Delta variant, p34

The horror, p24

THE WEEK

3 Leading article 6 Portrait of the Week 9 Diary Life in isolation

Sajid Javid 10 Politics The tax-and-spend Tories

James Forsyth 11 The Spectator’s Notes

What Dominic Cummings gets wrong Charles Moore 14 Barometer Japan’s Olympic history, nightclubs and racehorses 15 Rod Liddle Will England pull out of the World Cup? 19 Douglas Murray

Get ready for the Boring Twenties 21 Ancient and modern

No time for losers 27 Sam Leith

World gone lazy 29 Letters School reports, royal jubilees and the joy of Jeremy 30 Any other business

The clever radical who led the City’s transformation Martin Vander Weyer

Achingly meta, p47

12 Party time

The price of freedom Kate Andrews 13 Anthony Costello

‘The saddest thing I ever saw’: a poem 14 Now what do we do?

The government’s Covid optimism is fading fast Katy Balls 16 Fuelling the fire

Lebanon is trapped in a nightmare of its own making Paul Wood 20 Game changer

The uncomfortable truth about the Nazis and the Olympics Nigel Farndale 22 Dishing the dirt

The case against organic food Matt Ridley 24 Losing the plot

Real gardens are dying out James Bartholomew 26 Cricket notebook

How ‘Wooders’ gave me my big break Henry Blofeld

BOOKS & ARTS

BOOKS 32 Damian Thompson

The Storm is Upon Us, by Mike Rothschild; Pastels and Pedophiles, by Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko 33 Candy Neubert

‘lawn’: a poem 34 Hugh Thomson

The Nile, by Terje Tveldt Isabel Hardman

Heavy Light, by Horatio Clare 35 Roger Lewis

The Art of Living, by Stephen Bayley 36 Dea Birkett

The Cambridge Companion to the Circus, edited by Gillian Arrighi and Jim Davis 37 Sarah Ditum

The Great Mistake, by Jonathan Lee Nicholas Shakespeare One Blade of Grass, by Henry Shukman 38 Madeleine Feeny

China Room, by Sunjeev Sahota John Maier

Drunk, by Edward Slingerland 40 Max Décharné

Two Hitlers and a Marilyn, by Adam Andrusier David Patrikarakos

Beirut 2020, by Charif Majdalani

Cover by Morten Morland. Drawings by Michael Heath, Castro, RGJ, Tim Bales, Paul Wood, Bernie, Nick Newman, Robert Thompson, Grizelda, Matt Percival, K.J. Lamb, Wilbur. www.spectator.co.uk Editorial and advertising The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, Tel: 020 7961 0200, Fax: 020 7681 3773, Email: letters@spectator.co.uk (for publication); advertising@spectator.co.uk (advertising); Advertising enquiries: 020 7961 0128 Subscription and delivery queries Spectator Subscriptions Dept., 17 Perrymount Rd, Haywards Heath RH16 3DH; Tel: 0330 3330 050; Email: customerhelp@subscriptions.spectator.co.uk; Rates for a basic annual subscription in the UK: £111; Europe: £185; Australia: A$279; New Zealand: A$349; and £195 in all other countries. To order, go to www.spectator.co.uk/A263A or call 0330 3330 050 and quote A151A; Newsagent queries Spectator Circulation Dept, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, Tel: 020 7961 0200, Fax: 020 7681 3773, Email: dbrown@spectator.co.uk; Distributor Marketforce, 161 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9AP. Tel. 0203 787 9001. www.marketforce.co.uk Vol 346; no 10,065 © The Spectator (1828) Ltd. ISSN 0038-6952 The Spectator is published weekly by The Spectator (1828) Ltd at 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP Editor: Fraser Nelson

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the spectator | 24 july 2021 | www.spectator.co.uk