Sam Leith

Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator. His forthcoming book, The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading, is out in September.

The grotesque truth about children

12 Jul 2024

Who won Sunak vs Starmer?

05 Jun 2024

The Portal has revealed the best of mankind

15 May 2024

The lunacy of Child Liberation

01 May 2024

Why chicks still dig Byronic heroes

14 Mar 2024

What’s the point of self-immolation?

29 Feb 2024

ChatGPT will kill off the Romantic genius

26 Jan 2024

Boris Johnson blames the herd

08 Jul 2022

Lock up your cats

05 Jul 2022

How anti-racism can make you rich

09 Mar 2022

No10 is already spinning the Sue Gray inquiry The PM’s supporters are already trying to re-frame the civil servant's role

14 Jan 2022

Sally Rooney’s empty Israel boycott

13 Oct 2021

Books have always been a weapon

27 Aug 2021

How activists captured publishing

05 Aug 2021

The talentless Mr Osborne

25 Jun 2021

Give the Queen a break

12 May 2021

Do you miss Trump yet?

09 Apr 2021

Harry, the Prince of PR

26 Mar 2021

How home-schooling scarred my kids

08 Mar 2021

Trump’s legacy: dinosaur porn

12 Feb 2021

Joe Biden’s old tropes for new times

21 Jan 2021

Stop bad-mouthing the BBC

30 Dec 2020

Harry Potter fans need to grow up

24 Dec 2020

The President’s speech was scarily good

04 Nov 2020

Humans don’t know how to be happy

26 Oct 2020

What will the New York Times do when Trump goes?

08 Oct 2020

Joe Biden brought a sponge to a knife fight

30 Sep 2020

The intellectual shabbiness of Judith Butler

24 Sep 2020

Why ‘Civilization’ is a political masterpiece

10 Sep 2020

Harry Potter fans need to grow up

31 Jul 2020

The woke are coming for Scrabble

09 Jul 2020

‘How to end lockdown’ is the only story in town

28 Apr 2020

The narcissism of apocalyptic thinking

14 Apr 2020

Are you a Scrabble sadist or a Cluedo nerd?

30 Mar 2020

Why I’m reactivating World of Warcraft

23 Mar 2020

The joyful anachronism of kid lit

04 Mar 2020

The world needs curmudgeons

03 Mar 2020

Want to make sense of our chaotic world?

24 Dec 2019

I’m an ideologue… get me out of here!

19 Nov 2019

The Booker Prize judges had one job

15 Oct 2019

What Eton taught me about power

03 Sep 2019

Even experts are ignorant

15 Aug 2019

Thou shalt not be Piers Morgan

03 Jul 2019

What’s the point of political fiction?

06 Jun 2019

Call yourself well-read?

02 May 2019

What if the US President went mad?

18 Apr 2019

Don’t be afraid of the digital dustbin

20 Mar 2019

Don’t knock white saviours

06 Mar 2019

Why are publishers pandering to the mob?

16 Jan 2019