Best of the Spectator

Last week, President Xi Jinping visited Serbia. An unexpected destination, you might think, but in fact the links between Beijing and Belgrade go back decades. One event, in particular, has linked the two countries – and became a seminal moment in how the Chinese remember their history. In 1999, the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed by US-led Nato forces. Three Chinese nati

Freddy Gray talks to writer and philosopher Curtis Yarvin about how Alexander Hamilton was America's Napoleon, why Putin is more of a royal than King Charles, and why Yarvin admires FDR. Yarvin is voting for Joe Biden at the next election, but not for the reasons you might think. Could Biden 2024 strengthen the case for American isolationism? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Mega

Freddy Gray speaks to the journalist Nellie Bowles about her new book: Morning after the Revolution: Dispatches from the wrong side of History. As someone who had fit into the progressive umbrella, her book recounts issues that arose when she started to question the nature of the movement itself. Freddy and Nellie discuss the challenges of the progressive-conservative divide, bias

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Philosopher Slavoj Zizek takes us through his diary including his Britney Spears Theory of Action (1:08); Angus Colwell reports from the front line of the pro-Palestinian student protests (8:09); Svitlana Morenets provides an update on what’s going on in Georgia, where tensions between pro-EU and pro-Russian factions are heading to a crunch po

Lisa Cameron was born in Glasgow and grew up in East Kilbride, the constituency she now represents. After three elections under the SNP, she memorably defected to the Scottish Conservatives in 2023. At the time, Humza Yousaf described it as the least surprising news he’d had since becoming first minister. On the podcast, Lisa tells Katy about the need for increased investment i

This week: On Monday, tents sprung up at Oxford and Cambridge as part of a global, pro-Palestinian student protest which began at Columbia University. In his cover piece, Yascha Mounk, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, explains how universities in both the US and the UK have misguidedly harboured and actively encouraged absurdist activism on campuses. Yascha joined the podc

This week, my guest on the Book Club podcast is the poet Jackie Kay, whose magnificent new book May Day combines elegy and celebration. She tells me about her adoptive parents – a communist trade unionist and a leading figure in CND – and growing up in a household where teenage rebellion could mean going to church. We also discuss her beginnings as a poet, her debt to Robbie Bu

Michael Zee is an author, cook and the creator of SymmetryBreakfast, which started as an Instagram account, before amassing over 670,000 followers and becoming one of the ‘most popular food books of 2016’. He is now based in Italy and known for his particular brand of British-Chinese fusion food. His third book, Zao Fan: Breakfast of China, is out now. On the podcast he tells

Freddy speaks to Norman Ornstein, political scientist and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. They discuss the possibility of Donald Trump becoming a dictator, his ongoing court cases, and if there's a double standard in the treatment of Trump vs Biden.

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Sean Thomas worries that Paris has lost some of its charm (1:21); Kara Kennedy reports on US-style opioids arriving in Britain (8:43); Philip Hensher describes how an affair which ruined one woman would be the making of another (15:32); Damian Thompson reflects on his sobriety and his battle with British chemists (23:58); and, Toby Young argues