February 2020 Issue

FROM THE MAGAZINE

February 2020

The Spectator has, since its founding in 1828, always stood on the side of free expression and thought. Without those freedoms, civilized society will quickly fall apart.’

I was expelled from the Electoral College before I was even admitted

Wayward electors run in our family

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

What is a ‘tergiversation’?

The Latin for ‘back’ is ‘tergum’

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine

Cat cafés mix business with pleasure

Paws-itively purr-fect

By Revd Steve Morris

From the Magazine

How many Democrats have made it to the first primary in the last 40 years?

Back in 2016, only three Democrats made it to Iowa

By The Spectator

From the Magazine

Internet

You can’t cancel the truth

The creeps won’t win

By Meghan Murphy

From the Magazine

Education

We’re all high-schoolers now

In the age of social media, we have the largest mobs in the history of mankind

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Internet

The rise of cancel chic

Liberal journalists are so desperate to be canceled they’ve begun to form secret societies around the theme

By Chadwick Moore

From the Magazine

Europe

How will post-Brexit Britain find its way in the world?

Those who believe Britain can only trade effectively with the nearest markets know little history

By Robert Tombs

From the Magazine

Middle East

How far will Trump go in Iran?

The Tehran students were chanting in the streets: ‘Our enemy is right here, they’re lying that it’s America’

By Paul Wood

From the Magazine

Europe

After Brexit

A US-Britain trade deal would be a boon for Boris Johnson and Donald Trump

By Ross Clark

From the Magazine

Internet

The mob and me: my life in the crosshairs

Bars that served me were harassed and ‘Hate Has No Home Here’ signs appeared on my lawn

By Gavin McInnes

From the Magazine

Internet

The left’s real cause is muzzling its opponents

The kind of people who want to cancel someone are looking not for an apology, but for vengeance

By Amber Duke

From the Magazine

Europe

French disconnection: how Emmanuel Macron went from savior to failure

Macron needs help and his new best friend, bizarrely, is Britain’s prime minister

By Jonathan Miller

From the Magazine

Politics

Donald Trump, president of peace

The emotional anti-war right is susceptible to its own wishful thinking about the irenic intentions of Iran

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Education

So you’ve been canceled. Here’s how to fight back

Let’s make 2020 the year cancel culture gets canceled

By Toby Young

From the Magazine

Education

Defend your friends

The silence of decent people allows the bullies to get away with it

By Douglas Murray

From the Magazine

Spectator Editorial

Tyranny of the minority

Cancel culture is real. It destroys lives, ruins careers, causes suicide and silences reasonable debate

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Art

The TV show that rots young minds

Euphoria is doing for young people’s morality what British Bomber Command and the USAAF did for the architecture of Dresden

By Taki

From the Magazine

Books

Who is he?

The guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend talks to Sam Leith about madness, sleep bubbles and his new novel

By Sam Leith

From the Magazine

Art

Urbino legend

The chance of a lifetime for lovers of Raphael

By James Hankins

From the Magazine

Books

Finding the Lost Girls

D.J. Taylor tracks down the proofreaders and heartbreakers who were the toast of Blitz-era London

By D.J. Taylor

From the Magazine

Books

The prophetic Raymond Chandler

Chandler’s California is a cultural desert stretching along the western edge of a continental wasteland

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

From the Magazine

Art

Cyrus the Great

A night at Blues Alley with the mighty Chestnut

By Jacob Heilbrunn

From the Magazine

Art

Wells farrago: gaslighting the Invisible Man

Priapic shower-stalking and domestic haunting were never Wells’s style – not on the page, anyway

By Will Lloyd

From the Magazine

Books

The way we read now

The thrill is gone for lovers of fiction. Joseph Bottum on the strange death of the novel

By Joseph Bottum

From the Magazine

Art

Land of hope and Victoria: The Kinks’ lost empire

By 1969, Churchill was dead and the Kinks, as an album group, were toast

By Luke Haines

From the Magazine

Art

J’accuse…!

The banning of Roman Polanski’s film about the Dreyfus affair is history repeating itself

By John R. MacArthur

From the Magazine

Art

The Witcher’s hours

Medieval gore for millennial gamers

By James Delingpole

From the Magazine

Art

‘I aspire to write for posterity’

Tom Stoppard talks about inspiration, growing older and his new play, Leopoldstadt

By Douglas Murray

From the Magazine

Books

The Italian job

A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism by Caroline Moorehead reviewed

By Clare Mulley

From the Magazine

Books

A house divided

The Doll by Ismail Kadare reviewed

By Boyd Tonkin

From the Magazine

Books

Winter wonderland

The Frozen River: Seeking Silence in the Himalaya by James Crowden reviewed

By Mark Cocker

From the Magazine

Books

‘A system at odds with the Constitution’

A conversation with Christopher Caldwell about America today

By Dominic Green

From the Magazine

Architecture

Roger Scruton: a year in which much was lost – but more gained

Despite everything, I have so much to be grateful for

By Roger Scruton

From the Magazine

Art

Comedy in the era of Twitter outrage: An interview with Ricky Gervais

The comedian on why he will never apologize for his jokes

By Andrew Doyle

From the Magazine

Life

Home

The evolution of Vermont

I’ve wintered here all my life and during that time Vermont has, like old Digby’s marital status, seen three permutations

By Digby Dent

From the Magazine

Place

Palermo without borders

At first glimpse there appears to be no serious backlash against incomers

By Kapil Komireddi

From the Magazine

Place

Cape of many colors

Some call Chatham slightly precious, too sure of its own perfection. They have a point

By Benjamin Riley

From the Magazine

Humor

Speed-dating in Portland with Godfrey Elfwick

If you have a ‘type’ when it comes to matters of the heart, then your narrow-mindedness sickens me

By Godfrey Elfwick

From the Magazine

Diary

The Democrats shouldn’t nominate some outlier candidate on a gamble

The British election of 2019 offers them an obvious warning

By David Frum

From the Magazine

Home

Generation Gender Reveal — the weirdest fad of the 2010s

In the vacuous, conservative world of Instagram, it’s just easier to accept that the color pink is shorthand for femininity

By Lara Prendergast

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

In praise of the Midwestern steakhouse

Frozen in culinary time

By Zack Christenson

From the Magazine

Drink

Let’s eat: Israeli cuisine is coming of age

Hummus is the cement of the Levant and claimed, like the land, by both Israelis and Palestinians

By Josh Glancy

From the Magazine

Drink

A Trumpian feast

Dining out at the Trump DC

By Freddy Gray

From the Magazine

Drink

California bound

Wine may have been born in Virginia, but it matured elsewhere

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Drink

My vegan hell

Veganuary was not for chickens

By Billy McMorris

From the Magazine

Drink

The conservative case for opposing ‘ag-gag’ laws

Animals deserve to be treated well in life and that consumers deserve to know how animals are treated

By Ben Sixsmith

From the Magazine