Australia’s so-called transition to renewables has been one long deception built on lies, falsehoods, hoaxes and scams. For those of…

I only had one wish to Santa this Christmas. All I wanted was a Cop. I wanted Adelaide to win…

An operation has transformed the way I hear English,  just in time for Christmas. So many phrases so right for…

Onerous red tape is killing the magic of movie-making

Never say ‘passed’

The world remains silent to Iran’s horror regime

Our festive prize for mathematical misinformation

Not odd of God to choose the Jooz, his son was one

A land our King, descended from Dracula, says he ‘has a stake in’

2025 was a year best forgotten

Bowen goes international

The politics of restoration

Kerry Chikarovski, Bruce Hawker, and the search for a Labor intellectual

Is Pope Leo XIV just Francis 2.0?

Even free speech is endangered

‘Never again!’ I sigh every 6 January, as I pack away the abundance of Christmas decorations and baubles lovingly collected…

For me, the past 12 months have been about one man, and that man is Alan Partridge. The veteran broadcaster’s…

Queen Camilla loves a book. Almost any book will do. ‘There’s something so tactile about a book,’ she says. ‘I…

Peter Thiel has been described variously as ‘America’s leading public intellectual’, the ‘architect of Silicon Valley’s contemporary ethos’ or as…

Nigel Farage is signing football shirts when I arrive at Reform’s campaign headquarters in Millbank Tower, the building where New…

As Christmas approaches and we wrack our brains to find something that suits everyone, there is no present quite like…

What has gone wrong for Americans? To listen to an increasing number of politicians and pundits on both sides, from…

Our Santa Pants cocktail is one of our go-to holiday pours when hosting at this time of year. Made with…

The foundation of science is based on the humility to learn, not the arrogance of expertise. When comet experts argued…

The Palace of Westminster, already beset by crumbling finials, has developed a damp problem. Nothing to do with bricks and…

W.H. Auden, in his essay on detective fiction, ‘The Guilty Vicarage’, asked: ‘Is it an accident that the detective story…

It was months before the difficulty with Marnie and Addison was talked about, or even alluded to. The sight of…

There are decades when The Spectator is shorthand for a trait: sex (2000s), young fogeys (1980s), free trade (1900s). But…

I have sweet memories of Christmas. My dad is proper old-school and would set up the video recorder. I don’t…

The new movie Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring and Rami Malek as his US Army psychiatrist, has had…

In preparation for the 2005 Ashes series, the late Graham Thorpe, a man I looked up to enormously, turned to…

After a stellar career in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6, an unassuming man with a passion…

One day while walking in Peckham Rye Park, William Blake saw angels sitting in the trees: ‘bright angelic wings bespangled…

Most of us indulge in mild fortune-telling. We think ‘If the light changes before I count to five, I’ll get…

‘Dearly beloved friends and family, well, what a year it’s been! Where to start?! The big event for us –…

No writer has done more than Jung Chang to bring the horrors of Maoist China to the attention of western…

I still hang out with the same two lovable crackheads I sat beside on the first day of primary school.…

A Christmas Carol is pretty well unavoidable around now, with Little Women trailing somewhat behind. There’s no shortage of alternative…

The Amazon reviews for David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity don’t alert you to the fact that this is a…

In August, the President of the United States declared a crime ‘emergency’ in my home town of Washington D.C. Donald…

There is little to beat the thrill of finding a letter you didn’t know existed and being transported back in…

There is no better time to read a Sherlock Holmes story than a winter evening. As the rain lashes against…

Right, who’s doing the washing up? It’s 6 p.m. on Christmas Day and the table, which was meticulously set for…

Pooh-pooh Christmas Eve marks the 100th birthday of Winnie-the-Pooh, which first appeared in a short story in the Evening News…

A meeting planned in secret. A message deemed subversive. The authorities both antagonised and confused. The gatherings of the early…

I set up In Our Time 27 years ago. I had been shunted from Start the Week to what was…

January Downing Street said Rachel Reeves would remain in her role as Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘for the whole of…

For otherwise healthy plebs in the Roman world, survival depended on the four ‘Fs’: farming (your sole source of food…

Party’s over Sir: My departure from Your Party, described as ‘disputed’ by Douglas Murray (‘Where was my invitation to Your…

We will remember 2025 as the year that a madness which had gripped us for a decade finally succumbed to…

On Advent Sunday, our grandson Christian became a Christian. He was baptised, sleeping, in the font of our parish church.…

Keir Starmer will start the new year as he means to go on: by attempting to convince his troops that…

A few years ago the podcaster Lex Fridman published a list of books that he was hoping to read in…

I can’t be the only neurotic mother to have rejoiced when the Princess of Wales revealed recently that she has…

If you like your period dramas butchered, then you are in for a real treat. The 250th anniversary of Jane…

