Today

1 Oct 2021
America’s campus culture wars come for St Andrews

The University of St Andrews has been keen on American imports for some time. Americans make up 16 per cent of undergraduates, by far a larger proportion than any other British higher education institution. The university, hungry for foreign money (international students pay £25,100 a year, compared to £9,250 a year for English, Welsh and Northern Irish students) sends recruiters to high schools in the States to woo potential students. When I was at St Andrews a decade ago, I knew more Americans than Scots. Mostly, the university’s connections with the US have been good. Yet there is one American import St Andrews could do without: campus culture wars. Today’s Times reports that St Andrews is no longer allowing students to matriculate unless they pass modules on sustainability, diversity, consent and good academic practice.

America’s campus culture wars come for St Andrews

Yesterday

30 Sep 2021
The Edition
Running on empty: the government is out of fuel – and ideas
39 min listen

In this week’s episode: is Boris Johnson running on empty or is a weak opposition giving him the momentum he needs? Kate Andrews asks in her cover story this week if Boris Johnson’s government has run out of ideas – as well as petrol. Katy Balls also writes in the magazine that the opposition seems unable to take advantage of the government’s failures. Katy and Kate join William on the podcast to give their takes on the state of both parties. (00:51) Also this week: what is behind China’s latest crackdown on cryptocurrency? Ian Williams writes in this week’s Spectator that the CCP’s latest move to criminalise anyone dealing in cryptocurrency is to clear the decks for China’s new, state-sanctioned digital currency.

Running on empty: the government is out of fuel – and ideas

Thursday

23 Sep 2021
The Edition
New world order: can Britain, America and Australia contain China?
43 min listen

In this week’s episode: can the new Aukus alliance contain China? In his cover piece this week, James Forsyth writes that the new Aukus pact has fixed the contours of the next 30 years of British foreign policy. Britain, he says, is no longer trying to stay neutral in the competition between America and China. On the podcast James is joined by Francis Pike, author of Empires at War: A Short History of Modern Asia Since World War II, who also wrote for the magazine this week, giving the case against Aukus. (00:45)Also this week: what can be done to save the Church of England’s parishes? Back in February, Emma Thompson, a rural parish volunteer, and the Reverend Marcus Walker, Rector of St Bartholomew the Great, London, wrote pieces for the Spectator expressing their concern for the future of the Church of England’s parish system.

New world order: can Britain, America and Australia contain China?

Thursday

16 Sep 2021
The Edition
Payday: who’s afraid of rising wages?
45 min listen

In this week’s episode: is Brexit to blame for the rise in blue-collar wages? With labour shortages driving wages up, many have blamed Britain’s removal from the single market. However, this week in The Spectator, Matthew Lynn argues that shocks and price signals are how the free-market economy reorganises, and that we are experiencing a global trend just like America and Germany. Simon Jenkins, columnist for the Guardian, joins Matthew to discuss. (00:45)Also this week: the British Medical Association has dropped its opposition to assisted dying, but is euthanasia really a dignified and painless process? Dr Joel Zivot asks this question in The Spectator magazine, drawing upon his own experience as an expert witness against the use of lethal injection in America.

Payday: who’s afraid of rising wages?

Thursday

2 Sep 2021
Top dog: how animals captured politics

‘Bishops are a part of English culture,’ T.S. Eliot wrote in 1948, ‘and horses and dogs are a part of English religion.’ It was a joke. Is it still? Today the fervour for animal lives is so strong that at times it can certainly feel religious. Politicians like to tell us that we are a ‘nation of animal lovers’ because it is such an uncontroversial truth. But if love for animals comes at the expense of humans, that’s not an example of moral worth. It’s a sign of moral collapse. The evacuation of Kabul offered a clear example. Pen Farthing, a former soldier who had settled in the city, was offered a flight home, but said he would not travel without the dogs and cats in his animal sanctuary. It seemed preposterous.

Top dog: how animals captured politics

Thursday

19 Aug 2021
The Edition
America abandoned this fight before the Afghans did
39 min listen

On this week’s podcast:In the latest issue of The Spectator, we cover the Afghanistan issue extensively, looking at everything from why the West was doomed from the start, to how events in Afghanistan have transformed central Asian politics. On the podcast, journalist Paul Wood and our own deputy editor Freddy Gray, both of whom feature in this week’s issue, join Lara to talk Biden, Boris and the new 'progressive' Taliban. (00:37)'This is not your father's Taliban' - Paul WoodNext up, thousands of women whose menstrual cycles have been affected by the Covid vaccine have now come forward to make their symptoms known, including our host Lara Prendergast, who writes about her experience in this week's Spectator. We continue that conversation with Jessica Braun, who was the host of the Periodical podcast and Dr Joe Mountfield from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

