Best of the Spectator

The Pope is 'WEAK on crime and terrible on foreign policy' – this was the verdict of the President of the United States this week, as he appeared to deepen his row with the leader of the Catholic Church. In the magazine this week, Damian Thompson reports on why the President appears to have engaged in his own Holy War with the leader of 1.3 billion Catholics around the world.

For this week's Edition, host William Moore is joined by deputy editor Freddy Gray, commissioning editor Lara Brown – and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Baron Williams, now retired from the Lords, fears there is something 'demonic' in the political culture of the United States right now, as people appear to twist Christian teaching to justify their own causes. He does admit he feels 'slightly sorry' for the US Vice President – and recent Catholic convert – J.D. Vance saying he appears to be 'floundering', following Vance's recent comments that the Pope should 'stick to morality'. Why is the President fighting with the Pope? And what reflections does Rowan have on how involved religious leaders should be in politics?

Also on the episode, they discuss: the American right's obsession with the Antichrist; Rowan's new book Solidarity; the Spectator's cover story – by John Power – on the property crash of the London flat market; how the future might be vegetarian; and finally, whether foreign visitors should pay to enter British museums. Plus, what are the panel's favourite cultural attractions in London?

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the reporter – cartoonist Joe Sacco, talking about his most recent book The Once and Future Riot, about Hindu/Muslim violence in rural India. He tells me how he knows when he’s onto a story, what cartooning can do for reportage, and why he draws himself so differently.

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To hear this week's episode in full, search 'Quite right!' wherever you are listening now.
This week: the Southport inquiry and a deeper question about why Britain’s institutions keep failing to act. After a damning report into the killings revealed that Axel Rudakubana was ‘known to authorities’, Michael and Madeline ask how so many warning signs were missed. Did a fear of getting things wrong – or being accused of racism – stop professionals from intervening?

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Freddy Gray speaks to Shadi Hamid, author of the book The Case for American Power, which explores – and puts forward – the case for American power in spite of Donald Trump.

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My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Mason Currey, author of the new book Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life. He tells me how artists, writers and composers have wrangled through history with the challenge of scraping by, and how that has affected their art, from Baudelaire's lifelong outrage at being forced to live on an allowance and John Berryman's disastrous stint as a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman to Haydn reinventing the musical idiom of his time because he was so far in the boondocks with his day job that he didn't know what the musical idiom of his time was, exactly.

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