The Spectator

The Spectator is Britain’s oldest and most influential magazine, with incisive political and economic analysis, unrivalled books and arts reviews, and unmissable lifestyle writing, plus the funniest cartoons. It’s more cocktail party than political party, and we’d love it if you joined us.

An ugly trade-off

The Spectator

CONTRIBUTORS

PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK

DIARY

Alpha Romeo

THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES

Just start oil • Labour must go further and faster in the North Sea

Andelys

Taste test • Beware of dinner-party guests bearing gifts

Would Sadiq Khan back a rave in a mosque?

The settlements question • What counts is international law, not emotive vocabulary

Before 9/11

Closed book • The precipitous decline of biblical literacy

Clip art • How social media ‘clippers’ are shaping politics

AUTHOR’S NOTEBOOK

Long live death’s dark humour

Kicking down • The trouble with the government’s ‘equality of outcome’ measures

days

Swede dreams • Will Britain learn from Sweden’s immigration crackdown?

Don’t sympathise with Lindsay Clancy

LETTERS

Where are all the apprentices, Chancellor?

BOOKS & ARTS

Forever in the pink • Most lives contain great swathes of boredom, but not Barbara Cartland’s, writes Frances Wilson. Every page of this biography is a cliffhanger

Poetry and scattered gunfire

A succession of selves

Top guns

Scents and sensibility

The passive voice

For better, for worse

A life lived to the hilt

Embroidering the truth • Alex Burghart hails the miraculous precision of the Bayeux Tapestry

Artists of the Caribbean

Suitably epic

Good? Definitely maybe

Safe journey

Splendour in the bluegrass

Rant and dreck

Lumpfish

No life

Dog’s life

Still life

Fast life

Will chess be ‘solved’?

Hard times

2769: Order

Turkish delight

DEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED

SPECTATOR WINE

The Jason Arday review already knows who to blame

The Battle for Britain

The Wiki Man How to train a driverless car

Here’s hoping

The hunt for Reform corruption

Whimsy