The Spectator
Thursday
Addicted
‘We’re worried he may be addicted to online porn.’
Death Threat
‘We must remember to send the Johnsons a death threat.’
Earthlings
‘Do you ever wonder just what Earthlings look like?’
Oil 2
‘You’re right — oil on canvas.’
Smartphones
‘The problems started when we both lost our smartphones and had to talk to each other.’
Letters | 23 April 2015
Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much as the person who wrote its online headline, ‘Scotland knows the power of a common enemy. We English don’t’ (18 April). It is true that ‘the wish to be the underdog’ is a defining urge
Barometer | 23 April 2015
Any answers? Nigel Farage accused the audience in the BBC opposition leaders’ debate of being left-wing. Need insulting an audience destroy a political career? — Former US Vice President Dan Quayle did it on a number of occasions, telling an audience of American Samoans in 1989: ‘You all look like happy campers to me.’ Two
Portrait of the week | 23 April 2015
Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into the election campaign. The SNP manifesto promised to increase spending and to find a way to stop the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, said she wanted to make Labour
The other union
The election campaign is becoming increasingly dominated by a small party whose raison d’être is to preach independence from membership of a union it claims is hindering national ambition. But the party is not Ukip, which had been expected to play a big role in this election. It is the Scottish National Party, which seems
Books and arts – 23 April 2015
The Spectator at war: Soldiers of Italy
From ‘Soldiers of Italy’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: It is winter in Florence. The sun shines, but snow lies low on Monte Morello, and the tramontana blows cold as ice, out of a piercingly blue sky. The streets and squares are crowded. Bells are ringing, bands playing, troops marching. The soldiers are coming back from
Florence weeps
From ‘Soldiers of Italy’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: It is winter in Florence. The sun shines, but snow lies low on Monte Morello, and the tramontana blows cold as ice, out of a piercingly blue sky. The streets and squares are crowded. Bells are ringing, bands playing, troops marching. The soldiers are coming back from Tripoli. There
Wednesday
Watch live: Spectator wealth debate with Owen Jones, Jack Monroe, Toby Young and Fraser Nelson
The Spectator will host a debate at 7.00pm this evening on whether ‘Politicians should leave the wealthy alone, because they already contribute more than their fair share’. Fraser Nelson, Toby Young and William Cash will go head-to-head with Owen Jones, Jack Monroe and Molly Scott Cato, with Andrew Neil chairing the debate. The debate has now sold out, but
The Spectator at war: The menace of drink
From ‘The Menace of Drink’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: Some depressing influence is at work among the very poor which is not poverty, something which makes the full effort after the highest civilization attainable to them seem not worth while. That depressing influence is, as we believe, drink. “Oh, hold your tongue!” we hear
Tuesday
The Spectator at war: Crime and punishment | 21 April 2015
From ‘Criminal Warfare and Retaliation’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: Although a soldier is supposed to obey his officer unquestioningly, the English soldier has two masters, his officer and the law. An illegal command need not be obeyed by the English soldier. An English soldier who kills by order of his officer is liable to
Monday
The Spectator at war: Ypres times
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: THERE are two very important military events to record during the week. The first is the capture by the British of Hill 60, a part of a ridge which runs close to the south of Ypres. Ypres is on what we may call the dead
Sunday
The Spectator at war: Drink and the dead hand
From ‘The Objections to State Control’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: As our readers know, we hate State ownership of industries, because in our opinion it is inefficient, and tends to low product; but in this particular case we cannot be expected to regard this as a disadvantage. The “Government stroke” in the matter of
Saturday
The Spectator at war: At home in England
From ‘Some reflections of an alien enemy: the contradiction between being and feeling an Englishman, by a Czech’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: What I most regret having lost is my previous unawareness of there being any difference between me and Englishmen. In saying we, I used to mean we English people; somehow or other
Friday
The Spectator at war: Papal infallability
From ‘The Pope and the War’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: The result of the war may prove that motives which we had supposed to be secured by Christianity are after all to be of little account in directing human actions. That is the situation stated without exaggeration. And in the world in which this
