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Druin Burch

Druin Burch

The Spectator

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The joy of aphrodisiacs

Men and women have put more effort into finding aphrodisiacs than alchemists ever put into changing lead into gold. Metals at least hold still; other...

26.08.2026 10

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Is the high-street pharmacy in danger?

Only in France have I ever looked forward to attending a pharmacy. Napoleonic Paris, in response to the fatal incompetence of its citizens at...

22.08.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Why people cared about Jason Arday

Don’t badmouth the dead, said Chilon of Sparta. Over time, the phrase became a positive injunction to say nothing of the dead unless it was good, de...

17.08.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

We need more emergency phone alerts

Last night, my phone, which was set to silent, erupted with the sort of siren one associates with immediately life-threatening emergencies. If you...

15.08.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Will the NHS get serious about prescribing weight loss drugs?

‘The weight is over,’ read an advert on the side of a bus outside my hospital this morning. The first really effective pill for weight loss has...

08.08.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The NHS is not in a crisis of racism

The Society of Radiographers have said racism is rising in the NHS.  They give the example of a patient refusing a chest X-ray from a black...

05.08.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Why I’m ignoring the hosepipe ban – and you should too

I returned from holiday to find parched lawns and a deliciously cool babbling brook where the road had been. Up the hill stood signs warning motorists...

03.08.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Burnham is wrong to model social care reform on the NHS

There have been trimmings and ornaments: the bus fare cap and the performative opening of a No. 10 North in an office block above a Manchester branch...

29.07.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The NHS is fundamentally dishonest

This weekend, the excellent health editor of the Sunday Times, Shaun Lintern, revealed how NHS England has been suppressing damaging reports from...

27.07.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

A free-to-use National Care Service will never work

As a former adviser on social care reform to a Conservative prime minister, allow me to explain why Andy Burnham’s proposals on the issue – which...

27.07.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Transport / Why the bus £2 price cap might just pay off for Burnham

Andy Burnham has announced a reduction in the cap on English bus fares, down from Starmer’s £3. Remarkably, he might be right to do so. ‘For too...

26.07.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Transport / Why the bus £2 price cap might just pay off for Burnham

Andy Burnham has announced a reduction in the cap on English bus fares, down from Starmer’s £3. Remarkably, he might be right to do so. ‘For too...

25.07.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Why the bus £2 price cap might just pay off for Burnham

Andy Burnham has announced a reduction in the cap on English bus fares, down from Starmer’s £3. Remarkably, he might be right to do so. ‘For too...

25.07.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The joyous ridicule of Stella Creasy’s avian error

‘Stella Creasy’s bird-brained parrot alert,’ ran a Steerpike headline yesterday. The Labour MP for Walthamstow had posted a video of herself in...

23.07.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The NHS can’t cope with this heat

The weather in 1976, like the football ten years before, lingers in our national memory. But already on some measures this year is worse. Back then,...

15.07.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

It must be harder for the NHS to strike

The BMA makes lots of vague demands for recognition and autonomy, control and civility – Madeline Grant, hearing similar words coming from Angela...

07.07.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Does it matter what politicians drink?

Keir Starmer is fond of a beer. We knew he liked beer when we knew nothing much about his policies except that they were in favour of everything...

06.07.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The death of DEI / Would Oxford still open its doors to a poor, white boy like me?

Magdalen College, Oxford, is over-represented at The Spectator. Not long ago, Paul Johnson and Matthew d’Ancona were fixtures here. Today, there...

05.07.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Would Oxford still open its doors to a poor, white boy like me?

Magdalen College, Oxford, is over-represented at The Spectator. Not long ago, Paul Johnson and Matthew d’Ancona were fixtures here. Today, there...

04.07.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The true cost of ending the doctors’ strikes

After three years, and a cost to taxpayers of over £3 billion, the junior doctor strikes are finally over. For now. The vote was narrow. Of those who...

30.06.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Medical emergency / Why Britain has a medicine shortage

Across Britain today, people will take prescriptions to pharmacies and be told they can’t be fulfilled. After hearing a lifetime of speeches about...

27.06.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Medical emergency / Why Britain has a medicine shortage

Across Britain today, people will take prescriptions to pharmacies and be told they can’t be fulfilled. After hearing a lifetime of speeches about...

27.06.2026 20

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Why Britain has a medicine shortage

Across Britain today, people will take prescriptions to pharmacies and be told they can’t be fulfilled. After hearing a lifetime of speeches about...

27.06.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Good intentions alone won’t fix Britain’s maternity crisis

The Ockenden Maternity Review, published today, finds the NHS is not to be trusted – not for maternity care, possibly not at all. Set up in 2022 in...

24.06.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The Employment Rights Act will fuel striking doctors

TThe junior doctors were due to strike again, and everyone was sick of the whole business. At the last minute, after a new government offer, the...

15.06.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Why can’t Elon Musk’s critics just be pleased for him?

