British empire
‘A really complicated person’
Almost two years after the death of Jan Morris, the jaunty travel writer and pioneer of modern gender transition, her…
Missionary position
Alexander Chula on the uncomfortable lessons of the new Fourth Plinth statues
Does the curriculum really need ‘decolonising’?
Layla Moran, the Lib Dems’ education spokesman, has written to Gavin Williamson urging him to do something about ‘systemic racism’…
Empire states of mind
It is hard to find benign examples of imperialism
In defence of the British Empire
Is it my imagination, or are the whitened bones of the British Empire being yet again dug up and trampled…
Empire state of mind
They never learn, do they? Lisa Nandy, the dark horse candidate in the Labour leadership race, has demanded the word…
The forgotten masterpieces of Indian art
As late as the end of the 18th century, only a handful of Europeans had ever seen the legendary Mughal…
This election will change Britain – and Europe – for good
This election campaign feels unreal. Commentators focus on spending plans and personal foibles, but what will make next week’s vote…
Shameless and corny: ITV’s Beecham House reviewed
ITV’s new drama Beecham House is set in late 18th-century India where the British and French were still battling it…
One of the best plays I’ve ever seen: I and You at the Hampstead Theatre reviewed
Lauren Gunderson’s play I and You opens in the scruffy bedroom of 17-year-old Caroline. Lonely, beautiful and furious, she’s unable…
The dumbing down of the Reith Lectures
It’s been a heavyweight week on Radio 4 with the start of the annual series of Reith Lectures and a…
Playing it safe
BBC1’s latest Sunday-night drama The Last Post, about a British military base in Aden in 1965, feels like a programme…
Nuclear waste
Miss Atomic Bomb celebrates the sub-culture that grew up around nuclear tests in 1950s America. The citizens of Nevada would…
Diary
Just as the presidential race in America started to get really crazy, I left for India. On the morning of…
What to do with Syria?
From ‘The future of Syria’, The Spectator, 5 February 1916: We say with all the emphasis at our command, and…
Artistic taste is inversely proportional to political nous
‘Wherever the British settle, wherever they colonize,’ observed the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘they carry and will ever carry trial…
Rhodes to nowhere
Protesting students in Cape Town may disdain the statue of Cecil Rhodes, yet they do not reject his legacy
Colonial cringe
Gymkhana is a fashionable Indian restaurant in Albemarle Street. It was, according to its natty website, ‘inspired by Colonial Indian…
Rags, riches and respectability
In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is — you might…
Giving Jonathan a drubbing
Peter Snow explains that he decided to look into this extraordinary story when he realised how few people knew about…
