In March of this year, a case in Rotherham once again forced the United Kingdom to confront a reality it has long preferred to bracket. Two men, Romulad Stefan Houphouet and Absolom Sigiyo, were convicted of repeatedly raping teenage girls…
Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of Scott McKay’s new novel, From Hellmarsh With Love, which is being released exclusively at The American Spectator each weekend in September and October, before its full publication on Amazon later this fall. From…
WASHINGTON — I have spent the last three weeks in a very pleasant place, Europe. Not in Moscow, nor in Kyiv, nor even in Paris. Actually, I have been in London — London, the city that never sleeps or, at…
Augustus Welby Pugin (1812–1852) is in the news these days in the United Kingdom because he designed the iconic London Clock Tower, popularly known as “Big Ben,” whose scaffolding has now come down after five years to reopen this spring….
Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age By Daisy Hay (Princeton University Press, 516 pages, $32) From 1760 to 1809, British bookseller and publisher Joseph Johnson (1738–1809) hosted a weekly dinner at his London home and…
Three months ago, colorful crowds caroused in the streets of London as the queen stepped onto the Buckingham Palace balcony to celebrate her 70th year on the throne. Today, the streets are quiet, grey, and bleak. A cloud of melancholy…
Good taste is in free fall. Also in free fall are manners, protocols, and formality. And London’s Savile Row, the Valhalla of all things sartorial, is the latest battleground. Good taste has been in decline for years. The backward baseball…
New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is on the verge of introducing congestion pricing. In a risky and unprecedented move, a new $23 charge will be imposed on those entering Manhattan’s central business district, costing drivers $1 billion per year. …
The Turning Point: 1851 — A Year That Changed Charles Dickens and the World By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Knopf, 368 pages, $30) 1851 was not only a pivotal year in the professional and personal life of the legendary writer Charles Dickens,…
