Mary Wakefield

London

Commissioning Editor at The Spectator

commissioning editor @spectator

Articles

‘Jordan Peterson is a sad and angry man’: an interview with Rowan Williams

1 week ago | spectator.com.au | Mary Wakefield

Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has a new book out, a slim, thoughtful introduction to Christianity. But that’s not quite why I went to Cardiff to visit him. I went because, although I admire the superstar culture warriors of the right, there’s something Williams is witness to which they lack.
‘Jordan Peterson is a sad and angry man’: an interview with Rowan Williams

1 week ago | spectator.co.uk | Mary Wakefield

Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has a new book out, a slim, thoughtful introduction to Christianity. But that’s not quite why I went to Cardiff to visit him. I went because, although I admire the superstar culture warriors of the right, there’s something Williams is witness to which they lack. Like many readers, I think Rowan Williams pretty loopy on most subjects – Brexit, Islam, immigration, the...
I'm hobbled by my own hypocrisy about cats

2 weeks ago | thespectator.com | Mary Wakefield |Arabella Byrne |Raheem Kassam |Aidan Hartley

I don’t like cats. I don’t like their reptilian stealth, or the way their heads are set low and poke out from their bodies. I don’t like the constant showing off of their puckered bums, or their disregard for the normal rules of mammal eye contact. There are roughly 74 million cats in the United States and until recently I found it inexplicable. Why would anyone choose to love and nurture a psycho that dismembers songbirds, often torturing them first in a casual, playful way?
The Met’s misogyny

4 weeks ago | spectator.co.uk | Mary Wakefield

My friend Rose likes a drink. She lives on the same street as another friend in Camden and three or four times a year, when the weather warms up, she stands on her doorstep, smashed, and yells at the world. I don’t blame her. Rose has been through the mill. She’s a slight woman and she’s suffered at the hands of predatory men all her life.
The Met’s misogyny

4 weeks ago | spectator.com.au | Mary Wakefield

My friend Rose likes a drink. She lives on the same street as another friend in Camden and three or four times a year, when the weather warms up, she stands on her doorstep, smashed, and yells at the world. I don’t blame her. Rose has been through the mill.
I was convinced by the cholesterol skeptics

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Paul Wood |Mary Wakefield |Bridget Phetasy |Lionel Shriver

I’s never a good thing when your cardiologist sounds alarmed on the phone. Come in tomorrow, he said: we’ll get you on the table. He wasn’t talking about cracking my chest, thank Christ, but threading a wire in through a vein to get a look at the heart, blow up a tiny balloon to stretch the artery, and maybe leave behind a metal tube or three. I wasn’t keen on that last part. Then I thought: serves me right. I should have avoided all those bacon sandwiches and steaks fried in butter.
The cat that tamed Dom

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Mary Wakefield

I don’t like cats. I don’t like their reptilian stealth, or the way their heads are set low and poke out from their bodies. I don’t like the constant showing off of their puckered bums, or their disregard for the normal rules of mammal eye contact. There are nearly 13 million cats in Britain – one in three of us owns them. There are roughly 74 million in the United States and until recently I found it inexplicable.
The cat that tamed Dom

1 month ago | spectator.com.au | Mary Wakefield

I don’t like cats. I don’t like their reptilian stealth, or the way their heads are set low and poke out from their bodies. I don’t like the constant showing off of their puckered bums, or their disregard for the normal rules of mammal eye contact. There are nearly 13 million cats in Britain – one in three of us owns them.
Who’d dare join the SAS now?

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Mary Wakefield

We should all feel scared to our bones about the persecution of the SAS, soldiers harried through the courts for jobs they did many decades ago. It’s not that the SAS should be allowed to behave like trigger-happy psychos, but as Paul Wood wrote in this magazine before Christmas, Special Forces are now being hounded and punished for simply following orders and conducting operations. And what will we soft sofa-sitters do when no one wants to be a soldier any more?
Monica Lewinsky discusses ‘power imbalances’... on Call Her Daddy

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Jawad Iqbal |Brendan O’Neill |Teresa Mull |Mary Wakefield

Monica Lewinsky, the woman at the center of the scandal that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, opened up about her journey and how America has changed in its understanding of power dynamics and owning one’s sexuality on the Call Her Daddy podcast Tuesday. Lewinsky walked through how she processed the power imbalance involved with the scandal over time. When it was happening, she didn’t think about it much. “I thought it was something it wasn’t.