I once tried to write a novel but lacking any ear for dialogue or skill at characterisation, I abandoned the…

I grew up in the 1980s but in many ways it was more like the 1880s. We lived with my…

Many years ago, a friend described one of my serious literary novels as ‘clever’. I was offended – but I…

God bless Netflix: I’ve just watched all 28 episodes of Foyle’s War, the 1940s detective series set in Hastings and…

My pick of the books of 2025

Amy Jeffs rediscovers the disturbing beauty of traditional ballads

Apprentice stories contain much of the raw material for To Kill a Mockingbird, as Lee tries to reconcile love for home with disgust at its prejudices

The former MP for Penrith and the Border prefers to ignore the depleted uplands and poisoned lakes as he rhapsodises about the landscape’s ‘improbable beauty’

Robert Langdon is pursued by dark forces through labyrinthine alleys as he searches for his abducted girlfriend, who is about to crack the secret of human consciousness

Recent titles reviewed are: The Christmas Clue, by Nicola Upson; Benbecula, by Graeme Macrae Burnet; and Blood Rival, by Jake Arnott

While investigating paranormal activity in postwar Britain, Tony Cornell found mischievous, attention-seeking children to be responsible for some of the more sensational ‘disturbances’

Late one August night in a Pentagon office in 1945, a line scrawled in pencil on a map of the Korean peninsula led to the creation of two countries that are still at war today

In Britain’s postwar tower blocks, modern amenities and breathtaking views left some residents ecstatic, while others risked disaster at the likes of Canning Town’s Ronan Point

How many can you spot? For answers, click here

Atmosphere can be as important as food – and no one knows this better than the capital’s visionary restaurateur Jeremy King, who raises front-of-house to an art form

Opera was hugely popular in Victorian Britain, but subsidies have doomed it to charges of ‘foreign elitism’ – as opposed to a ‘national passion, like football’

Quiet days in his garden listening to birdsong and counting his cucumbers gave Gilbert White enough material for one of the most enduring classics of all time

With Nazi informers everywhere, any dissident risked betrayal – and the prospect of being hanged ‘like slaughtered cattle’ for ‘defeatism’

Who can say what a world of Christmases will unfold this year? Sir Keir Starmer was knighted for services to…

‘Places in Cookham seem to me possessed by a sacred presence of which the inhabitants are unaware,’ wrote Stanley Spencer.…

The path that links the Spice Girls to Jeffrey Dahmer – necrophile mass murderer of at least 17 men –…

Who doesn’t love Paddington? The winsome marmalade junkie has arrived at the Savoy Theatre in a musical version of the…

Two years ago I was flown to Reykjavik to interview the Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson. It was a weird…

I called on Hugo Wolf the other week, and he didn’t look too great. He wouldn’t, of course; he died…

Secrets of the Conclave seemed rather optimistically titled, given that everybody at this year’s papal election had made a solemn…

By all accounts, the world première of Elgar’s Sea Pictures at the October 1899 Norwich Festival made quite a splash.…

The Nativity. In ‘Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance’, Elizabeth Bishop ends her travelogue-poem – St Peter’s, Mexico, Dingle,…

Driving up Noosa North Shore a few weeks ago we joined three other vehicles bogged in the soft sand. All…

I heard ‘begging the question’ being misused (again!) on talkback radio. But let’s not blame the poor old broadcasters –…

The first time I got drunk was at a wedding. I was 12 or thereabouts and sick in the taxi…

‘After having thrown a sheep six times from the top of a tower,’ reported the Gloucester Journal in 1784, ‘Montgolfier…

Maybe it’s the time of the year, or maybe it’s down to my sad little life, but surely I can’t…

Competition 3429 invited you to tell the story of the Nativity in the style of a well-known writer. There were…

Events, dear boy In 2025: 1. Name the singer of ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’ whose concert…

Alcoholics know that hell is denial, and there is plenty at Disneyland Paris in winter. This is a pleasure land…

As those of you familiar with this column will know, I am always eager to distinguish between an option and…

Towards the end of the war, a young Guards officer met some Italian aristocrats. They had much in common. Robert…

From Emma Barnett Q. What do I do about the fact that my friends are all scared of the telephone…

I met Ben Wallace for the first time the other day. He was pretty well the only minister who came…

Kenya An unexpected subplot in the ending of my marriage has been the loss of dear old friends. It came…

Bangkok Christmas in Thailand is one of the strangest festivities of the modern world. A country that is almost entirely…

As we reached the top of the hill and saw the view in front of us my heart thumped so…

In the early 2000s, academics, philosophers, politicians, members of the royal household and business people – including the CEO and…

I used to be a Christmas pudding denier. I couldn’t see the attraction of a dense pudding made mostly of…