Second world war
Dutch courage
The Forgotten Battle is a Dutch feature film commemorating the desperate and relatively little-known Allied assault on the Scheldt estuary…
High life
Do any of you remember the time when everything took place on the terraces and in outdoor cafés? Before everyone…
Incredible hulks
Laura Gascoigne on the art of pillboxes
A character assassination too far
Revisionist biographies of Churchill are nothing new but this one lays the hostility and contempt on with a trowel, says Andrew Roberts
High-minded vs heartbreaking
It can be difficult to remember that Tennessee Williams, the great songster of the Deep South during the 1950s, was…
Apocalypse now
Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death
Low life
Where the 36th (Ulster) Division attacked at 7.30 a.m. on the first morning of the Battle of the Somme in…
Home affront
What we can learn from Britain’s rationing mistakes
Bop till you drop
Stuart Jeffries on the dark history of dance marathons
Inherited trauma
Okinawa is having a moment. Recently a Telegraph travel destination, to many in the west it’s still unfamiliar except as…
Churchill’s enigma
The real riddle is why he cosied up to Stalin
Unlived lives
Francis Spufford was already admired as a non-fiction writer when he published his prize-winning first novel, On Golden Hill, in…
The Spectator’s Notes
Domenica Lawson, daughter of Rosa and Dominic, the former editor of this paper, has Down’s syndrome. She is classified as…
Chance of a lifetime
As I gaze at my four children on Christmas morning, clambering on to the bed with their stockings, I will…
The Venus de Marlene
Tanjil Rashid on the legend of Dietrich
The Midas touch
It’s well known that you should never meet your heroes because they will only disappoint you. Less commonly said, but…
Savage beauty
The Painted Bird opens with a young boy (Jewish) running through a forest and clutching his pet ferret. He is…
The house on the Heath
Lissa Evans has been single-handedly rescuing the Hampstead novel from its reputation of being preoccupied by pretension and middle-class morality.…
Grubby thumb prints and peeling glue
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
Actress’s Notebook
Rather like unpacking after a holiday, when you take unworn clothes from the case still neatly folded because the occasion…
Corona-gardening
The American diet was probably at its healthiest in the second world war. Fearing interruption to supply chains, Washington launched…
Letters
Growing pains Sir: James Forsyth (‘Rewiring the state’, 4 July) shocked this loyal Spectator reader with the following: ‘Even before…
Containing multitudes
It might seem a bit of a stretch to see deep similarities between Michaela Coel (young, female, black and currently…
Letters
Police relations Sir: As a former Met Police officer, with a similar background to Kevin Hurley, I was surprised how…
Going underground
Leaf Arbuthnot and Igor Toronyi-Lalic on the new cultural rebels
