Skip to content

Tag Archives: The Spectator

Fun and Games

I’m not saying the Falklands is a tiny place, but… in the course of one day, last month, in the newly-anointed city of Stanley, I had my hair cut by one international athlete and then my passport processed by another. Soon-to-be international athletes, anyway. They’re both part of the Islands’ team for this year’s Commonwealth […]

A Hitch in time

On the late, great Christopher Hitchens, and the role the Falklands may have played in his political development. — For The Critic

Pyramid schemes

The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner Thames & Hudson £30 319pp (1.216kg) . Because I once made the mistake of dabbling a bit in Egyptology, no less than every other week – in the year 2022 – some friend (‘…’) will schwack me […]

Kreises of conscience

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days The True Story of the Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner Canongate, £16.99, pp576 . In 1928, modest young blue-collar English lecturer Mildred Fish arrives in Berlin to begin her PhD in American Literature. In the febrile, polyglot atmosphere at the […]

Trouble at’ Mill

Notes on the life (and afterlife) of JS Mill, philosopher . The classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill was born and died this month – in, respectively, 1806 and 1873 – and in between he wrote (or co-wrote, with his wife, and then his step-daughter) On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Principles of Political Economy, Considerations of Representative Government, […]

Beneath the mountains

Review of Alexandria: the Quest for the Lost City, by Edmund Richardson. — For The Spectator

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. A banker’s license in the United Kingdom costs £30 per annum. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Friday, July 17 1908 . Sri Lanka has only 500 cases of the Coronavirus. Germany has no elite universities. There are a lot of porno videos featuring Scarlett Johansson’s face. Mexico City is a good place to be an […]

The Pelican

Or; Some Further Notes Towards the Bestiary To the researches of the antiquary and scholar Jorge Luis ‘Vintage’ Borges, a few points offer further context on that most peripatetic of birds in this, our present century. . Learned reports come from South Asia, where the spotted-bill Filipino pelican (phillipensis) is found, with no small irony, only in Cambodia, the Indian peninsular, and in Sri Lanka (or the contemporary […]

Selassie come home

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste Canongate, £16.99, pp. 428 . In 1935 the troops of Benito Mussolini’s sinister-clownish Roman Empire II invaded Ethiopia, in large part out of spite for Italy’s embarrassing defeat there 40 years before. Initially largely uncontested – thanks both to emperor Haile Selassie’s desperate faith in international brotherhood and to […]

Trouble at t’Mill

The curious life of John Stuart Mill, philosopher . When JS Mill was born, his father, James, challenged a friend to ‘race with you in the education of… the most accomplished and virtuous young man.’ That other child has not gone down in history – but he may well have dodged a serious bullet. Learning […]