The quiet kid from my friend’s school has become a trillionaire, and many people are unhappy that this should be so. Musk’s success narrows our...

14.06.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Marilyn Monroe was just like the rest of us

Marilyn Monroe was born a hundred years ago today. She was famous enough in her lifetime to be one of those rare figures referred to by their first...

02.06.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Marilyn Monroe was as complicated as the rest of us

Marilyn Monroe was born a hundred years ago today. She was famous enough in her lifetime to be one of those rare figures referred to by their first...

01.06.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

We cannot stop the small boats

This April, we agreed another deal with France to stop migrants coming across the Channel. The Home Office has explained it is ‘bearing down’ on...

28.05.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Gene-editing drugs are opening a new frontier in medicine

Older readers with bulging medicine cabinets, or parents eyeing their children’s distant futures, are not encouraged to read the New England Journal...

26.05.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

I’ve found the perfect pregnancy diet

The world is full of people fierce in the belief that they know the right diet to make your children glow with superior health. Few are shy about...

26.05.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Health / Will Labour’s sick note crackdown work?

‘Can I have one last present?’ my daughter asked earlier this week, having turned fifteen and covered the kitchen floor with torn wrapping paper....

23.05.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Will Labour’s sick note crackdown work?

‘Can I have one last present?’ my daughter asked earlier this week, having turned fifteen and covered the kitchen floor with torn wrapping paper....

23.05.2026 30

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Streeting’s NHS record is nothing to boast about

“Leaders take responsibility,” Wes Streeting wrote, in what has already been called his Wesignation letter. The charge against Keir Starmer was...

15.05.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Mary Seacole is celebrated for all the wrong reasons

Florence Nightingale, born in Florence on this day in 1820, made her world measurably better. She counted the dead until the living had to listen. Her...

12.05.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Why whiskey is worth the effort

‘The King and Queen got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!’ Donald Trump announced on Thursday. In...

02.05.2026 50

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Politics is making us more unhealthy

Wes Streeting has said women have been treated like ‘second-class citizens whose voices don’t matter’. ‘The blunt reality is the NHS is...

27.04.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Should doctors be banned from striking?

Kemi Badenoch has said she will ban doctors from striking. Yesterday, asked if he would do the same, Health Secretary Wes Streeting refused to rule it...

10.04.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Why junior doctors are back on strike

In the emergency department, and on my wards, the strikes sit lightly. My specialty of internal medicine never closes; Easter Monday was a normal...

07.04.2026 50

The Spectator

Druin Burch

What the death of my beloved son taught me about Easter

The hawthorn hedges are white with blossom; the countryside looks set for a wedding. Even in the small garden of my hospital, spring is inescapable....

03.04.2026 50

The Spectator

Druin Burch

What the death of my beloved son taught me about Easter

The hawthorn hedges are white with blossom; the countryside looks set for a wedding. Even in the small garden of my hospital, spring is inescapable....

03.04.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Is it time to scrap the NHS?

Nigel Lawson said the NHS was the closest we had to a religion. What’s needed today is someone willing to declare that this church has become...

01.04.2026 50

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The absurdity at the heart of the junior doctors’ strikes

Immediately after the Easter weekend, junior doctors are planning a six-day strike. Unless they call it off, Starmer has said today, they’ll be...

31.03.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

My daughter’s living my football dream

Next door to Jeremy Clarkson’s farm, behind spiked steel fencing and overlooked by edge-of-town bungalows, are the grounds of my daughter’s...

31.03.2026 50

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Medicine / NHS Online won’t cure Britain’s creaking healthcare system

What is it that doctors actually do? The answer is not obvious and I say that as a physician who has spent the past 30 years in hospitals. But the...

29.03.2026 60

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Medicine / NHS Online won’t cure Britain’s creaking healthcare system

What is it that doctors actually do? The answer is not obvious, and I say that as a physician who has spent the past 30 years in hospitals. But the...

29.03.2026 50

The Spectator

Druin Burch

NHS Online won’t cure Britain’s creaking healthcare system

What is it that doctors actually do? The answer is not obvious, and I say that as a physician who has spent the past 30 years in hospitals. But the...

29.03.2026 50

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Should teenagers be vaccinated against meningitis B?

Two people have died of meningitis in Kent: an eighteen year old year 13 student named as Juliette, and an unnamed 21-year-old. The outbreak has...

18.03.2026 40

The Spectator

Druin Burch

Licence fee / The BBC cannot tax Netflix viewers

The BBC has described itself as being set to enter ‘managed decline’. The government is currently reviewing the broadcaster’s charter, and...

07.03.2026 60

The Spectator

Druin Burch

The BBC cannot tax Netflix viewers

The BBC has described itself as being set to enter ‘managed decline’. The government is currently reviewing the broadcaster’s charter, and...

06.03.2026 50

The Spectator

Druin Burch