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The Spectator
@thespectator1828.bsky.social
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It is hard for us to imagine a world in which portraiture of such quality did not exist – and then suddenly arrived. www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-...
How Hans Holbein brought portraiture to England
On the evening of 6 May 1527, Henry VIII entertained an embassy from France at a lavish party in Greenwich. The festivities took place in a banqueting house and a theatre, both built for the…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 7, 2025 at 11:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
I’ve long badgered Jamie to run an offer here and, over several homemade Quarante Quatres (my new favourite tipple), he finally succumbed.

✍️ Jonathan Ray

www.spectator.co.uk/article/wine...
Wine Club: Christmas gems from Brunswick Fine Wines
Jamie ‘Jimmy’ Graham, co-proprietor with Carlos de Haan of Brunswick Fine Wines in Brighton, is one of my oldest chums. We cut our vinous teeth at Berry Bros decades ago, we live on the same street…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 7, 2025 at 8:45 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'It is worth remembering that Offord enthusiastically backed Kemi Badenoch for leader'

✍️ James Heale

bit.ly/48WODm8
The meaning of Lord Offord's defection
It is worth remembering that Offord enthusiastically backed Kemi Badenoch for leader.
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December 6, 2025 at 3:45 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'The cancellation of New Year’s Eve on the Champs Élysées is confirmation that Paris is no longer is in control of its public space'

✍️ James Tidmarsh

bit.ly/3YhXYPb
December 6, 2025 at 2:30 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'Her guests agreed with everything she said and the show felt like a bank holiday book-club or a gripe session at Wetherspoons'

✍️ Lloyd Evans

bit.ly/4phiADf
Until Truss faces her enemies, she remains an irrelevance
Her guests agreed with everything she said and the show felt like a bank holiday book-club or a gripe session at Wetherspoons.
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December 6, 2025 at 12:15 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'Whatever the merits of Mr Rigby’s entitlement to benefits, it should not be a surprise that someone with a prosthesis can be a competent cricketer.'

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...

✍️ Patrick Kidd
The strange history of one-armed vs one-legged cricket
A sheet metal worker from Shropshire who lost a leg below the knee in a tractor accident when he was a child has been told to pay back £36,000 in disability benefits after he was filmed playing…
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December 6, 2025 at 11:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Some of what these novels reveal about desire is cheesy and embarrassing.

✍️ Samantha Ellis

www.spectator.co.uk/article/prid...
Pride and Prejudice retold in a thousand different ways
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that any essay about Jane Austen… must be in want of a poorly rendered paraphrasing of her most famous opening lines,’ writes Ella Risbridger in this sharp,…
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December 6, 2025 at 11:15 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
There are decent lines and comic moments, even if some of the running gags overstay their welcome.

✍️ Deborah Ross

www.spectator.co.uk/article/noah...
Noah Baumbach needs to try harder: Jay Kelly reviewed
Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly stars George Clooney as a handsome movie star playing a handsome movie star who has an identity crisis and is forced to reflect on his life. It’s being sold as a Hollywood…
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December 6, 2025 at 11:01 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'There comes a time in every Boomer Granny’s life when she must consider the ‘granny annexe’ as a viable demesne.'

www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-...

✍️ Arabella Byrne
How to live gracefully in a ‘granny annexe’
Fergie is reportedly considering her daughter Princess Beatrice’s Cotswold ‘cowshed’ as her next billet.
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December 6, 2025 at 11:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
What’s an album? The horror! How had this abject failure of parenting happened?

✍️ Flora Watkins

www.spectator.co.uk/article/brin...
Bring back the album
Usually when my tweenage sons ask about relics from my 1990s adolescence – ‘What’s a landline?’ ‘What’s a phone book?’ – we’ll have a good laugh about these obsolete artefacts of the not-so-distant…
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December 6, 2025 at 10:45 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
We are used to the idea that our greatest writers might be unpalatable in person. Not Stoppard.

✍️ Craig Raine

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The wit of Tom Stoppard
The playwright Peter Nichols created a character based on Tom Stoppard. Miles Whittier. On a car journey across London, I once asked Peter why he was so irked by Stoppard. Thelma, his wife, answered…
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December 6, 2025 at 10:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The most remarkable artistic phenomenon of the 21st century has been the resurgence of painting.

✍️ The Spectator

www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-sp...
A Spectator poll: What is the greatest artwork of the century so far?
Slavoj Zizek        Hegel thought that, in the movement of history, the world spirit passes from one country to another, from the East to the West. Something similar happened at the beginning of the…
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December 6, 2025 at 10:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no

www.spectator.co.uk/article/tomm...

