Health
Great news for fatties: it’s really not your fault
I’ve noticed for some time now that thin people, genuinely slim ones, have a secret loathing of fatties. Kindly though…
Warning: top-performing funds are highly likely to contain tobacco
Axa will no longer invest in the tobacco industry: the French insurance giant will sell €184 million of shares and…
How your brain buys a sofa
Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly…
Vaping’s appeal isn’t about the nicotine. It’s about the gadgets
Probably you never visited the flats of middle-class student drug dealers in the 1990s, because crikey, neither did I, and…
In praise of doctors’ handwriting
My baby and I excel at blood tests. He (tiny, jaundiced) stretches out naked under the hospital’s hot cot-lamps like…
When novels kill
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
Stress point
It’s not work that’s killing us. It’s the irritation and confusion of modern office life
Diary
It’s clear that Vladimir Putin has had a facelift, which might explain why Wendi Deng would take an interest in…
How Seneca got to sleep
As if we did not have enough to cause us sleepless nights, the Royal Society for Public Health has demanded…
The Spectator’s notes
However wicked tax evasion is and however distasteful some tax avoidance may be, people should imagine a world without tax…
Live fast, die not too old
At 77, it is clear to me that increased longevity can be a curse rather than a blessing
Diary
I’d like this to have been one of those Spectator diaries that gives the ordinary reader a glimpse into the…
The brain-damage game
In most sports, injuries happen when things go wrong. In boxing, they’re the ultimate goal. It isn’t right
The scan said my baby wouldn’t live. It was wrong
When my unborn baby was a five-month-old fetus, twisting about in the internal dark, he was given a death sentence…
Barometer
Vote no, vote often David Cameron scorned Boris Johnson’s idea that voting to leave the EU might result in further…
What was this bed-blocker doing on my ward?
There’s some journalistic research you’d really never do by choice. Spending four days in an NHS hospital with a life-threatening…
Letters
Just call them Daesh Sir: I was interested to read Sam Leith’s article in which he appears to argue that…
The wrong cuts
Jeremy Hunt is right to fight for NHS reform. But he’s going after the wrong people, on the wrong issue
A trust betrayed
Like many of my fellow junior doctors, I trusted a Conservative government with the NHS. If it’s to stay strong…
Why can’t we get our minds around ME?
Do you ever wake up worried that you have tiny fibres growing beneath your skin, all along your spinal column?…
Barometer
Killer facts The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens. A few of the other…
Women are still scared to talk about IVF. Let’s change that
Pretty soon, one in ten British babies will begin life in a Petri dish. So why is it still such a taboo subject?
Our drugs cheat
Do you want to see Paula Radcliffe’s blood? If so, you’re not alone. Radcliffe, three-time winner of the London Marathon…
Death watch
If you don’t think legalising ‘assisted dying’ is a slippery slope, you haven’t been paying attention
The dangerous food fad
The ‘clean eating’ revolution is more likely to make you ill than healthy
