FROM THE MAGAZINE

January 2020

‘In 2010, the smart people were either thrilled or alarmed by the prospect of an “emerging Democratic majority”, created by high immigration, de-industrialization and college education. Ten years on, influential magazines are still warning Republicans to play nice with a newly diverse electorate or go the way of the Whigs.’

Politics

No presidency for old men

Instead of coming away from my accidental meeting with Bernie dazzled, I left feeling sorry for him. He looked like an exhausted old man

By Harry Mount

From the Magazine

Europe

The death of populism has been greatly exaggerated

There have been setbacks — but populists are consolidating, not retreating

By Matthew Goodwin

From the Magazine

The link between politics and moisturizer

With some surprise I found reset has been in use since the early 17th century

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine

An Englishman in New York

Mist was blowing in drifts off the East River and already I could feel the intoxication of the city

By Ian Thomson

From the Magazine

Roman funerals had real ‘emotional intelligence’

There was a tradition of preserving death masks of the departed, complete with lists of achievements

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

The story of my only novel

I had to spend a solid year assuring readers that I did not prematurely ejaculate. Boy was that embarrassing

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

What have you changed your mind on?

A Spectator survey

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

Europe

Cold truth: Iceland’s melting glaciers are nothing to panic about

The glacier that had its last rites read in August had, in fact, more or less disappeared half a century ago

By David Gunnlaugsson

From the Magazine

Education

2019 was not a good year for freedom of speech

Is everything rosy in the groves of academe?

By Toby Young

From the Magazine

Politics

How to lose votes and bore people

Impeachment and the Democratic primary are the two weakest plot lines of The Donald Trump Show

By Matt Purple

From the Magazine

Politics

Polls apart

The modern pollster tends to be in love with his model. Hence his predictions tend to confirm the model rather than pull back the curtain on other contingencies

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Politics

How to end endless wars

If politicians really wanted to ‘support the troops’, they’d introduce mandatory national service

By Andrew Bacevich

From the Magazine

Politics

The case for Genghis Trump

What force on earth can reform a corrupt or incompetent elite, one that serves itself and its dreams rather the citizens of the country?

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Spectator Editorial

Who’s right in the 2020s?

The American tradition of fair opportunity has been breached in our Gilded Age more than honored

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Why Trump will win again in 2020

There is a growing wrath in the country, either ignored, suppressed or undetected by the partisan media

By Victor Davis Hanson

From the Magazine

Politics

A crime still in progress

The Russiagate whistleblowers have blown their cover

By Lee Smith

From the Magazine

Politics

Trump and the troops

The president’s weird popularity with the military shows few signs of diminishing

By Gil Barndollar

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Books

Novel inspirations: H.L. Mencken, the bad boy of Baltimore

Ideas and theories were not Mencken’s meat and drink. Real people and social comedy were

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Architecture

New York has really gone to pot when the tallest skyscrapers lie empty

Bad taste and bad manners are ubiquitous in New York, so why should good taste suddenly prevail in putting up buildings?

By Taki

From the Magazine

Art

Stayin’ alive in ’75

Meryl Meisler’s photographs captured the family life and nightlife of Seventies New York

By James Panero

From the Magazine

Art

Beethoven or bust

Reflecting on the hard-thinking, beer-drinking spiritual gambler

By Damian Thompson

From the Magazine

Art

Style on steroids: the power of Jerry Bruckheimer

Bruckheimer may think that the Oedipus Complex is a Greek shopping mall, but the set-ups of Bad Boys and Top Gun are classical

By Will Lloyd

From the Magazine

Art

Bad feeling: why we need to defend freedom of reaction

People react differently to different things, and hooray for that

By Mary Wakefield

From the Magazine

Books

Jung love

Savage Messiah: How Dr Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization by Jim Proser reviewed

By Micah Mattix

From the Magazine

Books

The joy of rummaging through Gladstone’s annotated books

A visit to the Gladstone Library has the welcome effect of removing you from the worries and concerns of the world

By Alexander Larman

From the Magazine

Art

Is he talking to us?

De Niro should live up to his movie characters and stop his knee-jerk dissing of Donald Trump

By John Waters

From the Magazine

Art

All modern art is quite useless

The contemporary artist doesn’t expect to have to suffer for what he calls his art. Away with the garret!

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Art

The Hayes of our lives

A soul survivor whose sonic alchemy endures

By Jacob Heilbrunn

From the Magazine

Books

George Eliot, radical but conservative

What other heroine in a 19th-century novel strangles her sister’s canary as a girl?

By Kathy O’Shaughnessy

From the Magazine

Art

The soft power of Italian jazz

Eat to the beat

By Andrew L. Shea

From the Magazine

Books

Kingdoms of the wicked

How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century by Frank Dikötter reviewed

By Conrad Black

From the Magazine

Books

Three’s company

The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes reviewed

By Adam Begley

From the Magazine

Art

A hero for the Snowflake age

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is now a politically correct pantywaist

By James Delingpole

From the Magazine

Books

The audacity of verse

The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century by John Burnside reviewed

By Lucasta Miller

From the Magazine

Life

Home

Show off and tell: the sad death of inconspicuous consumption

While I was in Manhattan I was dropped by my New Yorker girlfriend for not being rich enough

By Harry Mount

From the Magazine

Humor

A Godfrey New Year

All I had to do was give myself a colonic with a turkey baster and a sachet of organic miso soup, and I was ready to embark on my metaphysical quest

By Godfrey Elfwick

From the Magazine

Place

After the Americans

The SDF look like city hipsters in an Arab village, blasting Kurdish revolutionary music from civilian cars

By Justin Higginbottom

From the Magazine

Place

In the cart of the city

‘The new owners employ Army vets for a few dollars a day to sit by a van in case an inspector comes’

By Revd Steve Morris

From the Magazine

Faith

Burning Christianity

Europe’s churches are under attack

By Samuel Gregg

From the Magazine

Faith

The culture war is lost

Americans are learning to live in a post-Christian age

By Rod Dreher

From the Magazine

Home

My journey to the heart of prehistoric England

I would be staying in this cottage in the shadow of Wansdyke to see if I wanted to rent it

By Jeremy Clarke

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

French women do get fat

The effortlessly stick-thin Parisienne is a mythical creature

By Alice Pfeiffer

From the Magazine

Drink

Back in the USSR

Foraging for mushrooms and the taste of freedom in eastern Europe, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall

By Rory MacLean

From the Magazine

Drink

Who invented the hamburger?

The immigrant origins of the all-American meal

By Norman Lebrecht

From the Magazine