‘We’ve dedicated this issue to the much-discussed but sometimes nebulous subject of “post-liberalism”. The Spectator has always supported liberty and will continue to, but, as Tim Stanley suggests, liberalism may now need saving from itself.’
A waste of 19 years
The US withdrawal doesn’t mean peace in Afghanistan
By Paul Wood
From the Magazine
What do elbows have to do with fighting coronavirus?
Digging up reliable etymologies takes a lot of elbow grease
From the Magazine
The fight to save G.K. Chesterton’s home from demolition
A Londoner until the age of 35, Chesterton moved to Beaconsfield on a whim
By Dan Hitchens
From the Magazine
Giving up Twitter for Lent went well
If I’m honest with myself, Twitter is the most hardcore addiction I have and it’s also the one that robs me of the most productivity
From the Magazine
Right on: Boris Johnson’s Britain and the new political reality
Neoliberalism was a ruling-class project that was never popular with working-class citizens
By Michael Lind
From the Magazine
Foreign policy is in a straitjacket
The Ivy League graduates who constitute America’s foreign policy elite think just like Robespierre
From the Magazine
Joe Biden and the vanished political age
The ghost of Washington past
By Matt Purple
From the Magazine
Constrained by freedom: what do post-liberals want?
Liberalism may be a doctrine to organize your society by; it is not a doctrine to live your life by
From the Magazine
Degrees of control
America’s colleges are selling themselves to hostile foreign states
From the Magazine
Social justice isn’t always just
The reaction of most accused men is to say nothing in the hope that the outrage caravan will move on
By Toby Young
From the Magazine
Living in an Italy consumed by fear
Right now, the death rate from coronavirus in Italy is more than 8 percent
From the Magazine
A final farewell
Some carefully chosen words about what it means to say goodbye
By Toby Harnden
From the Magazine
The weak response to coronavirus is a symptom of the decay of the liberal state
The modern nation-state has always offered a deal: liberty for protection. America’s liberal state frequently fails to honor its side of the bargain
From the Magazine
Time to scrap the Goldwater Rule
Biden’s many errors are tokens of serious mental incapacity
From the Magazine
Books + Arts
The bloody decade: think America’s divided now? Try the 1970s
In 1974 alone, there were 2,044 bombings in America, with 24 people killed
From the Magazine
Dirty diving
Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort by Raffi Berg reviewed
From the Magazine
Bluestockings of Bloomsbury
Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade reviewed
From the Magazine
Cosmopolis
Migrant City: A New History of London by Panikos Panayi reviewed
By James Evans
From the Magazine
On the road again
The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad by Emily Thomas reviewed
From the Magazine
Death in the Cape
Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Boer War by Sarah LeFanu reviewed
From the Magazine
The universal cartoon
Is there a single image that fits any caption? Perhaps there is…
By Nick Newman
From the Magazine
Finger pickin’ good
Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has reinvented his instrument and retraced its roots
From the Magazine
Apocalypse soon
The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success by Ross Douthat reviewed
From the Magazine
Prince of Europe’s long peace
Metternich: Strategist and Visionary by Wolfram Siemann reviewed
By Conrad Black
From the Magazine
Some of the best Austen adaptations are the most unfaithful
Undoubtedly the freshest version of Emma was the one that looks least like it: Clueless
From the Magazine
Life
The guns of Alexander
In the event of the gun confiscation fancied by the Democratic party’s billionaires and its NPR tote-bag carriers, the hinterlands will not submit
From the Magazine
Lure of the jungle
The monkeys have become experts not only at stealing fruit from rooms but also at plundering minibars
By Jeff Mills
From the Magazine
A tale of three dogs
Like a star of the country & western stage, I write because my wife left me and took my dog
By Digby Dent
From the Magazine
No one in Jefferson’s day suspected the contradiction between commerce and education
Republics have never lived by the commercial principle alone
From the Magazine
My fellow dinner guests made me feel like a combination of Messalina and Lady Macbeth
What is it about loud American women that makes men like Charlie Glass and myself, two fairer-sex-obsessed males, wince?
By Taki
From the Magazine
Celia Walden: the birth of ‘corona kissing’ in LA
For germaphobe Angelenos the coronavirus is scarier than a waiter coming at you with a breadbasket
By Celia Walden
From the Magazine
Epicenes and epicures
While his fellow Germans were rounding up résistants, Jünger was visiting Braque and Picasso
From the Magazine
Food and Drink
Salami of the sea
Seacuterie is a delicious but annoying culinary portmanteau
By Jane Stannus
From the Magazine
How to sample your own urine
Michael took an imaginary draft and did that thoughtful, rabbity connoisseur’s tasting thing with his mouth
From the Magazine
The carnivore confessions: I’ve never felt better than on my meat-only diet
Online carno-forums are growing like mushrooms (which I no longer eat)
By Lauren Chen
From the Magazine
