The Week
Diary
Monday morning and I am heading south on Harley Street towards a rendezvous with ramifications, a date that is also…
Portrait of the week
Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told MPs before the summer recess: ‘No backbiting, no carping. The choice is me…
Diary
It has been an unqualified delight, even if it is mildly absurd: I have been chairing the judges for this…
Hope in Mosul
For the title of world’s most benighted city, Mosul takes some beating. Liberated from Saddam Hussein by US forces in…
Australian letters
Disraeli switches gears Sir: Malcolm Turnbull’s statement that Liberals are not Conservatives finally settles a question that has puzzled me…
Portrait of the week
Home In her first big speech since the general election, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘I say to the…
Letters
Technical education Sir: I am grateful to Robert Tombs for highlighting the baleful use of ‘declinism’ as part of the…
Diary
A trip to the supermarché at the beginning of our French month yielded many of the necessary things one also…
Russia’s revolutionary soul
From ‘The Russian awakening’, 6 July 1917: M. Kerensky, the Russian Minister of War, has kept his word. He promised…
The beginning is nigh
Just a few weeks ago, the Conservatives triumphed in the local government elections and Theresa May was hailed as an…
Australian letters
Hot stuff Sir: If Dr Williamson of East Anglia wishes to be taken seriously then he should refrain from using…
Portrait of the week
Home Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, urged colleagues to make the case for ‘sound money’; he said, ‘We…
Letters
The wrong choice Sir: Sebastian Vella’s new-found interest in politics is to be commended, but he has made the wrong…
Stronger together
There is unlikely to be much of a legacy from Theresa May’s premiership, which could yet be truncated a short…
Letters
The Tory quagmire Sir: While the media has been preoccupied in divining what went wrong with the Conservatives’ appalling election…
Portrait of the week
Home In preparation for the vote on the Queen’s Speech, the Government, after weeks of negotiations, bought the support of…
Diary
Also in Sam Leith’s Diary: the best 18th-century novel since the 18th century and gossiping with David Miller
Diary
To Fortnum & Mason last week on the hottest evening of the year to present the Desmond Elliott Prize for…
Diary
Five years after I swore I’d finished with him, it’s odd to be back on the road with Alex Rider.…
Opening gambit
The unexpected outcome of the general election has led some to hope that a weakened government will be forced to…
Australian letters
Denialist Sir: David Williamson (‘Oceans apart’, 17 June) shows that the planet is dynamic and many natural processes are not…
Portrait of the week
Home The burnt-out skeleton of Grenfell Tower, the 24-storey block of 127 flats at Latimer Road, west London, became a…
Letters
May’s convictions Sir: Nick Timothy seeks sympathy by revealing that his ‘loved ones’ are upset by the personal attacks to…
Diary
Nobody inside CCHQ was prepared for election night’s 10 p.m. exit poll. Lynton Crosby’s last text to me predicted that…
The thin blue line
The lessons to be learned from the Conservatives’ poor showing in the election could fill more pages than the national…
