"Brutal, insensitive, and not illuminating" is how Kate Crisholm (writing in the Spectator) justifies the decision by Radio Four to cut Hanif Kureishi's short story Weddings and Beheadings from the National Short Story Competition.
posted by three blind mice on May 8, 2007 - 26 comments

Why Are British Sex Scandals So Much Better Than America's? A recent (Feb. 2007 issue) Vanity Fair article by James Wolcott examines the Profumo Affair , the Major-Currie revelations and the recent shenanigans at the U.K.'s The Spectator magazine, as compared to Mark Foley, Clinton-Lewinsky and much more.
posted by amyms on Jan 15, 2007 - 35 comments

Happy Birthday, Speccie! Your 175th, actually. There's a special issue out - only five free articles on the web, of which the Graham Greene competition is probably the funniest - but The Spectator itself (my favourite comic in the whole wide world, I have to say) is still in fine fettle. Among the more interesting articles in today's issue, Paul Robinson's delirious defense of West Point and its highly questionable Code of Honour (whereby you're compelled to rat on your fellow cadets if they lie, cheat or steal, or be expelled if you're found out covering up for them) and Melanie Phillip's firm opinion that the evidence of the Hutton Inquiry shows that Blair - Shock! Horror! - spoke the truth about Iraq are probably the most provocative. Damien McCrystal's tirade against fat nannies is the most predictably outrageous and typical. But the whole issue (I am particularly fond of Jeremy Clarke's column) is a cracker. No other weekly (or even monthly) conservative magazine is anywhere near as good. Congratulations, old fruit!
posted by MiguelCardoso on Sep 25, 2003 - 12 comments

Millionaires' Havens, Heavens And Hell Holes: Ghastly, depressing Monaco comes in for a deserved drubbing from Philip Delves Broughton in this week's Spectator. The idea of billionaires surfing the Web looking for a hide-out makes me giggle and gag, but it appears poor people can play too. Have a look at (free!) e-zine Escape From America; run your index finger down a list of tax havens and choose the paradise place you'd scarper off to, if your money problems, whether from excess or lack of money, ever become too [sorry...] taxing.
posted by MiguelCardoso on Nov 29, 2002 - 9 comments

The editor-at-large of The Spectator has resigned in protest at the publication of an anti-American article. There has already been some discussion of this here but the British press seems to be tearing itself apart about how much to support the War on Terror, and what viewpoints it's acceptable to express. The offending article will presumably appear here sometime in the next few days, though its content is somewhat predictable given the views of the author. Funny quote: "I want to be in the magazine more often than I seem to be". Maybe the price of freedom is eternal whingeing.
posted by Gaz on Mar 13, 2002 - 11 comments

The America-Hating British? In the UK's Spectator : "And this time it’s not just the usual America-haters at the Guardian and the BBC, but the likes of Alice Thomson, Stephen Glover, Alasdair Palmer, Matthew Parris, my most esteemed Telegraph and Speccie colleagues...many people over here had no idea quite how ridiculous you are. You’re shocked by us, we’re laughing at you. In fairness, instead of coasting on non-existent diseases and wild guesses at the weather, the always elegant Matthew Parris at least attempted to expand Guantanamo into a general thesis. ‘We seek to project the message that there are rules to which all nations are subject,’ he wrote in the Times. ‘America has a simpler message: kill Americans, and you’re dead meat.’ This caused endless amusement over here. As the Internet wag Steven den Beste commented, ‘By George, I think he’s got it!....’ PS What is an internet wag anyway?
posted by Voyageman on Feb 11, 2002 - 19 comments

Every multiculturalist is a recruiting officer for al-Qa’eda. The Spectator's cover story this week suggests that white intellectuals' posture of hatred for Western civilization is at least somewhat responsible for British Muslims' hatred of the West. Is this a revealing insight, or just a twisted blame-the-victim argument? Or both?
posted by mattpfeff on Feb 5, 2002 - 54 comments

F*ck off you crazy old dyke In 1993 Camille Paglia and Julie Burchill had this fax exchange over a book review Burchill had done for the Spectator. This brings back all that 80s anti-PC, pro pop culture journalism I loved so much in my youth. Pity both Paglia and Burchill seem to have had their time and run out of ideas. Sorry this is so old, but I only learnt about it while reading Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
posted by Summer on Nov 24, 2001 - 30 comments

The death of the American Spectator: The conservative magazine survived and prospered for twenty-five years before Bill Clinton came into its sights. Now the former President is rich and smiling, and the Spectator is dead.
posted by Rastafari on Oct 28, 2001 - 7 comments