✍️ Theo Hobson
Tommy Robinson wants to put 'Christ back into Christmas'? No, thanks
Tommy Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no
www.spectator.co.uk
December 6, 2025 at 10:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'Cards explicitly featuring the Christmas story are in a decided minority, while those supporting mammon – our new collective subject of worship – are in ascendance'

www.spectator.co.uk/article/put-...

✍️ Alec Marsh
Put Christ back into Christmas cards
It’s that time of year when the cards landing on the doormat compete for the title of most fatuous. Will it be a reindeer spouting an obscenity, or a painterly robin perched on a frosted gatepost in…
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December 6, 2025 at 9:15 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'The Prime Minister has unveiled plans that he claims will lift some 550,000 children out of poverty by the end of the decade.'

www.spectator.co.uk/article/keir...

✍️ Lucy Dunn
Keir Starmer says ending child poverty is Labour’s ‘moral mission’
The Prime Minister has unveiled plans that he claims will lift some 550,000 children out of poverty by the end of the decade.
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December 6, 2025 at 8:45 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'The idea of the ‘swivel-eyed-loon’ has completely moved camp from the right to the left'

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...

✍️ Julie Burchill
The comedy genius of Zarah Sultana
As both of the great Spectator writers Madeline Grant and Gareth Roberts have pointed out here recently, the element of farce in British politics is notable as never before. Miss Grant opined that…
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December 6, 2025 at 8:15 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Tom’s England of the 1940s and 1950s was provincial, almost pastoral.

✍️ Charles Moore

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The conservatism of Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard, who died last week, never wrote a memoir, but he did sort of speak one. Just over ten years ago, he told me that he and his new wife, Sabrina Guinness, had become tenants of an old…
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December 6, 2025 at 8:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
'Public anger at both Labour and the Tories remains palpable and Farage remains overwhelmingly the greatest beneficiary of the protest vote'

www.spectator.co.uk/article/has-...

✍️ Tim Shipman
Has Reform peaked?
The week ends as it began, with Keir Starmer outlining plans to curb child poverty, news that Rachel Reeves won’t face a formal investigation into whether she misled the markets over her Budget,…
www.spectator.co.uk
December 6, 2025 at 8:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
While a number of the measures in today’s policy bundle have already been announced, there are a few new elements.

✍️ Lucy Dunn
Keir Starmer says ending child poverty is Labour’s ‘moral mission’
The Prime Minister has unveiled plans that he claims will lift some 550,000 children out of poverty by the end of the decade.
www.spectator.co.uk
December 5, 2025 at 3:00 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
From what Steerpike has heard, Farage would be doing better than Your Party organisers if he managed to get their co-founders into the same room…

✍️ Steerpike
Farage: Corbyn and Sultana should ask me for tips
To Reform’s Nigel Farage, who managed to dominate headlines today after he took a pop at the Beeb on Thursday afternoon. But that wasn’t all he was there to discuss: he blasted the Labour government’s...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 5, 2025 at 2:15 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The actions of Ireland, Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands risk turning Eurovision into an instrument of hostility.

✍️ Angela Epstein
Boycotting Israel could kill Eurovision
The actions of Ireland, Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands risk turning Eurovision into an instrument of hostility
www.spectator.co.uk
December 5, 2025 at 2:00 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
India, the land of the future, has surged to become the world’s fifth-largest economy. Russia, the land of the past, now hovers at the fringes.

✍️ Mark Brolin

www.spectator.co.uk/article/ther...
There's nothing equal about Russia's relationship with India
India, the land of the future, has surged to become the world’s fifth-largest economy. Russia, the land of the past, now hovers at the fringes
www.spectator.co.uk
December 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
It is important that we all understand the sheer evil of what has been done and what has been hidden from us by the state.

✍️ David Shipley

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The evil of the grooming gangs is finally being exposed
It has now been six weeks since the inquiry into ‘Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse’ fell into chaos. Over the course of a several days numerous survivors quit – claiming that the civil…
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December 5, 2025 at 11:30 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
Is this the EU that David Lammy and Keir Starmer wish to rejoin, one run by Germans for Germans?

✍️ Gavin Mortimer

www.spectator.co.uk/article/davi...
David Lammy is wrong about Brexit and the EU
Is this the European Union that David Lammy and Keir Starmer wish to rejoin, one run by Germans for Germans?
www.spectator.co.uk
December 5, 2025 at 11:00 AM
thespectator1828.bsky.social
The sort of sweeping solutions that sound easy are often neither easy nor, when it comes to it, solutions.

✍️ Druin Burch
Why GPs are reluctant about online booking
'Moaning Minnies' is how the Health Secretary Wes Streeting has described GPs opposing his rollout of online appointment booking
www.spectator.co.uk
December 5, 2025 at 8:30 AM