Second world war
‘I’ve taken to sleeping in my teeth’ – the wartime admissions of T.S. Eliot
‘I’m getting to be a wambling old codger’…‘I haven’t got enough phlegm to undress’, writes the poet, exhausted by readings and broadcasts, in letters spanning 1942-44
The rose-tinted view of female friendship shatters
Are women’s relationships with each other today more brittle and less supportive than in the past?
No escaping mother: Lili is Crying, bv Hélène Bessette, reviewed
A daughter longs to flee her parent’s boarding house in 1930s Provence, but her bid for independence fails in a story of thwarted love and shattered dreams
Germany’s Bundeswehr bears no resemblance to an actual army
Confusion abounded this week when the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Ukraine could use western missiles to hit…
The mystifying cult status of Gertrude Stein
The American author (of mostly unreadable books) was revered in 1920s Paris and became an international celebrity – though no one was quite sure why
Consorting with the enemy: The Propagandist, by Cécile Desprairies, reviewed
The debut novel by a historian of the Vichy regime is a personal J’Accuse, indicting the collaborators in her family for their part in France’s collapse in the second world war
Who could persuade you to fight for Britain today?
This week we celebrated VE Day. When Pericles remembered the dead from the war against Sparta in his famous Funeral…
Bring on the Trump protests
The coming week will see the last major commemoration of a second world war anniversary – 80 years since VE-Day…
What would Livy have made of Trump’s treatment of Harvard?
It is not surprising that Donald Trump holds the law in contempt. That is what happens when you have a…
How I found Christianity
I wasn’t brought up in the faith. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist lay-preacher, but when my mother left County…
Bringing modernism to the masses in 20th-century Britain
Owen Hatherley examines the contribution of refugees from central Europe to the film industry, publishing and public art, especially architecture and town planning
Were the Arctic convoy sacrifices worth it?
Stalin privately admitted that his army could never have triumphed without western aid, and the convoys also indirectly helped the war in the Atlantic – but the loss of life was horrendous
Parallel lives
Aged 69, the travel writer had a stroke and spent his last 20 years as a hemiplegic – and writing this memoir of his father’s life intertwined with snapshots of his own
A fight to the Finnish
When I went into the Sisu screening I knew only that it was a Finnish film, so was expecting an…
How do I hate thee?
A new play, The Misandrist, looks at modern dating habits. Rachel is a smart, self-confident woman whose partner is a…
High life
None of this would have happened had I accepted my neighbour’s invitation to dine with a Swiss billionaire banker, or…
Spare us the preaching
It doesn’t help the cause of The Railway Children Return that the original 1970 Railway Children film is currently on…
High life
New York Prince Pavlos, heir to the Greek throne, turned 55 recently and I threw a small dinner for him.…
Have we got news for you
In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…
The great deceit
Operation Mincemeat is based on the book by Ben Macintyre, which in turn is based on what Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper…
High life
Was it Socrates who said that chaos was the natural state of mankind, and tyranny the usual remedy? Actually it…
Neville’s advocate
Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain
The Guinea Pig club
Lloyd Evans on a musical that tells the story of the pioneering maverick whose methods for treating disfigured second world war airmen revolutionised plastic surgery
Debacle at Dieppe
In my mother’s final days we had a long conversation about the second world war. I asked if she’d ever…
