an independent force for international order. Among Spectator readers there are still one or two
No popular impression is more precious to those who govern than the impression on the part of the governed that more is known than can be divulged. William Whitelaw understood this better than most. When I was a callow young Tory MP in the 1980s, and he was home secretary, I was briefly caught up