The Critics | The Spectator

Yesterday

July 16, 2026

Chinese puzzle or matryoshka doll – the complexity of Sino-Russia relations

China and Russia are twins. Both are great Asian land empires; both are continental, multi-ethnic powers that expanded by pushing forward their borders rather than by crossing oceans; both have a deep tradition of autocracy that survives to this day; and both (more plausibly in China’s case) believe that their social contract, ideology and system of government is a universal one superior to all others. In Entangled Empires, the German historians Sören Urbansky and Martin Wagner explore the convoluted story of Russo-Chinese relations from the moment in the mid-17th century that roving Cossack bands bumped up against Siberian tribes who owed fealty to Beijing up to the latest performative amity between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Count Binface

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a triumph

Incredible stories, otherworldly creatures, false identities, a cavalcade of trickery: the original Odyssey is packed with everything you could want from a big-screen blockbuster. And like all great stories, it’s more than just a fantasy adventure. It’s about survival, marriage, truth, what it means to be a man and much more. It’s also roughly 2,700 years old, and by picking it for his latest movie, Sir Christopher Nolan has definitively proved that the old ones are the best. But why, really, has he decided to go Greek? Screenwriters have always been suckers for a good “coming home” story. It was such a popular genre in ancient times that the Greeks even coined a name for it: “nostos.

Wednesday

July 15, 2026

Charles Cornish-Dale

Death of a looksmaxxer

Is the looksmaxxer a morality tale for our time – a sort of Hogarthian parable about everything, or at least some of the main things, that ail us as a society in 2026? After all, could there be a greater indictment of the vanity of the vainest society in history than a young man who devotes his entire waking life to improving his appearance, and not only that, documents every second on camera for a legion of adoring fans and imitators? An otherwise perfectly handsome, fortunate young man obsessing so much over his looks that he spends a portion of each day hitting his face with a small rock hammer. The modern individual is concerned with optimizing himself without limits, without any goal beyond optimization itself There are other, darker, interpretations of looksmaxxing.

Tuesday

July 14, 2026

Sabrina Philip

Meet the man road-tripping across America in a giant pear

Inflation drives us to think ahead: plan out grocery trips, buy in bulk, carpool. One young man had an unorthodox way of funding his summer road-trip across America as gas got more expensive: he constructed a life-size pear on his moped. Twenty-four-year-old Andrew Glubbey has 19,000 followers on his Instagram account, @glubbey. His profile has grown since the start of the road trip as he adventures in his self-built pear car from Florida to Washington State. “I've talked to a lot of people that are like, ‘I could never do that or I would never do that with that kind of thing’,” Glubbey tells me.

Monday

July 13, 2026

Terry Barnes

Why Sam Neill was so loved

Actor Sam Neill, whose unexpected death was announced today by his family, was claimed as a son by not one, but three countries. Neill’s light-hearted description of his highly-successful vigneron business reflected his approach to his acting career Born in Northern Ireland, grown up in New Zealand and first making his name in Australia, Neill was more than the “Jurassic Park actor” as first reports of his death labeled him. From the time he first enjoyed the spotlight in the 1970s Australian film, My Brilliant Career, and his BAFTA-winning portrayal of the enigmatic Sidney Reilly in television’s Reilly, Ace of Spies, to his most recent work, Neill’s career was as versatile as it was broad. Chester Campbell in Peaky Blinders was Cardinal Wolsey in The Tudors.

Sam Neill

On the importance of dogs

The actor Sam Neill has died at the age of 78. Here is a column he wrote for The Spectator in 2014. Last week, my dog left me. Walked out. Gone and left me for another man. I knew what had happened when I returned to the vineyard after a week or two abroad. As soon as I got out of my truck, there he was, running right past me without so much as a how d’you do. I couldn’t help it – I’m afraid I yelled after him, “Listen, you little shit, I saved your life! One day from death row you were, and this is what I get?” A house without a dog is oddly empty. I grew up with dogs I suppose you think I should be heartbroken. I’m not really. Truth is, I liked him well enough, but I never really loved him. That’s hard to admit; you are meant to love your pets unreservedly.

Monday

July 6, 2026

Alexander Larman

The vulgarity of the Swift-Kelce wedding

When Taylor Swift, the billionaire pop star, announced her engagement to Travis Kelce, the rather less wealthy (although still multi-millionaire) NFL player, she chose to mark the occasion by declaring, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” It was rather a nice way for Swift to refer to herself and her forthcoming nuptials. Those who, like me, have always been fans of both her and her music had hopes that her wedding to Kelce would not become the usual hideous exercise in celebrity tackiness. Boy, was I wrong.