America abandoned this fight before the Afghans did

Thursday

22 Jul 2021
The curious mythology of the Gosforth Cross

In the small Cumbrian village of Gosforth, in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church, there is a sandstone cross which has stood there since the 10th century. It’s tall, nearly 15 feet, which immediately distinguishes it from any other sculpted stone cross you might find in churchyards across Britain. Up close, it’s even more unusual. The imagery is weird: men wrestle with giant monsters that snake up the cross’s shaft. The depictions weren’t identified until 1883 when William Slater Calverley, a vicar and amateur antiquarian, realised that the cross doesn’t show Christian subjects at all. It shows scenes from Ragnarök, the end of the world in Viking mythology. On the west side of the cross there’s Loki, the god of mischief, bound in a cave with a serpent dripping venom into his eyes, his punishment for betraying the gods.

The curious mythology of the Gosforth Cross

Thursday

1 Jul 2021
The Edition
Staged: a handful of VIP events is no substitute for normality
37 min listen

19 July is approaching but what will life after ‘freedom day’ will look like? (01:19) Also on the podcast: what will Angela Merkel's departure mean for the EU? (14:12) And as many people fled the cities to the countryside during the pandemic, can a case still be made for urban life? (27:26)With The Spectator’s sketch writer and theatre critic Lloyd Evens; playwright James Graham; director of Eurointelligence Wolfgang Munchau; Independent columnist Mary Dejevsky; writer Ysenda Graham and Rory Sutherland, The Spectator’s Wiki Man columnist.Presented by William Moore.Produced by Sam Holmes, Natasha Feroze and Max Jeffery.

Staged: a handful of VIP events is no substitute for normality

Thursday

17 Jun 2021
The Edition
The new leviathan: the big state is back
48 min listen

It seems we are in a new President/Prime Minister alliance of big government spending, should we be excited or concerned? (00:44) Also on the podcast: Are the UK tabloids going woke? (15:00)? And in the wake of the pandemic are we ready to have a grown up conversation about death?(31:11)With Spectator Political Editor James Forsyth, Spectator Economics Editor Kate Andrews, former Editor of the Sun Kelvin MacKenzie, former Editor of the Observer Roger Alton, writer A.N. Wilson, science journalist Laura Spinney and Palliative Care Physician Kathryn Mannix and author of a With The End In Mind. Presented by William Moore.Produced by Cindy Yu, Natasha Feroze and Sam Russell.

The new leviathan: the big state is back

Thursday

27 May 2021

Thursday

25 Feb 2021
What kind of oyster-eater are you?

The latest fight between the EU and the UK isn’t over vaccines, but molluscs. Brussels won’t grant Britain a special export health licence for the trade of ‘live bivalve molluscs’ unless they are purified first. The problem is, once they’ve been purified they have to be eaten within 48 hours, which gives them too short a shelf life to be practical for export. This affects the trade of cockles, clams and mussels, but if the beleaguered British shellfish industry were to collapse, I think I’d be saddest about the oysters. Ours are some of the finest in the world. It’s no coincidence that three of London’s most famous restaurants — J. Sheekey, Rules and Wheeler’s — all began as oyster bars. Yet Britain is, for a maritime country, oddly uninterested in seafood.

What kind of oyster-eater are you?

Thursday

27 Aug 2020
The joy of commuting

I was on a train from Sussex to London, my first since lockdown, when I realised I like my commute. The thought worried me a little. What kind of weirdo have I become? A commute is a psychological hurdle, something to be endured, not enjoyed. What’s next? The giddy thrill of waiting in a queue? A root-canal fan club? There are some aspects to commuting I don’t enjoy — the expense of a season ticket, of course, and frustrating delays — but overall, yes, I do like it. And during lockdown I actually missed it. What makes my enjoyment even weirder is that I have no interest in trains. There are some big train enthusiasts in my family — my great uncle can point out inaccuracies in Ravilious’s depiction of a third-class Great Western Railway carriage — but I’m neutral at best.

The joy of commuting

Saturday

22 Feb 2020
How political is your bread board?

It’s not known which inspired Victorian first had the idea to take a chopping block and carve it into a circular ‘bread-platter’, as they were called, with a raised centre and decorated rim; but William Gibbs Rogers was the one to turn it into a craze. In the mid-19th century Rogers was considered one of Britain’s most accomplished wood-carvers. An 1847 issue of The Spectator said he had single-handedly ‘restored to carving the same interest and execution which it possessed in the best days of Grinling Gibbons’. His long list of wealthy patrons included Queen Victoria, who commissioned a wooden cradle for the infant Princess Louise. At some point in the 1830s or early 1840s Rogers began to carve beautiful, elaborate bread boards for aristocratic clients, who would personalise their commissions, turning his work into a sort of heraldry.

How political is your bread board?
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