Scuzz Nation: Britain’s slow and grubby decline If you want to understand why voters flocked to Reform last week, Gus Carter says, look no further than Goat Man. In one ward in Runcorn, ‘residents found that no one would listen when a neighbour filled his derelict house with goats and burned the animals’ manure in his garden’. This embodies Scuzz Nation – a ‘grubbier and more unpleasant’ Britain, ‘where decay happens faster than repair, where crime largely goes unpunished, and where the social f...
May 08, 2025•41 min
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Daniel Swift. Daniel’s new book, The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare , tells the fascinating story of a theatrical innovation that transformed Elizabethan drama – and set the stage, as it were, for the rise of our greatest playwright.
May 07, 2025•50 min
Mary-Ellen McTague is a chef based in Manchester. She is the culinary driving force behind Aunbury, 4244, the Creameries and her newest venture, Pip at the Treehouse Hotel. Mary-Ellen is also the co-founder of Eat Well MCR, which has delivered almost 100,000 meals across Greater Manchester since 2020 to those sidelined by poverty. On the podcast, she tells Liv and Lara why, as a child, she would only eat orange cheese, why Lancashire hotpot is so nostalgic, her Eureka moment when she decided to ...
May 06, 2025•25 min
As Chinese Whispers comes to an end, here is a compilation of some of the best discussions Cindy Yu has had across the podcast to understand modern China and President Xi. On this episode you can hear from: journalist Bill Hayton on what it means to be Chinese (1:10); writer and actor Mark Kitto and author Alex Ash on being foreign in China (13:07); professor of international history Elizabeth Ingleson on whether China’s economic boom was made in America (23:08); professor of Chinese studies and...
May 05, 2025•1 hr 38 min
The papal conclave is due to begin on Wednesday 7 May to elect a successor to Pope Francis. As host Damian Thompson says, Rome – and the entire Church – is in a state of ‘fevered excitement’. While this is to be expected, most commentators agree that this conclave will be one of the most consequential elections for centuries. At stake are both the future direction of the Church and Francis’s legacy – will his work be amended, continued or even rejected? The Pillar ’s Luke Coppen joins Damian to ...
May 04, 2025•41 min
The word ‘unprecedented’ is often overused in politics, but these local elections have proved to be just that. The headline is: sweeping success for Reform. Nigel Farage's 'teal tsunami' comes at the expense of the main parties – turning the two-party consensus on its head. The recriminations for Labour and the Tories have already begun. On the left, a number of MPs have broken cover and urged the government to shift its position on high-salience issues such as winter fuel. On the right, Kemi Ba...
May 02, 2025•16 min
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 ta...
May 02, 2025•37 min
Victor Davis Hanson joins Spectator TV to talk about the first 101 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency, describing it as a bold counterrevolution against decades of cultural, political, and economic drift. He discusses Trump’s sweeping agenda—from closing the border and challenging DEI initiatives to confronting foreign policy orthodoxy and trade imbalances—framing it as a populist backlash against elite institutions and progressive ideologies. Hanson highlights the deepening divide between...
May 01, 2025•49 min
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 ...
May 01, 2025•37 min
My guest on this week’s podcast is the historian Anne Sebba. In her new book The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival , Anne tells the story of how a ragtag group of women musicians formed in the shadow of Auschwitz’s crematoria. She tells me about the moral trade-offs, the friendships and enmities that formed, and what it meant to try to create music in a situation of unrelenting horror.
Apr 30, 2025•37 min
Mark Carney has won the Canadian election, leading the Liberal Party to a fourth term. Having only been Prime Minister for 6 weeks, succeeding Justin Trudeau, this is an impressive achievement when you consider that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives were over 20 percentage points ahead in the polls earlier this year. Trump’s rhetoric against Canada – engaging in a trade war and calling for the country to become the 51st state – is credited as turning around the fortunes of the Liberals. Are there...
Apr 29, 2025•13 min
Kirsty Wark has worked for the BBC for almost 50 years and is one of the UK’s most recognisable broadcasters. In 1976 she joined BBC Radio Scotland as a graduate researcher. Having produced and presented several shows across radio including The World At One and PM , she switched to television, and went on to present shows such as Breakfast Time and The Late Show . However, she is best known for presenting BBC Newsnight for over 30 years, which saw her interview key political and cultural leaders...
Apr 28, 2025•29 min
Earlier this year Dr Kurt Martens, Professor of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America, joined Damian Thompson on Holy Smoke to unpack what happens during a papal conclave. There was heightened interest in the process due to the film Conclave , which swept the awards season, but also because Pope Francis was hospitalised at the time. Despite showing some signs of recovery – including being able to meet world leaders such as King Charles III and J.D. Vance – Pope Francis died on Easter M...
Apr 27, 2025•53 min
Legendary pollster Prof Sir John Curtice joins the Spectator ’s deputy political editor James Heale to look ahead to next week’s local elections. The actual number of seats may be small, as John points out, but the political significance could be much greater. If polling is correct, Reform could win a ‘fresh’ by-election for the first time, the mayoralties could be shared between three or more parties, and we could see a fairly even split in terms of vote share across five parties (Labour, the L...
Apr 26, 2025•21 min
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....
Apr 25, 2025•31 min
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 A...
Apr 24, 2025•38 min
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Lamorna Ash, author of Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion . She describes to me how a magazine piece about some young friends who made a dramatic conversion to Christianity turned into an investigation into the rise in faith among a generation that many assumed would be the most secular yet — and into a personal journey towards religious belief.
