Politics
Governing the world – an interview with Mark Mazower
‘People begin to feel that… there are bonds of international duty binding all the nations of the earth together.’ This quotation, which resonates so clearly as yet more blood is shed in… Continue reading
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The left’s empathy deficit
A very good point made by Peter Hitchens in an interview with the Evening Standard yesterday. It was this: ‘A particular problem of the Left is that they believe their… Continue reading
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Mo Yan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
The new Nobel laureate is Mo Yan, a Chinese writer. He is the first Chinese citizen to win the prize, and doubtless will become the first of many as China’s… Continue reading
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Spreading the Word through patois
The Jamaican High Commission in London held a party last night to launch a patois translation of the Gospels. The translation, published by the Bible Society, is the culmination of… Continue reading
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Should literature be political?
‘Should literature be political?’ Njabulo S Ndebele asked Open Book Cape Town the other day. Ndebele, a renowned academic in South Africa, has written a précis of his speech for… Continue reading
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Richard Millet and the nihilism of multiculturalism
It’s the last day of banned book week but perhaps we should spare a thought for banned editors. An editor at Éditions Gallimard, who worked on Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly… Continue reading
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The loneliness of Edwina Currie
Edwina Currie is very much an acquired taste and I am very happy that I acquired it in 1983 when we were both first elected to Parliament. Sassy, saucy, fiendishly… Continue reading
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William Shakespeare and the pursuit of human happiness
‘Under the greenwood tree’ from As You Like It AMIENS: Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lies with me, And turn his merry note Uno the sweet bird’s throat, Come… Continue reading
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Keep up the good work, Simon Hughes
As a rider to my earlier blog I wish to put in the following as evidence. It became plain to me some years ago that people who have absolutely no… Continue reading
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Interview: Mary Robinson
In 1990 Mary Robinson became Ireland’s first female president. As a progressive liberal, Robinson seemed a very unlikely candidate for the job, in what was then, a deeply conservative country. … Continue reading
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Interview: John R. MacArthur on the US election
When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, millions of citizens across the United States believed it was a new dawn for the American political system. Obama promised… Continue reading
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Face it: Ed Miliband could be the next prime minister
It’s fun isn’t it, all this speculation about a leadership challenge to David Cameron? It was obvious really in the run-up to party conference season. We all needed a new… Continue reading
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Liam Fox comes out for coalition
Missing: One Scottish hardline right-wing Tory. Formerly Secretary of State for Defence, last seen leaving government over some confusion with a business card. Warning: An imposter was spotted this morning… Continue reading
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Iran: Jews make Gays
An article in an Iranian state-controlled newspaper has claimed that the Jews are spreading gays. According to Mashregh News the ‘Zionist regime’ (with the help of the US and UK)… Continue reading
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The peer who came in from the cold
Mr Steerpike reported last week that the Tories’ shadowy donor-cum-puppetmaster, Lord Ashcroft was shunned in America. But it’s not all bad news for the man dubbed the sleaze of Belize.… Continue reading
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Hot War in the South China Sea?
Like the deserts of the Middle East, the barren islands of the South China Sea now loom as a new theatre of war. Asian countries, indeed America, too, are at… Continue reading
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John Cleveland: discovering poetry
‘Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford’ ‘Here lies wise and valiant dust, Huddled up ‘twixt fit and just: STRAFFORD, who was hurried hence ‘Twixt treason and convenience. He spent his… Continue reading
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Jeremy Vine’s survival guide
I first knew Jeremy Vine as a very young, charming, earnest and totally driven political correspondent for the BBC in the 1980s. So when I started reading It’s All News… Continue reading
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South Africa: Mired in corruption?
On the 5th of August Mary Robinson delivered the annual Nelson Mandela lecture in Cape Town. It should have been an occasion when the former Irish President and UN Human… Continue reading
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Bookbenchers: Philip Davies MP
Philip Davies is the Conservative MP for Shipley and the present holder of the Readers’ Representative at the Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. He is the latest MP to… Continue reading
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