Ruaridh Nicoll is the former editor of the Observer Magazine and the author of two novels, White Male Heart and Wide Eyed.
A frisson of fear tends to run through non-Americans when they face immigration in the United States. For years, young Brits have been warned prior to their first trip: “When you meet the immigration officer, don’t make jokes!” To boys cultivated to be insouciant in Britain’s posher schools, this usually means approaching the booth nervously
My apartment in Havana is on a rooftop overlooking the sea, which sounds grand and penthousey, but it’s not – it’s the former caretaker’s hut. It also sits above my parents-in-law’s place, which offers challenges, but does mean that most days I wander down for lunch. When I first moved in, I didn’t speak Spanish
Here in Havana, when hurricanes approach, an eerie calm takes over
There’s a good chance you’ll have heard someone say that tactless phrase: ‘See it before it changes’
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Christopher Caldwell asks what a Trump victory could mean for Ukraine (1:07); Gus Carter argues that leaving the ECHR won’t fix Britain’s immigration system (8:29); Ruaridh Nicoll reads his letter from Havana (18:04); Tanya Gold provides her notes on toffee apples (23:51); and a selection of our books of the
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The first scent of trouble came when Cuba’s government ordered all its non-essential workers home. By packing them off (and there are plenty of them, given Cuba is one of the world’s last centrally planned communist states) the government hoped the island’s exhausted national power grid would get a breather. It didn’t work, the main
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Havana There is an astonishing patience in the Cuban people, born of endless waiting. When a store has, say, chicken, people queue, often for days. But on Monday, outside the Zanja police station in central Havana, people weren’t waiting for food. They were waiting — patiently — for news of family members who had been
