FROM THE MAGAZINE

April 2020

‘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

By Dot Wordsworth

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

Internet

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

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Europe

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

Politics

Foreign policy is in a straitjacket

The Ivy League graduates who constitute America’s foreign policy elite think just like Robespierre

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Joe Biden and the vanished political age

The ghost of Washington past

By Matt Purple

From the Magazine

Politics

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

By James Mumford

From the Magazine

Degrees of control

America’s colleges are selling themselves to hostile foreign states

By Peter W. Wood

From the Magazine

Politics

After liberalism

Are we entering a new era of political thought?

By Tim Stanley

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

Europe

Living in an Italy consumed by fear

Right now, the death rate from coronavirus in Italy is more than 8 percent

By Nicholas Farrell

From the Magazine

Politics

America is socialist, dummy

Let us count the ways…

By Patrick Allitt

From the Magazine

A final farewell

Some carefully chosen words about what it means to say goodbye

By Toby Harnden

From the Magazine

Spectator Editorial

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

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Politics

Time to scrap the Goldwater Rule

Biden’s many errors are tokens of serious mental incapacity

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Film

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

By William Rosenau

From the Magazine

Books

Dirty diving

Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort by Raffi Berg reviewed

By Stephen Daisley

From the Magazine

Books

It’s different for girls

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo reviewed

By Claire Kohda Hazelton

From the Magazine

Books

Magus of mass production

Warhol by Blake Gopnik reviewed

By Michael Millner

From the Magazine

Books

Austen’s power

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby reviewed

By Brian Martin

From the Magazine

Books

Bluestockings of Bloomsbury

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade reviewed

By Ariane Bankes

From the Magazine

Books

Cosmopolis

Migrant City: A New History of London by Panikos Panayi reviewed

By James Evans

From the Magazine

Art

The Irish question

Sebastian Barry talks about his new play, On Blueberry Hill

By Robert Jackman

From the Magazine

Books

On the road again

The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad by Emily Thomas reviewed

By Philip Marsden

From the Magazine

Books

Death in the Cape

Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Boer War by Sarah LeFanu reviewed

By Andrew Lycett

From the Magazine

Books

Rake’s progress

Threshold by Rob Doyle reviewed

By Lee Langley

From the Magazine

Art

The universal cartoon

Is there a single image that fits any caption? Perhaps there is…

By Nick Newman

From the Magazine

Art

Conscious coupling

Sex therapy with Anna Karenina

By Emily Ferguson

From the Magazine

Art

Tenor badness

Benny Golson, last legend of bebop

By Jacob Heilbrunn

From the Magazine

Art

Finger pickin’ good

Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has reinvented his instrument and retraced its roots

By Dominic Green

From the Magazine

Books

Apocalypse soon

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success by Ross Douthat reviewed

By Emina Melonic

From the Magazine

Books

Prince of Europe’s long peace

Metternich: Strategist and Visionary by Wolfram Siemann reviewed

By Conrad Black

From the Magazine

Art

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

By Claire Harman

From the Magazine

Life

Home

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

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Place

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

Humor

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

Faith

No one in Jefferson’s day suspected the contradiction between commerce and education

Republics have never lived by the commercial principle alone

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

High Life

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

Diary

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

Place

Epicenes and epicures

While his fellow Germans were rounding up résistants, Jünger was visiting Braque and Picasso

By Benjamin Riley

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

Cab and conversation

A Healdsburg symposium

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Drink

Salami of the sea

Seacuterie is a delicious but annoying culinary portmanteau

By Jane Stannus

From the Magazine

Drink

How to sample your own urine

Michael took an imaginary draft and did that thoughtful, rabbity connoisseur’s tasting thing with his mouth

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

Drink

Save French food!

A cuisine in crisis

By John Keiger

From the Magazine

Drink

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