FROM THE MAGAZINE

December 2021

Spectator Editorial

The hostage president

As hostages to Biden’s misfortunes, we must hope that our luck holds in 2022

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

It still plays in Peoria

I look forward to coming back to this classic place, for musical and other reasons

By Jay Nordlinger

From the Magazine

Politics

How Meghan Markle wins the White House

Welcome to Meghan’s world, where artifice, pop culture and politics march in lockstep

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

How the ancients handled refugees

In the ancient world, movements of people were also very common, often because war, famine or exile left them with no option

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Culture

Pregnant at the end of the world

Seeing that new life on the ultrasound gave me hope for the future — not dread

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Internet

Can GETTR go the distance?

Without Trump, what does a platform that is essentially a clone of Twitter have to offer?

By Jay Caruso

From the Magazine

Politics

Who won the Cold War, anyway?

Conservatism may have won the Cold War, but conservatives lost the peace in the West

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Politics

How Kyrsten Sinema brought Gen X to the Senate

Wielding power doesn’t have to mean going with the herd

By Stephen L. Miller

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

The doctor is mad

The American Medical Association has just issued a health equity guide

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Politics

Latinas are the shape of things to come

The Latina is the antithesis of the liberal female Democrat

By Alex Perez

From the Magazine

Business

The death of the phone call

It is now standard to pop into colleagues’ homes uninvited, unannounced and unashamed

By Daniella Greenbaum Davis

From the Magazine

Europe

Have Americans got George III all wrong?

George III was a model monarch, whose reputation finally deserves rehabilitation a quarter of a millennium later

By Andrew Roberts

From the Magazine

Business

Netflix’s Chappelle of hate

Netflix received only a thousand or so complaints about a special watched by millions

By Jesse Singal

From the Magazine

Science & Tech

Our gadgets are misleading us

Modern gadgets are less and less our servants and more and more our masters

By Roger Scruton

From the Magazine

Politics

Wokeness is the return of white supremacy

If white supremacists are racist because they put race at the center of all human interaction, what are the woke?

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

From the Magazine

Business

Black tie in NYC

Arriving at the American Museum of Natural History, I present my vaccination card and negative Covid test result

By James Kirchick

From the Magazine

International

What Bernard-Henri Lévy sees for the West

I have come to ask Lévy about the future of the West — if, that is, he feels there will be one

By David Patrikarakos

From the Magazine

Europe

Florence with Dante

Had Dante been alive today, he would have reserved an inner circle of hell for the bureaucrats

By Paul Wood

From the Magazine

Middle East

Has Micah Goodman found the path to peace?

Since the fall of Benjamin Netanyahu, ‘shrinking the conflict’ has become the theme of the moment

By Jake Wallis Simons

From the Magazine

Culture

Life after sex

Sex is everywhere in America, except in the bedroom

By Karol Markowicz

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Books

Books of the Year 2021

Our best reads and most pertinacious page-turners of 2021

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

Book Review

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece is finally appearing

March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 3 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reviewed

By Robert D. Kaplan

From the Magazine

Books

The Road Not Traveled

A short story

By William Boyd

From the Magazine

Art

A brush with Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell was a female star of the Abstract Expressionist boys’ club

By Andrew L. Shea

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

Prints of Wales and elsewhere

Amid the turbulence of modernism, British artists made art for themselves

By James Panero

From the Magazine

Theater

Broadway’s back(side)

Six and Chicken & Biscuits reviewed

By Robert S. Erickson

From the Magazine

Exhibitions

A dream of a dress

It’s easy to see why Dior still rules the red carpet

By Jane Coombs

From the Magazine

Music Review

Roy Hargrove doubles up

For anyone looking for a stocking stuffer for the aficionado — or merely the lover — of good music, here it is

By Jacob Heilbrunn

From the Magazine

Music

Sounds of Christmas past

I tend to associate Christmas music with the records I received as gifts when I was a kid

By Luke Haines

From the Magazine

Podcasts

Fashion, fairies and folklore

As every sullen teenager knows, headphones are a great way to escape the family gathering and retreat inward

By Jessa Crispin

From the Magazine

Life

High Life

I miss life before Big Tech

There are always books to remind us what the world was like before lookers such as Bezos took over

By Taki

From the Magazine

Low Life

The downfall of the French middle class

The Corsican taxi driver painted a thrilling picture of impending social revolution

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

Home

Summer in Newport

Newport is unlike most American towns

By Digby Dent

From the Magazine

Home

Blues for Jimmy Duncan

Jimmy Duncan is a man who knows his place, which is one of the highest compliments I can give

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Home

The foremost challenge facing Western democracies

In the absence of a Brahmin class, any civilization worthy of the name is impossible

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Place

The history of the American Memorial Chapel

The Chapel is dedicated to the 28,000 American people who were stationed on British soil and died in World War Two

By Revd Steve Morris

From the Magazine

Language

What exactly is the ‘festive season’?

No one ordinarily talks of the festive season

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine

Place

Place

Ice fishing in the Arctic

The Russian ice fishing journey is a study in contrasts between the elements

By Isaac Sligh

From the Magazine

Place

Prague by design

The Czech capital may be a prisoner of its heritage, but it’s more than a Disney castle

By Benedict Spence

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

The finest festive fizz

A dinner party without good conversation is like flat Champagne: pretty pointless

By Jane Stannus

From the Magazine

Food

What’s good from the goose

Goose used to rule the roost

By Hannah Moore

From the Magazine

Food

I ate Audrey Hepburn’s kidneys

I had contemplated knocking on my famous neighbor’s front door and asking if she had any suggestions for cooking veal kidneys

By Calla Jones Corner

From the Magazine

Drink

Silky, sumptuous wines for Christmas dinner

Chambertin was Napoleon’s favorite wine. I am prepared to make it mine, too, at least for Christmas

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine