Philip Clark

Jan 13, 2025 | thespectator.com | Alexander Larman |Byron’s Women |Philip Clark |Aaron Gwyn

The Robbie Williams biopic Better Man opened in American theaters last weekend and, as every single box office commentator predicted, it flopped, and flopped hard. A gross of just over $1 million in its opening three days — less than the Golden Globe-winning The Brutalist, which is only showing on sixty-eight screens nationwide — is utterly disastrous, all the more so because this wasn’t a $10 million indie, or even a $40 million Rocketman, but a movie that it cost $110 million to make.

Mar 18, 2024 | thespectator.com | Philip Clark |Niall Ferguson |Roger Kimball |Tim Rice

In the mid-1950s, alongside his close friend and intimate confidant John Coltrane, the revered saxophonist Sonny Rollins completely revolutionized notions about how the tenor saxophone could function within modern jazz.

Jan 22, 2024 | thespectator.com | Francesca Peacock |Freddy Gray |Philip Clark |Christopher Bedford

One Friday evening in a half-ruined, half-rebuilt city, where smart tourists dine out in restaurants next to refugees in makeshift shelters, a woman walks the streets. In torn clothes and slippers “worn ragged,” she hands out leaflets.

Jan 22, 2024 | thespectator.com | Freddy Gray |Philip Clark |Christopher Bedford |Dot Wordsworth

Manchester, New HampshireNew Hampshire votes tomorrow and today Nikki Haley has just two planned events in New Hampshire. She has a morning meet-and-great in the city of Franklin and a “get out the vote rally” in Salem this evening. Nobody could accuse Haley of not working hard. She’s famously an industrious woman. But given the make-or-break nature of tomorrow’s vote, her campaign seems strangely lacking in urgency. Yes, she’s spending a fortune on campaign ads.

Jan 22, 2024 | thespectator.com | Dot Wordsworth |Philip Clark |Christopher Bedford |Juan P. Villasmil

British prime minister Rishi Sunak mentioned mayoral elections the other day and he pronounced them as though they were conducted by mouth in the month of May: May-oral. There is no doubt that this is an American pronunciation, though some Americans prefer MAY-uhr-uhl to may-OR-uhl. In British English it’s MAIR-uhl. The funny pronunciation has spread to electoral, which on both sides of the Atlantic was uh-LECK-tuh-ruhl. Now broadcasters sometimes say uh-leck-TOR-ruhl.