52 min listen
Daniel Taub, former Israeli Ambassador to the UK, joins Damian Thompson to talk about his new book Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish art of constructive disagreement. In a fast-moving interview, Daniel explains how the art of arguing has shaped Jewish humour and scholarship, and Damian asks him about keeping kosher, life after death – and the influence of the Talmud on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
29 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Max Jeffery tracks down the Cambridge bike bandit (1:10); Tanya Gold says that selling bathwater is an easy way to exploit a sad male fetish (5:38); Madeline Grant examines the decline of period dramas (10:16); a visit to Lyon has Matthew Parris pondering what history doesn’t tell us (15:49); and, Calvin Po visits the new V&A East Storehouse (23:08). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
52 min listen
How Reform plans to win Just a year ago, Nigel Farage ended his self-imposed exile from politics and returned to lead Reform. Since then, Reform have won more MPs than the Green Party, two new mayoralties, a parliamentary by-election, and numerous councils. Now the party leads in every poll and, as our deputy political editor James Heale reveals in our cover article, is already planning for government. The party’s chair, tech entrepreneur Zia Yusuf, describes the movement as a ‘start-up’; and like a start-up, Reform is scaling up at speed. Among the 676 councillors elected last month, a number are considered more than ready to stand as MPs. James also
Thom Yorke has done us all a great service by exposing how unhinged, intolerant and, frankly, bigoted much of the supposedly ‘pro-Palestine’ set is. The Radiohead frontman and bandmate Jonny Greenwood have for years now been locked in a bitter beef with Israelophobic fans and fellow musicians, due to their dogged refusal to treat Israelis like moral lepers and insistence on still playing to – and with – them. In 2017, Radiohead ploughed ahead with a big tour show in Tel Aviv, despite outrage from all the usual suspects. Roger Waters even called Yorke a ‘prick’, which I suppose would only really sting if you subscribed to the old adage ‘it takes one to
28 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Arabella Byrne on the social minefield of private swimming pools (1:13); Sean Thomas says that not knowing where you are is one of the joys of travel (5:34); reviewing Helen Carr’s Sceptred Isle: A New History of the 14th Century, Mathew Lyons looks at the reality of a vivid century (11:34); reviewing Tim Gregory’s Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World, Bryan Appleyard analyses the three parties debating global warming (16:07); and, Chas Newkey-Burden looks back to the 1980s nuclear drama that paralysed his childhood, Threads (20:42). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
50 min listen
End of the rainbow: Pride’s fall What ‘started half a century ago as an afternoon’s little march for lesbians and gay men’, argues Gareth Roberts, became ‘a jamboree not only of boring homosexuality’ but ‘anything else that its purveyors consider unconventional’. Yet now Reform-led councils are taking down Pride flags, Pride events are being cancelled due to lack of funds, and corporate sponsors are ‘withdrawing their cold tootsies from the rainbow sock’. Has Pride suffered from conflation with ‘genderism’? Gareth joined the podcast to discuss, alongside diversity consultant Simon Fanshawe, one of the six original co-founders of Stonewall. (0:59) Next: people are forgetting how to read Philip Womack ‘can hear
Let us create a hypothetical situation in which we have a state funded broadcaster in perpetuity. Who would you wish to run this goliath? I know some of you are sullenly answering “Lee Westwood”, but let us move on from the politics of the issue. I thought about this question when listening to Tony Hall – Lord Hall- lamenting the death of Alan Yentob on the radio yesterday. Tony is a good, decent, man and a very competent administrator. I hope he will not mind too much if I say that in my dealings with him I saw a sharp and wary political intelligence, but no shaft of brilliance and
In the excellent BBC comedy series W1A, which poked a harsher degree of fun at its makers than many would have believed credible, there is one especially amusing throwaway gag. The hapless Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is taken on a tour of Broadcasting House, and briefly veers into a meeting room, where, to his surprise, he sees Salman Rushdie and Alan Yentob engaged in a game of arm wrestling. Both men look up at him in pained surprise, and a baffled Fletcher makes his excuses and leaves. I was reminded of this moment yesterday when the news broke of Yentob’s death, at the age of 78. My initial response was
38 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale analyses the splits in Labour over direction and policy (1:27); Angus Colwell asks if the ‘lanyard class’ are the new enemy (6:21); Alice Loxton explains why bite-sized histories have big appeal (9:58); Lloyd Evans reports on how Butlin’s is cashing in on nostalgia (15:00); Richard Bratby on Retrospect Opera, the non-profit record label that resurrects the forgotten works of British opera (20:40); Christopher Howse provides his notes of typos (27:27); and, Catriona Olding reflects on the death of her partner, the Spectator’s Jeremy Clarke, two years ago this week (32:15). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
44 min listen
The real Brexit betrayal: Starmer vs the workers ‘This week Starmer fell… into the embrace of Ursula von der Leyen’ writes Michael Gove in our cover article this week. He writes that this week’s agreement with the EU perpetuates the failure to understand Brexit’s opportunities, and that Labour ‘doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t exist to make the lives of the fortunate more favourable’. Michael makes the argument that ‘the real Brexit betrayal’ is Labour’s failure to understand how Brexit can protect British jobs and industries and save our manufacturing sector. Historian of the Labour Party Dr Richard Johnson, a politics lecturer at Queen Mary University writes an accompanying piece arguing
28 min listen
To mark the second anniversary of the death of Jeremy Clarke – one of the Spectator’s most loved writers – we’ve compiled some of his Low Life columns, as read by Jeremy in 2016, for this special episode of Spectator Out Loud. Included in this compilation are: New Man (00:42); Virgin (5:16); Debauchery Competition (9:32); Buddhism (14:12); The Beach (18:58); and, Memory (23:40). Read by Jeremy Clarke, with an introduction from William Moore. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
36 min listen
The Belgian composer César Franck – unfairly associated with kitsch and sentimentality by certain cultural sophisticates – wrote some of the most spiritually inspiring music of the late 19th century. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson talks to the British-Israeli pianist Ariel Lanyi, who has just recorded Franck’s late masterpiece Prélude, Aria et Final on the Linn label. Ariel discusses the influence of Catholicism and the anti-Catholic Richard Wagner on the devout Franck, who was organist of a church in Paris for 30 years – but reserved his most profound thoughts for ostensibly secular works. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Damian Thompson.