Toby Young

The World Cup has revived American soft power

Not only where the England fans outnumbered by 30 to one inside the Azteca stadium, but on their way to and from the game they had to run a gauntlet of Mexico fans, including the Anti-Globalist Assembly, a far left group that promised to target England supporters because of Britain’s history of colonial rule. The local police advised the visiting fans not to hang around the area after the game – and with good reason. After Mexico beat Ecuador last week, over a million people gathered outside the Azteca to celebrate and four fans died in the crush. Contrast that with the experience of football supporters attending games in the United States.

Saturday

June 27, 2026

Richard Bratby

Fresh, original Mozart

It’s spring in Vienna; well, OK, it’s early summer but it’s a gray day when Mozart doesn’t make you feel younger and I reckon this new release from Alim Beisembayev will do just that. In a world of infinite entertainment possibilities, Beisembayev has done the hard bit – the choosing – for you. Here we have two late piano concertos (Mozart wrote them between the ages of 30 and 32, as his own solo career wound down) charged with a grandeur, a playfulness and an endless smiling compassion that will come as a glorious corrective to anyone whose last experience of Mozart involved bodily fluids and confectionery in Sky’s hellish remake of Amadeus.

James Delingpole

The Roswell incident is the setting for an enjoyably old-fashioned caper

Aliens are very fashionable right now. Steven Spielberg recently announced that they are real and have been visiting us since for ever – but then he does have a poorly reviewed new movie to push. Trump’s White House, meanwhile, has been busily trolling us with hints that it knows more about the subject than it has hitherto let on. I personally think it’s all bollocks – or, if you believe Project Blue Beam, worse than bollocks. But whichever camp you fit into, I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy the three-part documentary series The Alien Autopsy Scandal. It has the feel of one of those old-fashioned capers where an unlikely band of English eccentrics with specialist skills – butchery, model-making monsters for Dr.

Peter Parker

The problem with ‘queer art’

In 1911, Duncan Grant’s “Bathing” went on display as part of a design scheme for the dining room of the Borough Polytechnic in Southwark. This large painting depicts a group of strongly muscled male bathers diving, swimming and hauling themselves into a boat. Only one of them is wearing a bathing slip, and while this kind of spectacle might have been familiar to anyone educated at a public school at this period, the art critic of the Times complained that it could well have “a degenerative influence on the children of the working class.” The picture now hangs in Tate Britain, and is used on the gallery’s website to direct people to an account of “Queer Life and Art.

Bryan Appleyard

Alien fever shows no signs of abating

These two books are about aliens – intelligent beings who may or may not have visited our planet. Jonathan Caplan is a distinguished lawyer and believer; David Lavelle is a journalist and skeptic. Aliens have always been with us. For at least 4,000 years there have been reports of strange visitations assumed to come from heaven, hell or simply the universe. Angels and demons were commonplace, but they were eventually replaced by technology-based visions, most often flying saucers. These could be quietly ignored until 1947, when postwar alien fever was sparked in Roswell, New Mexico. Metal and rubber debris were found which the US Army initially claimed were parts of a “flying disc.

Anne Sebba

There will be blood – the vital work of field transfusion units

Most conventional World War Two military histories focus on weapons, materiel and even the manpower needed for a decisive victory over Hitler and the Axis powers. Little has been written about blood as a strategic resource. However, a pioneering service of specially trained medics who worked dangerously close to the front lines, pumping blood into the veins of battle casualties, not only saved lives but contributed significantly to winning the war. They did this by returning men to the front line and boosting morale by persuading them that, if wounded, they had the maximum chance of life.

Friday

June 26, 2026

Deborah Ross

Toy Story 5 contains delicious touches

Toy Story 5 – do we need it? One worries for the narrative integrity of characters when an IP is thrashed to death like this. The latest installment, however, does address one of the most pressing dilemmas of modern childhood (screen time) and whether it will be the end of toys. (‘Extinction… Not again!’ cries Rex, the dinosaur.) It is timely, with some delicious touches – Woody now has a bald spot So it is timely, with some delicious touches – Woody now has a bald spot. And while it isn’t as entertaining as the first three and stumbles at the finishing line, it may be better than the fourth, with its horrible doll Gabby Gabby.

Horatio Clare

A trove of avian lore and history

I finished reading The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, and leaned out of my attic window to smoke and think about it, when there among the tumbling spires of the apple trees was a spasm of fluttering and a flurry of notes: two spotted flycatchers! One held the air for a moment, hovering and looking me in the eye, and then darted back to its perch while the other called. It has been years since we have seen them, and straight to my bird books I went. The Book of Birds was no help because it does not include the spotted flycatcher and is not designed as a recognition guide. Instead, Macfarlane writes: "Ours is a field guide with a difference... It asks not 'What is that bird?' but 'Who is that bird?' The aim is to help readers identify with them.

