The reality of raising an autistic child
My son, 42, was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome on his 13th birthday in 1996
Elisa Segrave
Elisa Segrave is an author whose books include The Girl from Station X: My Mother's Unknown Life.
Tuesday
Tuesday
The hedgehog and the fox poll highest as ‘the nation’s top animal’
From our UK edition
This is a truly wonderful book, erudite and fun. Karen R. Jones, a kind of alternative David Attenborough, explains her purpose: ‘Charismatic and amazing creatures are not only to be found in distant places. They are here. In our everyday spaces.’ Switching effortlessly and with relish between history, science and anecdote, the author selects ten
Tuesday
Is it wrong to try to ‘cure’ autism?
From our UK edition
Is autism the worst thing that can happen to a person? Is ABA – Applied Behaviour Analysis – the right treatment for an autistic child? Should an autistic person get away with being rude? Do autistic individuals not feel empathy? If, as exists for unborn Downs Syndrome babies, a precise test is found to diagnose
Thursday
Don’t bribe your dog with treats
From our UK edition
‘Do NOT look Lulu in the eye. Keep your voice low and soft and ignore her barking. Do NOT make arm or hand gestures. You can give her a treat, letting her come to you or drop it for her. She has been doing well with strangers outside but her property is difficult for her.’
Thursday
The Xi files: how China spies
From our UK edition
38 min listen
This week: The Xi files: China’s global spy network. A Tory parliamentary aide and an academic were arrested this week for allegedly passing ‘prejudicial information’ to China. In his cover piece Nigel Inkster, MI6’s former director of operations and intelligence, explains the nature of this global spy network: hacking, bribery, manhunts for targets and more.
Tuesday
Longing for oblivion: The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden, reviewed
From our UK edition
This novel, set towards the end of the first world war, is eerie and fanciful yet gruesomely down-to-earth. It features Laura Iven, formerly a nurse at the Front – awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1915 – and her brother Freddie, part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force sent to take Passchendaele Ridge in November 1917.
Thursday
Israel’s challenge
From our UK edition
42 min listen
On the podcast: Anshel Pfeffer writes The Spectator’s cover story this week. He voices concern that support from Israel’s allies might begin to waver if they don’t develop a viable plan after the war finishes. Paul Wood – former BBC foreign correspondent – and Dennis Ross – former Middle East coordinator under President Clinton and advisor to
How to date a widower
From our UK edition
When is it acceptable to consider dating a widower? How do you know if they are still grieving and not ready to move on? According to statistics, men die earlier than women, so I was surprised this year to meet several whose wives had died before them. Divorced since the early 1990s, I had no
Wednesday
How an animal psychic helped find a missing dog
From our UK edition
It was more in a spirit of desperation that I decided to contact an animal psychic after my friends’ terrier Lark disappeared. Lark vanished one evening from their house. She was chipped, and her collar had their number on it, but as the days went by no one called. Lark’s photo was put on Facebook and
Thursday
My pilgrimage to Lourdes
From our UK edition
‘Will someone steal my coat?’ ‘No, you’re on a holy pilgrimage,’ my son’s Irish carer-companion Rosemarie reassured him. We were going to Lourdes, where in 1858 a poor peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, had 18 visions of the Virgin Mary. At Stansted I’d lost a tooth. I had a bad knee and an ancient foot injury.
Tuesday
Caught in a web of lies: The Guest, by Emma Cline, reviewed
From our UK edition
This deeply unpleasant novel kept me reading all night. Alex, 22, preys on rich men as an upmarket prostitute, formerly in New York and now in resorts such as the Hamptons. She is a thief and addict, sneaking her boyfriend’s sleeping pills, his valuable watch, a former room-mate’s medication, random jewellery and any available alcohol,
Thursday
An angry poltergeist: Long Shadows, by Abigail Cutter, reviewed
From our UK edition
Long Shadows, a powerful novel set mainly in the American civil war, is very unlike Gone with the Wind. The narrator, Tom Smiley, is now an unhappy ghost trapped in his old home, which, apart from snakes, mice and silverfish, has been uninhabited since his widowed daughter Clara died. A young couple arrive: Harry, who
Thursday
Why aren’t mistresses a secret any more?
From our UK edition
I was shocked at a party recently when a woman I hardly know announced to me and another guest that she was the ‘mistress’ of a certain man in the room. I discussed it with my American friend in a local Italian afterwards. Holly took a robust view. ‘Since when does a mistress reveal herself
Thursday
School trip: My déjeuner sur l’herbe
From our UK edition
In 1966 we were 17 and about to do A-levels and leave our convent school for ever at the end of that summer term. Two girls were having a lesbian affair, another had been tempted to sleep with a boy, dramatically confessing this to our head nun, Mother Benedicta, in Mother B’s terrifying private room
Thursday
Cop out: Boris’s battle to save the climate summit
From our UK edition
32 min listen
In this week’s episode: Can Cop26 deliver on its grand promises? In our cover story this week, Fraser Nelson assesses the state of the upcoming Cop26 summit in Glasgow and questions their very effectiveness in dealing with climate change in a world of global players with very different priorities. He is joined on the podcast
Fight club: when book groups turn nasty
From our UK edition
‘Small friendly village book club is looking for three or four new members.’ I was infuriated to read this in our village newsletter, an alternative to the parish magazine. I had just been ‘cancelled’ by this ‘friendly’ club from featuring at one of their evenings. A text, sent by a hitherto pleasant woman who’d liked
Thursday
On the run from the Nazis: a Polish family’s protracted ordeal
From our UK edition
Writers of memoirs are often praised for their honesty — but how do we know? I found I did believe Frances Stonor Saunders for readily admitting her ambivalence towards her father, who died in 1997 of Alzheimer’s. She is ‘secretly furious’ with him for ‘not telling his story’. But when his suitcase — almost certainly
Thursday
A quick fix: how Boris and Carrie can bring Dilyn the dog to heel
From our UK edition
A lot of nonsense is being written about Dilyn, the adorable Jack Russell owned by Boris and Carrie, a lookalike for my dog, Perry, now nearly 16. Is Dilyn the currently subdued Boris’s alter ego, one journalist wondered. We read that Dilyn allegedly humped Dominic Cummings’s leg, and at Chequers ‘mounted’ a stool made from
Sunday
Alison Lurie, 1926-2020
In memory of a friend
Thursday
A beastly cold country: Britain in 1962
From our UK edition
Like this author, I was happily snowbound at a beloved grandparent’s house during the big freeze that began on Boxing Day 1962 and ended in early March the following year. I was in Sussex, she at Sissinghurst in Kent. Juliet Nicolson, then eight, describes the morning of 27 December: ‘The snow was still there, turning
