FROM THE MAGAZINE

April 2023

Family

A woman for all seasons

If my sentimentals connect me to truth, beauty and goodness, can they really be so bad?

By Teresa Mull

From the Magazine

Politics

A history lesson for Joe Biden

Putin made no move in Ukraine during Trump’s administration. Coincidence?

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

Did Ernest Hemingway have CTE?

His suicide remains one of literary history’s mysteries

By Kevin Cook

From the Magazine

Education

Where do the Elgin marbles belong? 

Their display in the Duveen gallery of the British Museum in London is not impressive

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Business

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the anti-confidence man

The writer, Twitter warrior and flâneur is so popular because he isn’t selling you anything

By Rosie Gray

From the Magazine

Business

The unstoppable march of the gambling giants

The golden age of sport betting has barely begun

By Neal Pollack

From the Magazine

Family

Confessions of the mommy groupchat

Every woman, pregnant or not, needs a Grumpy Mommy Compound

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Politics

The other DeSantis

There’s no Ron without Casey

By Oliver Wiseman

From the Magazine

Family

Yawn: your childhood just died again

When the transgressive becomes normal, the normal will become transgressive

By Matt Purple

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

Why are we still funding gain-of-function research?

Some scientists warn that the studies are an ‘extinction-level risk’

By Ashley Rindsberg

From the Magazine

International

The Paraguay predicament over Taiwan

Is Taiwan about to lose one of its closest allies?

By John Pietro

From the Magazine

Politics

Nancy Mace, the Waffle House populist

The South Carolina lawmaker is a serious congresswoman in unserious times

By Ben Domenech

From the Magazine

International

How to win the war that everyone is losing

Europe must be left to police Europe and Asia to police Asia

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Spectator Editorial

Save America’s cities

How much worse do things have to get before they get better?

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Culture

A new book and a newborn

I find myself wondering how I might have fared were I a child today

By Bethany Mandel

From the Magazine

Politics

Why the national divorce worked: a future history

A benign break-up is now a beacon to dissatisfied land conglomerates everywhere

By Billy McMorris

From the Magazine

Diary

The RNC should tell us who gets to make the debates

Engaging in debate with me, I think, is not something that the other candidates will relish

By Vivek Ramaswamy

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Book Review

Andrey Kurkov brings clarity to the Ukraine invasion

The highest compliment that can be paid to Kurkov’s diary is that it is not a work of art

By Fred Skulthorp

From the Magazine

Books

How James Bond began

Casino Royale introduced the world’s readers to exotic phenomena that would become as familiar as their families

By John Walsh

From the Magazine

Book Review

The quiet rise of Outback Noir

A new subgenre of Australian detective fiction is gaining global acclaim

By Amanda Craig

From the Magazine

Theater

A stripped back Doll’s House on Broadway

The difference between a divorce and a funeral seems lost on the director Jamie Lloyd

By Robert S. Erickson

From the Magazine

Film

Why were 2000s movies so hypersexual?

Are we decent yet?

By Nicky Otis Smith

From the Magazine

Books

How America influenced George Orwell

The legendary British author’s attitude to the US is curiously double-edged

By D.J. Taylor

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

Drinking with Picasso

To mark the half-century since Picasso’s death, I invited two art experts to lunch at Els Quatre Gats

By William Newton

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

The strange allure of Vermeer

In a new exhibition, the curators go some way to explaining the brilliance of the artist

By Francesca Peacock

From the Magazine

Book Review

There’s more to Pamela Anderson than Playboy and sex tapes

Unfortunately, most of Love, Pamela fails in its quest for victimhood and intellectualism

By Mitchell Jackson

From the Magazine

Life

London Life

The sex lives of writers

The era of the Great Literary Sex God is over

By Cosmo Landesman

From the Magazine

Prejudices

The paradox of political power

When everyone has power, no one has power

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

High Life

My Swiss Shangri-La

I’ve now been here for six years and it will be my last residence

By Taki

From the Magazine

American Life

Ernest Hemingway’s Idaho playground

Ketchum today does not exploit the Hemingway connection

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Low Life

It was cannula carnage at the hospital

‘Don’t look!’ said the student nurse as he set about staunching the blood

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

Place

Place

Paris: the place to be as a royal in exile

For the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Paris wasn’t the hardship it might have been

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

Place

In praise of cruises

For twelve days and eleven nights, we got to live on a floating United Nations

By Dave Seminara

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Food

Don’t spare us the asparagus

Harvested early, it is the most appropriate of springtime accompaniments

By Jane Stannus

From the Magazine

Food

The wonder and mystery of Mexican cooking

Trying to recreate my childhood favorites in Britain is pointless

By Hannah Moore

From the Magazine

Food

Cost-cutting in the kitchen with Budget Bytes

Each recipe calculates the cost of ingredients per serving, down to the penny

By Mary Kate Skehan

From the Magazine

Drink

McSorley’s Old Ale House resists restoration

The pub has Ireland, and the Irish experience in America, in its DNA

By Owen Matthews

From the Magazine

Drink

The art of Georgian toasting

In Georgia, raising a glass is an essential ritual of the supra, their ancient tradition of the feast

By Orson Fry

From the Magazine

Drink

How to wine and dine

Wine is only a condiment if your host has blundered in his choice

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

And Finally

And Finally

The surprising cultural life of orcas

Orcas make us ask troubling questions about humanity

By Simon Barnes

From the Magazine

And Finally

‘Super’ has become super-annoying

Four centuries ago, they were already aware that super was being overdone

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine