Robbie Mallett

Feb 9, 2024 | thespectator.com | Sergey Radchenko |Ben Domenech |Adrian Brune |Robbie Mallett

They say that he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon. But, driven by vanity and unconstrained by any understanding of Russia’s history or politics, Tucker Carlson slurped up the intoxicating broth of Vladimir Putin’s falsifications this week in his interview with the Russian president. Carlson took to Moscow well. His Russian hosts rolled out the red carpet, fawning over him with an admiration and servility that betrayed their sense of exasperation at being long shunned by the West.

Feb 9, 2024 | thespectator.com | Ben Domenech |Adrian Brune |Sergey Radchenko |Robbie Mallett

Yesterday was a year’s worth of a rising wave that came crashing down on Democratic hopes for 2024. They had hoped Republicans, motivated in part by constant lawfare attacks, would nominate Donald Trump — only to tear their party apart during the summer as denial of election eligibility in key states made clear he had no path to victory.

Feb 9, 2024 | thespectator.com | Adrian Brune |Robbie Mallett |mysteryBy A.S.H. Smyth |A.S.H. Smyth

Many magicians have passed through Las Vegas since its inception somewhere around the early 1940s: David Copperfield, Penn and Teller, Criss Angel. But possibly its most renowned, yet least acclaimed, trickster was a woman named Gloria Dea.  Dea performed traditional magic — the sleight of hand stuff — but she had a specialty in billiard ball manipulation, tossing the balls so that they seem to multiply and then disappear.

Feb 8, 2024 | thespectator.com | Robbie Mallett |A.S.H. Smyth |Freddy Gray |mysteryBy A.S.H. Smyth

“Do you like to dig?” That’s the first question seasoned Antarcticans ask when a scientist tells them he’ll spend winter on the white continent. Digging snow away from doors, windows and shipping containers saps your energy, but they’re not asking about that. Digging is a symbol for all the unglamorous physical tasks that will come to define your life.

Feb 8, 2024 | thespectator.com | A.S.H. Smyth |Robbie Mallett |mysteryBy A.S.H. Smyth |Freddy Gray

In my drafts folder there languishes an email to The Spectator pitching a letter from a then-forthcoming trip to Georgia. That was, alas, the spring of 2020. So when I saw Leo Vardiashvili’s debut novel — Hard by a Great Forest — billed as “a winding pursuit through the magic and mystery of returning to a lost Caucasian homeland,” I leapt at the vicarious travel opportunity.