October 2019 Issue

FROM THE MAGAZINE

October 2019

‘Our contributors are chosen for originality and sense of style, not political affiliation. It’s not The Spectator’s job to tell people how to think: we want to entertain and challenge readers.’

Education

Where are world leaders educated?

The US has just overtaken Britain in the number of world leaders educated at the country’s universities

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

The sinister political force of millennialism

To create a market was thus almost to create a generation, and to shape it

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

What could be more repellent than a bald man covered in hair?

Julius Caesar was very sensitive about his baldness, combing his thinning hair upwards over his crown

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Ben Schott’s traveler’s notes

I’m a keen student of hospitality’s ‘wow’ moments

By Ben Schott

From the Magazine

Education

Colleges should be ‘islands of excellence’

Scarcely a month passes without some distinguished professor being targeted for defenestration

By Toby Young

From the Magazine

Politics

Felix Sater, superspy

Should we believe Trump’s former business partner?

By Paul Wood

From the Magazine

How to define a dog

The variousness of dogs has ever been a leitmotif of dictionary discussions

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine

Riding means more than just control of the horse

We have forgotten not just the use of horses, but also their value to our wellbeing

By Alessandra Bocchi

From the Magazine

China

Will China meddle in the 2020 election?

It isn’t going to be Vladimir Putin who swings the 2020 election. It might be Xi Jinping

By Ross Clark

From the Magazine

The gilded rage: why is America so angry?

Most Americans now believe it is ‘healthier’ to unleash their negative feelings than to bottle them up

By Peter W. Wood

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

Space is the place — for war

Foreign hackers have broken codes that are integral to the effectiveness of satellites

By James Adams

From the Magazine

Politics

Romney Republicanism could never win

There is no market on the right or the identity-politics left for what anti-populist Republicans are advertising

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Education

Grade A: what Adderall has taught me

‘Come to think of it, no. I’ve never had a patient, once prescribed, go off them’

By Madeleine Kearns

From the Magazine

Europe

Please America, take Meghan Markle back

She has dragged across the Atlantic a garbage truck full of the most emetic US wokeness

By Rod Liddle

From the Magazine

Internet

The horror of Big Porn

Why pornography apologists are wrong

By Julie Bindel

From the Magazine

Politics

The age of LOLitics

Social media is turning democracy into a joke

By Will Lloyd

From the Magazine

Politics

An open letter to the Democratic party

The days of buffet-style politics are no longer allowed

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Politics

The Mueller inquiry was an attempted coup

We should call things by their real names

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

In Afghanistan, Trump and the Taliban want the same thing – Americans out

Someone should write a book about the utterly dispiriting architecture of the Global War on Terror

By Justin Marozzi

From the Magazine

Europe

Right from wrong: a guide to the new European politics

Branding all conservatives ‘far right’ is both wrong and dangerous

By Douglas Murray

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Books

Country girl

Girl by Edna O’Brien reviewed

By Jenny Colgan

From the Magazine

Books

If only Georges Simenon had been a bit more like Maigret

The pipe-smoking detective’s creator was a sex addict who died rich and lonely in a vast Swiss château

By Ian Thomson

From the Magazine

Architecture

Secrets of the maestro

The first major American exhibition of Andrea del Verrocchio confirms that he was a Renaissance innovator, and more than Leonardo’s teacher

By James Panero

From the Magazine

Art

Grandpa, who were the Rolling Stones, and why?

Raising the goblet of rock

By Luke Haines

From the Magazine

Art

Pod almighty

Building the great podcast of Alexandria

By Emily Ferguson

From the Magazine

Books

Race to the finish

Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams reviewed

By J. Oliver Conroy

From the Magazine

Architecture

Building a legend

Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright by Paul Hendrickson reviewed

By Stephen Bayley

From the Magazine

Art

A great time in the Faddisphere

Faddis took a break, sat down on a chair onstage near me, then started blowing along with the band again

By Jacob Heilbrunn

From the Magazine

Art

Who killed the American arts?

The decline from Duke Ellington and Aretha Franklin to A$AP Rocky and Lizzo is a slide from civilization to barbarism

By Dominic Green

From the Magazine

Art

Is Peaky Blinders past its peak?

If the cap fits…

By Matt McDonald

From the Magazine

Books

Bad company

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple reviewed

By Anthony Sattin

From the Magazine

Art

Blondie ambition

Face It by Debbie Harry reviewed

By Hannah Niemeier

From the Magazine

Books

A New York state of mind

Doxology by Nell Zink reviewed

By Sarah Ditum

From the Magazine

Books

No one held Susan Sontag in higher esteem than Susan Sontag

Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser reviewed

By Philip Hensher

From the Magazine

Film

Louise Linton: why I don’t like being ‘the wife of…’

I married a politician. But my identity is not defined by my husband

By Louise Linton

From the Magazine

Art

Not in front of the servants

Long live Downton Abbey

By Dominic Green

From the Magazine

Life

Home

Daddy issues: the fatherhood revolution has failed

It would be hard to argue that today’s teenagers have emerged happier than the generation raised by distant dads

By Cosmo Landesman

From the Magazine

High Life

The differences between British and American readers

The New York Times is the media institution that plays the most destructive role in American life

By Taki

From the Magazine

Humor

The best comedy is the type that makes white people feel terrible about themselves

Many sensitive souls find the sound of merriment jarring

By Godfrey Elfwick

From the Magazine

Place

Hog wild in Indiantown

Armed with a lever-action rifle, some elephant-gun slugs and a pack of six dogs, we set out into the brush

By Benjamin Riley

From the Magazine

Faith

Puritanism is back…and welcome to it

Martyrdom has become ‘inclusive’

By P.J. O’Rourke

From the Magazine

Home

I am a part of Batavia, New York

My friend Henry W. Clune used to say that all he ever really wanted was to appear considerable in the eyes of his hometown

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Media

Good morning, America

We dare to believe that we offer something that is lacking in journalism on both sides of the Atlantic

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Home

The mysterious ways of the French

Everything in this country is as strange to me today as it was five years ago

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

Home

A vacation in Greenland

For a country where people cling to the edges of a vast land mass, local identity seems important

By Robert Chote

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

Nostalgia sells — but you have to get it right

For Hendrick’s, we took our cue from the vintage stills used to create the gin

By Steven Grasse

From the Magazine

Drink

Junk food is my American dream

If you are a fat kid, it is an indelible state that can never be escaped much as one might try

By Molly Jong-Fast

From the Magazine

Drink

Who else misses smoking in a bar?

Instead of teachers or parents, smokers now hide from busybodies

By Billy McMorris

From the Magazine

Drink

Hipsters are getting high on an alcohol-free cocktail

Kin has become popular as swatches of America veer towards sinless living and self-care

By Antonia Hitchens

From the Magazine

Drink

Why do Americans and Brits write about alcohol so differently?

American drink writing tends to be self-flagellating: the recovering alcoholic’s remembrance of sins past

By Nina Caplan

From the Magazine