The Spectator

Yes, packaging’s bad, but what if the alternatives are worse?

The revolution is not coming anytime soon, but the twenty-somethings are in it for the long haul

In the darkest corners of the world, Christian missionaries are still saving lives

You can’t beat a session of naked kneading and flailing at a hammam

Why are young Brits flocking to hear a psychology professor talk about morality?

Offenders should be locked up for what they have done, not for what they might do

The church has always been hard-nosed about the land it owns

More aerobic than tennis but easier on the joints, it’s a sport for our times

The ‘harmless crank’ has seen his left-wing agenda go mainstream

Also in Portrait of the Week: Hawaii’s nuclear alert; Ukip leader dumps his girlfriend over racist messages

Also: my green-ink Twitter hecklers and the replies I don’t post

From the archive: 19 January 1918

Also in Barometer: Britain’s biggest corporate failures; rough-sleeping blackspots; forests of statistics

Just who do they think they will attract with this new touchy-feely approach?

Also: Rod Liddle’s vocabulary, superslow broadband and child screen addicts

Also: the BBC made no mention of the communion ceremony during its Coronation documentary

Fiddling around with university fees isn’t going to make the Conservatives suddenly competitive

So much of what we carefully separate just ends up wasting energy

It has dug itself a very deep hole and is calling for more shovels to finish the job

Not being cursed with any of my genetic make-up, he possesses certain special qualities that I lack

Also in Any Other Business: Why Vince Cable is wrong about the GKN takeover

The revolting food served by Eleanor Roosevelt not only depressed her husband but scandalised all Washington, according to Laura Shapiro

We bled so much when the tiger leeches dropped off us, the camp looked like a bombsite’, says the explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison

Both Ireland’s Troubles and the anxieties of a 25-year-old anorexic unfold over a single day in Turning for Home

The bloodbath involving former friends and neighbours in the East European border town in 1941 makes this atrocity especially shocking, says Omer Bartov

Fiona Sampson traces Mary’s life from unmarried teenage mother to the author of one of the most enduring of all horror stories

Though women had for centuries nursed and cooked for British sailors, it wasn’t until 1917 that they were officially recruited by the Royal Navy

Her thoughtful Go Went Gone sees the plight of refugees through the imaginative eyes of a retired academic in Berlin

Catherine Deneuve has expressed some badly needed truths about this crazy witch hunt

Since I started bonjouring and bonsoiring one and all, I am everybody’s friend

In a post-joke world, everything is a hate crime

If the course didn’t exist, the Jockey Club would invent it. So why sell it off?

The first home tournament of 2018 was last week’s four-day European Open Trials. Ten selected pairs played 216 boards at…

Well, I don’t know about you but I found the recent festivities somewhat challenging. I didn’t draw a sober breath…

‘Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,’ wrote Alexander Pope about Atticus. Those lines more or less describe the…

White to play. This position is from O. Howell-Pickersgill, Hastings 2017/18. White now terminated proceedings abruptly. What was the key move?…

In Competition No. 3031 you were invited to provide a review by a restaurant critic that is tediously loaded with…

Two unclued lights are terms for the same style. One, consisting of two words, forms a cryptic indication of each…

A beastly business The quote is 1A/92/18D from the poem ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’. The theme was the names…

It was nothing too serious, just a little nip. But the man from Ocado was understandably upset

We can have an efficient health service or one no one complains about. We can’t have both

Also: How to hide a housekeeper’s hideous cushions and how to keep friends as a birthday looms

Some wines may turn out to have too much fruit, making harmony impossible

In Polite Conversation, Jonathan Swift presents dialogues made up of clichés, banalities and catchphrases. When Miss Notable makes a remark…