Alexander Larman

Why are there no good films about Independence Day?

This month marks 30 years since the release of Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, a science-fiction blockbuster best viewed as the anti-Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg’s 1977 film suggested we would be better off finding common ground with extraterrestrial visitors; Emmerich’s more bombastic picture stuck to the (surprisingly Trumpian) idea that aliens were evil, wished to destroy our planet and must be resisted at all costs, preferably with nuclear weapons. It is not a subtle film, with the most fondly remembered moment coming in the famous shot when the White House is destroyed by an alien spacecraft.

Simon Jenkins

The making of America

The story of the United States was determined from the start by the manner of its birth. The original 13 English colonies may seem lost in the distant past. Yet it was their diversity that was the key to their union. The creation of the US reflected the tensions of 17th-century England, pitting the Puritan republicans of Massachusetts against the landed gentry of Virginia, Quaker New Jersey against Catholic Maryland. The Founding Fathers resolved these tensions by instituting the concept of states’ rights. Their Constitution was a tissue of compromise, yet it was robust. What served to unite 13 colonies still holds together the mightiest nation on Earth.

Alexander Larman

What went wrong with the Madonna biopic?

Madonna Louise Ciconne has had one of the more eventful American lives of the past half-century, and it is little wonder that she might wish to depict it on screen in a big-budget film. After all, as the recent success of the Queen and Michael Jackson biopics have shown, it doesn’t matter how good the pictures are, as long as they include the best-known songs that made the artists household names and a smattering of the drama that led to their current eminence. Even if, as in Michael, it was the decision to omit most of the really interesting events that led to cries of whitewashing. Yet there’s been no Madonna biopic, and this is not because she has refused to cooperate. Far from it.

Tuesday

June 23, 2026

Kelly Chapman

My night with Woah Vicky

It was a sticky night at the lower east side menswear store "Le Pere," where dozens of downtown New York's sceney regulars filled the room to see the viral phenomenon “Woah Vicky” read her original poems. Publicist Mitchell Jackson has a nose for this generation’s enfants terribles – besides Vicky herself, a few of his clients dotted the crowd, including playwright Matt Gasda and the memoirist Caroline Calloway. The reading drew the usual familiar faces, including celebrity photographer Matthew Weinberger, Byline co-founder Gutes Guterman, and writers Mackenzie Thomas and Michael Crumplar. Woah Vicky, the marquee reader of the evening, is a 26-year-old influencer from Atlanta, who first became famous as a teenager for a string of racial controversies and celebrity feuds.

Friday

June 12, 2026

Elizabeth Garner

The importance of fairy tales in testing times

In the realm of magic and imagination, human nature can be better understood than in the world of our everyday lives: “The best of our tales do not lie or die.” It is a bold claim, which the folklorist Jack Zipes explores across continents and class in a series of essays. He guides the reader from the origin of oral storytelling, through medieval writings, to 17th-century literary salons and finally to today’s cinema screens. In the course of this journey, he focuses on the specific genre of the “wonder tale,” in which “those who are naive and simple are able to succeed because they are untainted and can recognize the wondrous signs... They have not been spoiled by conventionalism, power or rationalism.

James Delingpole

Why I’m increasingly drawn to optimistic sci-fi

You know you’re getting old when you see Geena Davis from Thelma & Louise cast as a granny sex symbol and Alfred Molina as a character so elderly you’re supposed to believe that he could drop at any time. This is one of the running gags of The Boroughs, a sci-fi/monster series set in an upmarket, Stepford Wives-esque desert retirement village, and clearly aimed at aging farts like I very nearly am who imagine themselves to be much younger and groovier than they now are. “Don’t worry, wrinkly kids,” the series reassures us. “By the time you hit your seventies you’ll be taking more drugs and having more sex – even crazy, orgy sex [note to squeamish viewers: this scene takes place off camera] – than ever before.

Jane Stannus

The Catholic Church has turned on the faithful

The Catholic world has been in an uproar since February, when the Society of Saint Pius X, a Catholic order of traditionalist priests, announced its intention to consecrate bishops with or without papal approbation, for the second time since 1988. On May 26, the identities of their four candidates were revealed: one American, one Swiss, and two Frenchmen. The Society acknowledges the extraordinary nature of its action, but insists that the Church is in a serious crisis. Without their own bishops, it says, no one will ordain priests trained exclusively in traditional Catholic doctrine and liturgy, and the faithful who rely on them will be left without recourse.

