Issue: December 2020
A letter to Jesus
Frederic Raphael poses some pertinent questions to the son of God
“Meme”
From a German zoologist to internet burns, Dominic Green charts the history of the word meme
Ad-vent season
Claudia Savage-Gore fumes over the PTA’s latest “voluntary” wheeze
Making history
Charles Saumarez Smith believes the restoration of an historic factory in the Potteries can be a model for preserving our manufacturing past
Anoraks at half-mast
Tom Chesshyre on the death of a train-spotters’ paradise
Homes fit for a post-Covid world
Tim Abrahams asks whether the crisis will prompt builders to create the type of houses we need
On nodding terms
Thomas Woodham-Smith says the most vocal customers rarely buy
Cape crusader
Hannah Betts loves the theatrical flourish of a cloak
Memoirs of a Microaggressor
Will Collins traces the aristocratic roots of the social justice warriors’ search for purity
Trunk routes
Take your time, but do plant a tree, says Hephzibah Anderson
Most Read
American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
President Trump’s intervention will leave the world safer than it was
Saint Nicola
Nicola Sturgeon wants sympathy for her husband’s crimes—but after years spent avoiding awkward questions, her latest reinvention may be the hardest sell yet.
The lonely death of Henry Nowak
We must draw lessons from a horrendous and disgraceful case
Rewatching the English
English identity has become too surreal and discomfiting to define
A failed war on fags
The black market has taken over the tobacco trade Down Under
Light my fire
A perfect spy requires a spark for his cigarette
Frivolous and doomed
Classicism still has its place at the National Theatre
London vs the rest of the country
The publishing industry should aim to be more provincial and less metropolitan
Gender self-ID was never the law
Barrister Akua Reindorf KC speaks about the controversial trans guidance the government is so loath to implement
Beyond Carmen
Georges Bizet: The piano works (Hyperion)
Get into the groove — why vinyl rocks
On the best sound in popular music
Westminster is not Manchester
Andy Burnham would find being the PM a lot more difficult than being a mayor
Why tradition, not utopia, protects expression
Free expression thrives on human frailty, debate, and tradition — not on utopian zeal or moral legislation
A country at war with itself
Washington politics can
best be understood through the history
of bitter factional in-fi ghting within both
the Democratic and Republican parties
Anyone could have predicted
Left-leaning commentators should not pretend to be surprised by the consequences of multiculturalism
Gruesome twosomes
Considering culinary mismatches