Category: Spectator Australia

If only the Queen had been in charge of Brexit we may have avoided rolling heads, rolling eyes and years of utter dismay. On Saturday, Buckingham Palace released a statement informing us that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will no longer use their HRH titles.

Steering the ship of state isn’t the easiest experience. Not only is it a matter of always tacking between Scylla and Charybdis. Even senior officers on the bridge — let alone the other ranks — will try to push the tiller different ways. And if that’s not enough the captain, the

The ‘third way’ of being a senior royal – representing the Queen one day, earning serious money the next, was always untenable. When Harry and Meghan first made public their desire to change the status quo they described it as a ‘progressive new role’. Critics, better versed in the workings

In the end, it took just over a week for Prince Harry to announce and finalise the terms of his exit from the royal family. The settlement: he and Meghan have agreed to give up their ‘royal highness’ titles . They’ll still be entitled to them, but won’t use them.

It’s excruciating. My eye rolls are so severe and unstoppable that my eyelids are sore. My forehead is red from my slapping. My right thigh is bruised from my slamming with outrage. My ribs hurt from derisory laughter. All this self-harm is the fault of America’s

Addis Ababa airport  This morning I caught a connecting flight via Addis Ababa’s Bole airport. For me this place has always been like a magical wardrobe, leading me towards different adventures across Africa. Today Ethiopia is the world’s fastest-growing economy and Bole is a continental crossroads, teeming with religious pilgrims,

In November last year, an internet video made by a 17-year-old American went viral. The video was less than a minute long and began with its creator, Feroza Aziz, looking directly into the camera and talking viewers through a makeup tutorial. ‘The first thing you need to do is grab

Since Robert Lowell’s sudden death in 1977 his critical reputation has suffered from the usual post-mortem slump. Interest in Lowell’s life, however, remains as strong as during his celebrity heyday, when he graced the cover of Time magazine and marched on the Pentagon with Norman Mailer. A biography (excellent, by

Just before Christmas our cat Runty died and I wasn’t in any rush to find a replacement. I like cats well enough but I wouldn’t consider them one of life’s essentials. You can’t ride them; they won’t come with you on walks or bark at burglars or gaze at you

Jonathon Green is a tosher. As a lexicographer he dives into archives and emerges with armfuls of slangy curios, such as ‘bell-polisher’ and ‘bitchin’. In Sounds & Furies he sifts English slang from tosheroons as diverse as the Wife of Bath to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Green’s passion for

Asked to name British institutions they’d rather not see shaken to the foundations, many consumers would list the John Lewis Partnership and its Waitrose supermarket subsidiary just behind the House of Windsor. Indeed some might rank the employee-owned retail group ahead, on the grounds that Her Majesty’s family doesn’t sell

White House Farm began last week on ITV; a six-part factual drama about the notorious murders. I play Sheila Caffell, Jeremy Bamber’s sister and one of the victims. She was initially thought to have committed the crimes, and was described in the tabloids as ‘crazed’ and ‘deranged’ — an unfair