Will Venezuela crisis spill into conflict with US?
Thousands of people lined up this week to register with the regime’s militia
Nigel Jones
Nigel Jones is a historian and journalist
Tuesday
The rats that predicted our future
From our UK edition
Next month is the 30th anniversary of the death of the American ethologist John B. Calhoun. In the early 1960s, he created an series of experiments to discover the causes of social dysfunction. His most famous work involved a so-called ‘rat utopia’ in which rodents were provided comfortable living quarters with unlimited food, water and
Friday
Is Colombia reverting to chaos?
Narco-terrorists brought down a police helicopter with a drone
Tuesday
The remarkable life of Peter Kemp, warrior and Spectator writer
From our UK edition
Today is the 110th anniversary of the birth of a former Spectator correspondent who took part in and survived more wars than any other English writer in modern history. Yet he is practically forgotten today because he fought all his life for unfashionable conservative causes. Peter Kemp, the son of a judge in the Indian Raj,
Monday
Socialism ends in Bolivia after two decades
The swing to the right could mean that Bolivia is following Argentina, where President Javier Milei was elected
Tuesday
The Isle of Wight is an England that time forgot
From our UK edition
‘August for the people and their favourite islands,’ wrote W.H. Auden. My own favourite island in Britain is the Isle of Wight, even though my introduction to it was less than ideal. I was seven years old and had been sent to the island for the ritual initiation for British middle-class males of my generation:
Saturday
What if Starmer had been prime minister in the second world war?
From our UK edition
Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has posed a fascinating counter-factual question about our Prime Minister: what if Keir Starmer rather than Winston Churchill had been Prime Minister in World War Two? Huckabee’s characterisation of him as the arch appeaser may be a little harsh, but it does have the ring of truth The
Wednesday
I’ve been bitten by the ancestry bug
From our UK edition
Although a historian, until very recently I have been curiously incurious about researching my own slightly peculiar family. How was it, for example, that my grandfather, originally a penniless Welsh peasant, sired a dynasty that in three generations has spread to three continents and includes a squillionaire who founded a multinational club business with 75
Sunday
Horst Mahler, the far-left terrorist who became a neo-Nazi
From our UK edition
One of the strangest German lives in the post-second world war era closed on 27 July 2025 with the death of Horst Mahler at the age of 89. Mahler’s life epitomises the fatal German tendency for much of the 20th century to embrace extremist politics Mahler’s life epitomises the fatal German tendency for much of
Tuesday
Jannik Sinner is a son of lost Europe
From our UK edition
The clue is in his appearance. The sandy-haired, blue-eyed, 6ft 2in star Jannik Sinner is the world’s No. 1 tennis champion and has just clinched his – and Italy’s – first win in the world-famous Wimbledon tournament. Sinner, the new hero of tennis after his victory over the previous reigning Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, may
Sunday
Reform is right to reject Liz Truss
From our UK edition
Reform UK topping the opinion polls and winning local council elections has prompted several leading Tories to defect. But now Nigel Farage’s insurgent party is riding so high that it is getting choosy about which Conservatives it will accept into its swelling ranks. If too many Tories join Reform they will begin to look like
Tuesday
There’ll never be another Norman Tebbit
From our UK edition
The death of Norman Tebbit at the great age of 94 marks a real ending of an era. They simply don’t make politicians like Lord Tebbit any more: caustic, high principled, Tebbit was a fighter rather than a quitter. The modern day Conservative party would be a very different outfit if it had a man
Why we wanted to believe The Salt Path
From our UK edition
Like millions of others, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Salt Path, an account of how a penniless and homeless middle-aged couple found their souls by walking the entire length of the rugged 630-mile South West Coastal Path around the Cornish peninsula. I also enjoyed watching the recent film of the book starring Gillian Anderson and
Sunday
History does not favour Musk’s new America party
From our UK edition
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has announced that he intends to create a new third party in the US called the America party. After his own poll on X showed that two out of three favoured the venture, the outspoken billionaire has now put his money where his mouth is and taken the plunge
Tuesday
Venice is a city of love and menace
From our UK edition
Jeff Bezos has brought much tat into the world, along with the undoubted convenience of Amazon’s services. But in at least one respect, he is a man of good taste. In choosing Venice to plight his troth with his lovely bride Lauren Sanchez at the weekend, Bezos picked the best possible location: La Serenissima is
Monday
Why we still lust after gold
From our UK edition
On Tuesday, as the world teetered on the brink of war in the Middle East, the Financial Times’ front page focused on the possibility that holders of gold from France and Germany were considering moving their investments out of New York due to Donald Trump’s erratic policy shifts and general global turbulence. We are regularly
Saturday
Oxfam’s Gaza propaganda
From our UK edition
An astonishing email from Oxfam, one of Britain’s oldest and biggest humanitarian charities, dropped into my inbox this week. Dramatically titled (in blood scarlet) ‘Red Lines for Gaza’, it demanded that if I am as outraged by the ‘horrors that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza’ as Oxfam is, and I want to do
Monday
The tyranny of mobility scooters
From our UK edition
I live in a small cathedral city in southern England. The chances of having my mobile phone snatched from my hand by an opportunistic thief, or my Rolex watch wrenched from my wrist by a brutish thug are still mercifully small. But another menace to life and limb has recently emerged here: the mobility vehicle
Sunday
Nigel Farage is looking unstoppable
From our UK edition
Opinion polls are notoriously a snapshot rather than a prediction, but the latest Ipsos survey of more than 1,100 voters should put a huge spring in Nigel Farage’s step, and terrify both the Tories and Labour, who are placed nine points behind the surging populists. The poll gives the highest ever level of support for
Sunday
This is Netanyahu’s Churchill moment
From our UK edition
History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now finds himself in precisely the same strategic position as Winston Churchill in 1940: he needs to draw a reluctant USA into a war with a mortal enemy bent on his nation’s destruction. Although some may think it dubious to