38 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Michael Gove interviews Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood (1:17; Max Jeffery shadows the police as they search for the parents of three abandoned babies (14:41); Paul Wood asks if this is really the end of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (20:57); Susannah Jowitt reports that death has come to the Chelsea Flower Show (28:55); and, Leyla Sanai reviews Graham Swift’s new anthology of short stories, Twelve Post-War Tales (34:23). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
42 min listen
The great escape: why the rich are fleeing Britain Keir Starmer worries about who is coming into Britain but, our economics editor Michael Simmons writes in the magazine this week, he should have ‘sleepless nights’ thinking about those leaving. Since 2016, nearly 30,000 millionaires have left – ‘an outflow unmatched in the developed world’. Tax changes have made Britain a ‘hostile environment’ for the wealthy, yet we are ‘dangerously dependent’ on our highest earners: the top 0.01 per cent pay 6 per cent of all income tax. If the exodus is ‘half as bad’ as those he has spoken to think, Simmons warns, a 2p hike to income tax looms.
Twenty-five years ago today, the Tate Modern first opened its doors to the public. The main attraction: a nine metre-high steel sculpture of a female spider which towered over visitors to the Turbine Hall. In its first year, the Tate Modern saw twice its projected number of visitors. London’s first museum of modern art was an unmitigated success. Say what you will about contemporary art, but it is undeniably true that the Tate Modern succeeded where others failed. While Manchester’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art and Centre Georges Pompido struggled, the Tate Modern thrived. Riding the wave of Blairism, Britpop and pre-crash confidence, the thematically organised gallery, housed inside a derelict site on the
31 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Olenka Hamilton ponders whether Poland’s revival is a mirage (1:24); Melanie McDonagh asks who killed the postal service (9:52); Hannah Moore argues that family cars aren’t built for families any more (14:35); James Delingpole reviews Careme from Apple TV and Chef’s Table from Netflix (21:15); and, William Atkinson provides his notes on Thomas the Tank Engine (26:48). Presented by Patrick Gibbons. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.
37 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Ian Williams looks at Chinese influence in the UK (1:39); Philip Patrick interviews Japan’s last ninja (9:35); Guy Stagg reviews Damian Le Bas and explores the myths behind the city of Atlantis (18:23); Ysenda Maxtone Graham reviews an exhibition on school dinners at the Food Museum in Stowmarket (23:38); Mark Mason provides his notes on quizzes, ahead of the Spectator’s garden quiz (28:00); and, swapping Provence to visit family in America, Catriona Olding takes us on a trip up the east coast (31:27). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
37 min listen
This week: the left-wing radicalism of Garden Court Garden Court Chambers has a ‘reassuringly traditional’ facade befitting the historic Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the heart of London’s legal district. Yet, writes Ross Clark in the cover article this week, ‘the facade is just that. For behind the pedimented Georgian windows there operates the most radically effective cell of left-wing activists in Britain’. Ross argues that cases taken on by Garden Court lawyers raise questions of impartiality. Is this just another example of ‘law’s expanding empire’ over the domain of elected politicians, as former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption has warned? The Spectator’s editor, and former Justice Secretary, Michael Gove joined the
31 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Owen Matthews reads his letter from Rome (1:21); Matthew Parris travels the Channel Islands (7:53); Reviewing Minoo Dinshaw, Marcus Nevitt looks at Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edward Hyde, once close colleagues who fell out during the English civil war (15:19); Angus Colwell discusses his Marco Pierre White obsession, aided by the chef himself (21:26); and, Sean Thomas provides his notes on boredom (26:28). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
38 min listen
This week: the many crises awaiting the next pope ‘Francis was a charismatic pope loved by most of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics’ writes Damian Thompson in the cover article this week. But few of them ‘grasp the scale of the crisis in the Church… The next Vicar of Christ, liberal or conservative’ faces ‘challenges that dwarf those that confronted any incoming pope in living memory’. Ahead of Pope Francis’s funeral this weekend, Damian joined the podcast alongside the Catholic theologian Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith to unpack all the political intrigue underpinning the upcoming papal conclave. They say that he who enters the conclave as a pope, leaves as a cardinal
