> It’s hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine Maxwell — 500 days and counting in solitary confinement. I intersected briefly with her at Oxford. As a fresher I wandered into Balliol JCR one day in search of its subsidised breakfast granola-and-Nescafé offering and found a shiny glamazon with naughty eyes holding court astride a table, a high-heeled boot resting on my brother Boris’s thigh. She gave me a pitying glance but I did manage to snag an invite to her party in Headington Hill Hall — even though I wasn't in the same college as her and Boris. I have a memory of her father, Bob, coming out in a towelling robe and telling us all to go home. I’m sure fairweather friends would not reveal they went to a Ghislaine Maxwell party: as Barbara Amiel’s brilliant memoir Friends and Enemies proves, you only know who your real chums are when you’re in the gutter.
This doesn't defend Maxwell or excuse her actions—it expresses pity for somone locked in solitary confinement for 500 days. Reasonable people can have pity for wrongdoers.
Rubbish. With the exception of Taki and maybe Young and Liddle, most Spectator writers and editors are moderate middle-of-the-road Cameron-type conservatives—they're basically Blairites.
Alright, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, the roads, fresh water and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
I haven't seen a single article that could reasonably be called a defense of Maxwell.