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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Jenny McCartney |Matt Ridley |Cressida Bonas |Ben Domenech
Sometimes the mind needs to take a break. And I can’t think of a better stopping-off place than the soothing, gloriously bonkers discussions on the Fashion Neurosis podcast, hosted by the British fashion designer Bella Freud. Its premise is that Freud, daughter of Lucian and great-granddaughter of Sigmund, encourages guests to recline on her couch and talk over any and every aspect of their relationship to fashion.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Dot Wordsworth |Cressida Bonas |Stuart Jeffries |Michael Farr
My husband said “A.J. Balfour played the concertina,” which is perfectly true, though he did other things, even as prime minister. The concertina was inessential to what I thought was a neat way of sorting out the meanings of naturalism. The word is used quite a bit these days, with four main meanings. My mnemonic for the meanings are Balfour, Bolingbroke, Zola and Caravaggio.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Billy McMorris |Cressida Bonas |Bill Kauffman |Toby Young
Grandma McMorris seldom curses, so when she said, “never let a son of a bitch know he’s a son of a bitch,” I knew she was quoting her father, Pop Pop. My grandfather oozed apothegms, nuggets of wisdom that are now only found on refrigerator magnets, motivational posters and throw pillows: the Silent Generation’s forerunner to the meme. Mom was giving me work advice.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Chilton Williamson |Cressida Bonas |Ben Domenech |Amber Duke
Considering the way history has been going for the past quarter of a century, it seems not merely Panglossian but naive and sentimental to the point of bad taste to find grounds for historical optimism now. Nevertheless, positive facts ought to be recognized as well as negative, and without embarrassment.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Cosmo Landesman |Cressida Bonas |Ian Williams |Tom Holland
This is a tale of two London parties. They say something about London society, status, power, fame and fun — but I’m not sure what exactly. Party one was what I call a Power Party. It was full of famous faces from the upper echelons of British politics and media. I spotted chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves talking to the former Tory chancellor George Osborne and the former foreign secretary David Miliband.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Alexander Larman |Byron’s Women |Cressida Bonas |Deborah Ross
Shortly after Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon was released in American cinemas in 1975, it was mercilessly parodied in the satirical publication MAD magazine. Over seven pages, “Borey Lyndon,” as it was called, was treated as an embarrassing flop, something to be ridiculed and regretted.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Bryan Appleyard |Cressida Bonas |John Davidson |Philip Womack
In Paris in 1740 the hangman publicly burned his most famous book. In England some of the best and brightest — Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Bishop George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift and John Wesley — lined up to destroy his reputation. The book was 1714’s The Fable of the Bees and the author was Sir Bernard Mandeville, popularly known as the Man-Devil.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Rod Liddle |Cressida Bonas |James Kanagasooriam
I can see one possible benefit of having a full inquiry into the almost exclusively Muslim grooming gangs who raped and assaulted and in some cases murdered young white girls and are perhaps still doing so in a selection of Britain’s ghastliest towns. The number of lawyers it would employ and the enormous salaries they receive might just about tilt the country out of a recession next quarter. I can’t see much other benefit.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | John Davidson |Cressida Bonas |John Connolly |Michael Gove
After generations of treating the universe as mere matter to be bent to our will, it seemed inevitable that the future of humanity would be to merge with machines. Billionaires and tech utopians now predict a near future in which the human mind itself might be “downloaded” or transferred into a digital realm, allowing us to overcome death itself by slipping the bonds of our physical existence altogether.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Peter Jones |Cressida Bonas |Justin Brierley |Grace Curley
A professor of neurophysiology has announced that anger is a good thing with a “very useful purpose,” unless it turns to aggression. Top thinking, prof!The first word of Western literature is the “rage” of Achilles, which Homer tells us was “murderous” and brought endless grief to the Greeks. What? Come again, Homer old boy, surely you meant “the Trojans?” Alas, no. This led directly to the death of Achilles’ dear friend Patroclus and the early death of Achilles.
