The Spectator 🇺🇸

The November 9 edition of The Spectator has gone to press, featuring: 💍 @mtracey 💍 @KeenanPeachy 💍 @DouglasKMurray 💍 @curtis_yarvin 💍 @default_friend 💍 @rogerkimball 💍 @geoffrey_cain

There's a general consensus that reading is a good thing, and reading from actual physical books an even better thing. There are some books, though, that test that theory to destruction and one of them was launched this week to universal rejoicing, with midnight queues at bookshops reminiscent of the 90s launch parties for Harry Potter. Funnily enough the publisher in both cases here is Bloomsbury. ✍️ Melanie McDonagh Article | spectator.com/article/a-cour…

No Americans Served Here' read a sign outside a car showroom in Hertfordshire in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis. Many ordinary Britons shared the car salesman's anger and so did much of the political nation: more than a hundred Tory MPs accused Washington of 'gravely endangering the Atlantic alliance', whilst a military inquest argued that 'it was the action of the US which really defeated us.' The Spectator caught the public mood in November 1956 when its cover carried the word 'Anti-Americanism' in bold. Seventy years on, Suez remains a restless ghost in Britain's relationship with America. ✍️ Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri Article | spectator.com/article/the-tr… | @ChountisFabbri

I've had hexes put on me by a university professor, had online vigilantes send packages of dogshit to my childhood home in New Jersey and been hounded by the trauma-informed journalists of the New York Times. CNN, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and other estimable sources have credited me with starting a dark new anti-#MeToo movement. Along the way, I have received tens of thousands of rabidly embittered phone calls, emails and texts. "Hope you get held down and raped for seven hours and wake up with a blistered fucking asshole," is a fairly standard example of the unremitting torrent of vitriol. ✍️ Michael Tracey Article | spectator.com/article/most-h…

Paranoiac conspiracy theorists are now busy drawing crazy lines between the bizarre news dots over the weekend. There's a completely unsubstantiated rumor spreading that the crashed Learjet in Florida was on a flight path over Mar-a-Lago. Bonkers, no doubt. But the craziness of the discourse speaks to this febrile moment in American politics. It's only rational to expect far more madness in the coming days. ✍️ Freddy Gray Article | spectator.com/article/the-mi… | @Freddygray31

London is drowning in dessert cafés. Waffles, milkshakes, and mountains of whipped cream are everywhere. But who's eating it all? ✍️ Angus Colwell Article | trib.al/T7EqHMP

Andy Burnham wants an 'honest discussion' about free movement. But is he prepared for the answers he might not like? ✍️ Charles Moore Article | trib.al/LGyPGfi

Private schools, private doctors, private security. Britain's middle classes are paying twice to escape the state. ✍️ Michael Simmons Article | trib.al/Us9ovEz

“Donald Trump, who has decided not to allow the televising of the spectacle of a soldier being executed by firing squad, has clearly been reading Seneca the Younger, as he would. After all, Seneca was one of Nero’s advisors.” ✍️ Peter Jones Article | trib.al/gW1kS39

“Russian spies seem to have made something of a specialty out of producing shit.” From sinister break-ins to excrement in toilets, the FSB's dirty tricks are getting dirtier. ✍️ Bethany Elliott Article | trib.al/Ph8MIDj

Michael Tracey has been cursed by a professor, sent dog excrement, and pursued by the New York Times. His crime? Asking awkward questions about Cornell University. ✍️ Michael Tracey Article | trib.al/HbyXIqn

Opera directors can't seem to leave the Soviet Union alone. Another production, another crumbling apartment block, another helping of communist misery. Hasn't Tchaikovsky suffered enough? ✍️ Richard Bratby Article | trib.al/vH32fhP

Poland's constitutional crisis has become a battle of lawfare. Can the rule of law be saved by breaking its rules? ✍️ Maximillian Garely Article | trib.al/rAyn0Ev

“As the 2026 midterm election jamboree entered its final days, the punditocracy has been treated to a couple of cathartic and possibly clarifying shudders.” ✍️ Roger Kimball Article | trib.al/6QJNGfE

Sarah J. Maas has sold 75 million books. Melanie McDonagh is unimpressed. “You know, literacy may be overrated.” Is the romantasy craze giving reading a bad name? ✍️ Melanie McDonagh Article | trib.al/67Sob1w

On the eve of the midterms, strange and dark events are unfolding in Trump's America. Tucker Carlson is warning of a possible nuclear strike on Iran. Freddy Gray asks whether to take the alarm seriously. ✍️ @Freddygray31 Article | trib.al/age9Z95

That was fast. One moment Representative Haley Stevens, who was defeated by Abdul El-Sayed in the primary for US Senate in Michigan, was supposed to mend fences with the Democratic candidate at a party unity event in Detroit. The next she’s endorsing Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent. A chaotic press conference on Sunday ended with Stevens declaring that no candidate is “perfect” and being heckled as a “traitor” before she was hustled away by the Rogers camp. Why did she do it? One answer is the virago theory. Angered by her loss, she’s having a public meltdown. Another is that El-Sayed treated her poorly. He’s hardly short on arrogance and Stevens had her fill of it. Her own explanation is that it’s all about his failure to condemn an aid blaming Israel for high grocery prices in America that was run by the Rebellion PAC. El-Sayed disclaimed knowledge of it. ✍️ @JacobHeilbrunn Article: spectator.com/article/explai…

Have the robots taken over? Democrats want to know whether Trump is taking Grok's advice. Cockburn wonders why they're so worried about a chatbot flattering the President. His staffers already do plenty of that. ✍️ Cockburn Article | trib.al/aeppAR3