Sam Leith

Bond makes a great video game

Grade: A– He may not know how to make a drinkable martini, but James Bond makes a great videogame. GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 was the first, but there’s always been potential there for more. After all, the character has all the stuff that the medium excels at. He has car chases, he fights, he shoots people, he blows things up and he appeals strongly to adolescent boys. In 007: First Light, he gets ample opportunity to do all those things, sometimes in very quick succession. Our man here is not yet a wintry Daniel Craig, a suave Sean Connery or a campy Roger Moore: when we first encounter him in the mandatory pre-credits sequence he’s not even a spy.

Lloyd Evans

Michelle Terry is ferocious in Brecht’s simplistic tutorial

Bertolt Brecht’s classic, Mother Courage, is about a female war profiteer who drags a wagon of supplies through no man’s land and sells them to bedraggled soldiers. During the story, she loses both her children and she discovers that war is not as marvelous as she previously thought. This spiritual journey evidently mattered to Brecht, who was born in 1898 in Augsburg, and who greeted the outbreak of World War One with enthusiasm only to become disillusioned by the mechanized slaughter of the trenches. His play is aimed at wrong-headed militaristic numbskulls who believe that war is good rather than bad. If you already hold pacifist views, you may find his tutorial a little simplistic.

Robin Simon

The art of resurrecting forgotten artists

A retired priest in North Wales once told me that after the war he had been asked by Billy Butlin to buy 19th-century paintings for the holiday-camp chapels, because they were going cheap. One he bought, for 49 guineas in 1947, was William Dyce’s 1835 “Lamentation of the Dead Christ.” In 1983, after the Butlin’s chapels had closed, it made a handy £125,000 at auction, when it was bought by Aberdeen Art Gallery. As late as 1962, Lord Leighton’s great “Flaming June” (1895) was sold for £50. Today? Millions. Talk about “the bubble reputation.” The pattern of artistic fame followed by subsequent obscurity has been repeated through the centuries.

Christopher Webb

Will robots simply bore us to extinction?

A few years ago, when ChatGPT and Claude were beginning to take off, some tech leaders seemed to develop a curious interest in oceanography. Consider, for instance, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s suggestion in 2023 that AI ought to be compared to a “tidal wave”; or Mustafa Suleyman’s book on AI, The Coming Wave (2024), in which the DeepMind cofounder talks urgently about an “impending deluge” (while repeatedly warning us that the “wave is coming,” and, even more alarmingly, “the coming wave really is coming.”) It didn’t take long for the analogy to spread. The IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva would liken the technology to a “tsunami hitting the labor market.

Lynn Barber

Wham! How George Michael shot to stardom straight from school

It turns out that the writer Sathnam Sanghera, “the boy with the topknot,” has been a besotted George Michael fan since the age of eight, when he started listening to his older sisters’ Wham! records. This was an unusual thing to be as a Sikh growing up in Wolverhampton and it got him teased at school. But he stuck with it. So when a friend suggested that he write something fun to compensate for the years of heavy historical research he’d put into his excellent book Empireland, he decided to set off on a sort of pilgrimage in search of his dead hero. First stop was Mondial Cars, a showroom in Northwood, north London, which used to be the Bel Air restaurant, where the teenage Michael worked as a DJ.

Thursday

June 11, 2026

Julia Yost

Not all portrayals of Sherlock Holmes hit the mark

A great literary character, like a gemstone, has many facets. Sherlock Holmes looks different depending on where the light hits him: reasoning machine or bohemian creative, misogynist or white knight, disciplined professional or (in Dr. Watson’s words) “self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.” Film adaptations, of which there are no end, pick and choose their angles. Purists rush to tell us which onscreen Holmeses are valid and which travesty Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Occasionally the purists themselves betray Holmes, who had more going on than they recall. As for me, I’m purer than the purists. But when it comes to onscreen Sherlocks, I’m one big soft spot. Even by my liberal standards, Amazon’s recent streaming series Young Sherlock fails.

Gustav Temple

The Sun Also Rises is still a great American novel

To pinpoint the precise moment Ernest Hemingway came up with the idea for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, which is celebrating its centenary this year, is not difficult. All we have to do is follow the trail back to Pamplona. In 1925, after a cold winter in Paris, a 25-year-old Hemingway was keen to return to the San Fermín bullfighting festival in the Basque town of Pamplona, near the northern coast of Spain. He had yet to make his mark as a writer, although he was surrounded by some of the heavyweights of expatriate literature: Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ford Madox Ford, all of whom believed Hem had a future as a novelist.