Apr 23, 2025•40 min
Roger Pizey is a baker, chef and one of the most influential pâtissiers in the UK. He started his culinary journey as an apprentice at La Gavroche under Albert Roux before taking on the role of head of pastry at Marco Pierre White’s Harveys, during the time it achieved three Michelin stars. He has since worked at a number of London institutions and now serves as the head of pastry at Fortnum and Mason. On the podcast he tells Liv and Lara about childhood memories of Manchester tart, what he lear...
Apr 22, 2025•20 min
Deborah Mattinson joined the House of Lords as a Labour peer in February. Her involvement in politics began when she worked alongside Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould to create Labour’s Shadow Communications Agency for Neil Kinnock. In 1992 she co-founded Opinion Leader Research, and she went on to advise Tony Blair ahead of the 1997 election and later became Gordon Brown’s chief pollster. In 2021 she was appointed Director of Strategy for Keir Starmer, a position she held until stepping down fo...
Apr 22, 2025•29 min
Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has died. The Argentinian, the first Latin American – and the first Jesuit – to lead the Church, has been the head of the Holy See for 12 years, succeeding Pope Benedict XVI who resigned in 2013. Francis presided over the funeral of his predecessor, who died in 2022 – a first in modern history. But Francis’s leadership has been historic for many other reasons. In fact, says Damian Thompson, his reign has been ‘one of the most memorable, if con...
Apr 21, 2025•29 min
The Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller, elected as the new MP for Bicester and Woodstock last year, joins James Heale to talk about the ambitions of the party that became the largest third party in Parliament in 100 years at the 2024 general election. They want to overtake the Conservatives to be the second party in local government – could they one day overtake the Tories to become the official opposition? A former civil servant, Oxford University policy manager and co...
Apr 21, 2025•17 min
The Easter issue of the Spectator includes two provocative articles exploring aspects of Christianity. Nigel Biggar, Regius professor emeritus of moral theology at Oxford University, now a Conservative peer, celebrates the heroic ‘faithful dissent’ of Christian heroes such as Thomas More and Helmuth von Moltke, who lost their lives rather than defend injustice. Meanwhile Spectator columnist Mary Wakefield interviews Roman Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s inspired by his holiness ...
Apr 20, 2025•24 min
Katy Balls joins Coffee House Shots for the last time as the Spectator ’s political editor. Having joined the magazine ten years ago – or six prime ministers in Downing St years – what are her reflections on British politics? Katy’s lobby lunch partner from the Financial Times Stephen Bush joins Katy and Patrick Gibbons to try and make sense of a turbulent political decade, work out where the greatest risk is to the current Labour government, and attempt to make some predictions for the next ten...
Apr 19, 2025•21 min
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : Would Trump really bomb Iran, asks Paul Wood (1:38); Katy Balls interviews Health Secretary Wes Streeting on NHS reform, Blairism and Game of Thrones (8:38); Olivia Potts examines the history – and decline – of the Easter staple, roast lamb (18:25); the explorer Benedict Allen says Erling Kagge and Neil Shubin were both dicing with death, as he reviews both their books on exploration to earth’s poles (22:13); Cosmo Landesman reflects on what turning 70 has mea...
Apr 18, 2025•40 min
This week: should the assisted dying bill be killed off? Six months after Kim Leadbeater MP launched the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, a group of Labour MPs have pronounced it ‘irredeemably flawed and not fit to become law’. They say the most basic aspects of the bill – having gone through its committee stage – do not hold up to scrutiny. Dan Hitchens agrees, writing in the magazine this week that ‘it’s hard to summarise the committee’s proceedings except with a kind of Homeric catal...
Apr 17, 2025•34 min
Sam Leith’s guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, whose new book 38 Londres Street describes the legal and diplomatic tussle over the potential extradition of the former Chilean dictator General Pinochet. Philippe tells Sam why the case was such an important one in legal history, and presents new evidence suggesting that the General’s release to Chile on health grounds may have been part of a behind-the-scenes stitch-up between the UK and Chilean governm...
Apr 16, 2025•58 min
Freddy Gray speaks to Peter Wood who is the President of the National Association of Scholars about Trump's decision to block Harvard funding after the university denied the President's DEI demands.
Apr 15, 2025•23 min
Lindsey Hilsum is the International Editor for Channel 4 News, where she has worked for over 25 years. Having started her career as an aid worker in Latin America, she transitioned to journalism, and she has now reported from six continents for over three decades. She has covered many major conflicts including Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and across the Middle East during the Arab Spring. Her third book I Brought the War with Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line is out now. On the podcast L...
Apr 14, 2025•34 min
In Luke's Gospel, an ancient inhabitant of Jerusalem named Simeon meets Mary and Joseph when they bring Jesus to be presented at the Temple on the 40th day after his birth. He has been promised that he will not die until he has seen Christ, and as he takes the baby into his arms he utters the words, 'Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentile...
Apr 13, 2025•28 min
Globalisation's obituary has been written many times before but, with the turmoil caused over the past few weeks with Donald Trump's various announcements on tariffs, could this mark the beginning of the end for the economic order as we know it? Tej Parikh from the Financial Times and Kate Andrews, The Spectator 's deputy US editor, join economics editor Michael Simmons to make the case for why globalisation will outlive Trump. Though, as the US becomes one of the most protectionist countries in...
Apr 12, 2025•17 min
