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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Octavia Sheepshanks |Ben Domenech |Francesca Peacock |Jonathan Sumption
A friend recently found himself trapped on a plane next to a young woman reading a Kindle bedecked with stickers of dragons and pointy-eared, hunky men. The font size was so large it was impossible not to see the sexually explicit text. He observed, “I was reading The Lord of the Rings; her book was more along the lines of I’m the Lord of Your Ring. I’ve never felt so uncomfortable.”Welcome to the cultural phenomenon of romantasy — a newly mainstreamed trend fueled by TikTok, or rather BookTok.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Henry Hitchings |Edward Howell |Francesca Peacock |Jonathan Sumption
For a few days in February 2000, Masayoshi Son was the richest person in the world. A risk-taker and showman, universally known as Masa, he had long been disdainful of Japan’s staid “salaryman” business culture and was riding the wave of dot-com mania. His company SoftBank, founded in 1981, had bet big on the growth of online shopping. The bullish mood didn’t last, and Masa slunk away from the limelight — but only for a while.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Jonathan Sumption |Alexander Larman |Julie Bindel |Peter Stothard
Strategically located in the narrows of the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tripoli, with a fine natural harbor, Malta has attracted the attention of successive conquerors for two millennia: Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Aragonese, French and finally British. In 1565, the island was occupied by a power that was already beginning to look anachronistic: the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
engelsbergideas.com | Jonathan Sumption
Governments have always valued information, but not all information counts as intelligence. In the middle ages, kings depended on travellers, such as merchants, pilgrims and heralds, to bring them political news of a kind that a later age would find on the front page of a newspaper. The use of scouts by field commanders is as old as warfare itself. They reconnoitred the terrain ahead or assessed the strength of enemy armies and reported on their movements.
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Nov 30, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Jonathan Sumption
The rival camps in Friday’s debate on the assisted dying bill can at least agree on one thing: the decision to allow doctors to help bring about the death of a human being crosses a major moral threshold. As matters stand, assisting someone to kill themselves is a criminal offence under the Suicide Act 1961. It was a common law offence for centuries before that. It was also contrary to the basic ethical principles of the medical profession.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Frances Wilson |Nicholas Farrell |Amber Duke |Jonathan Sumption
Fresh out of Hollywood High, Eve Babitz introduced herself to Joseph Heller: “Dear Joseph Heller, I am a stacked eighteen-year-old blonde on Sunset Boulevard. I am also a writer.” It was 1960, and while her writing was the sheerest bliss, “Eve Bah-Bitz with the Great Big Tits,” as she was known, was herself a work of art.
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Nov 10, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Matthew Lynn |Sam Meadows |Jonathan Sumption |Yascha Mounk
Elon Musk contributed huge sums of money. He campaigned relentlessly. And his social media network X provided a platform for the candidate. Of all the architects of Donald Trump’s return to the White House this week, arguably none was more influential than Musk, and certainly none were playing for such high stakes. If he had lost, the X owner would have faced a furious regulatory backlash. As it happens, however, the election has been a triumph for Musk — and will make him more powerful than ever.
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Nov 10, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Sam Meadows |Jonathan Sumption |Stephen MIller |Stephen Miller |Martin Vander Weyer
When Domingo Cavallo implemented at the start of December 2001 a restriction on cash withdrawals, he unwittingly unleashed a month of rioting and looting across Argentina that would leave thirty-nine people dead. Police brutally cracked down on protests that quickly spread as the country’s economy fell to pieces. The basket of laws enforced by the then-finance minister became known as the Corralito and were a desperate response to a devastating — and worsening — economic crisis.
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Nov 10, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Jonathan Sumption |Matthew Lynn |Sam Meadows |Peter Frankopan
For many years the academic sociologist Frank Furedi has been among the strongest conservative voices in the front line of the culture wars. The target of his latest book is the systematic campaign to discredit the history of the West in the interest of a modern political agenda. The vandalizing of statues, the “decolonization” of institutions and curricula, the recasting of museums and the rearrangement of libraries are all symptoms of something more fundamental.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Mark Piesing |John Keiger |Jonathan Sumption |Michael Moorcock
In May 1942, Agent Zo was in the home stretch after a long and risky mission that had placed her in Berlin, at the heart of Nazi Germany. As usual, she picked up a small stone and threw it at the second-floor window of her sister’s apartment in a grimy industrial city in occupied Poland, south of Warsaw. But no one in the flat turned on a light, the agreed signal. She threw another. Nothing happened.
