The last few weeks – and the last few editions of The Spectator Australia – have seen a flurry of…

The FBI certainly stirred up the US election when it announced it had found more of Hillary Clinton’s emails on…

Like most Aussies, I don’t rate Canberra high on my To Do List, but for it I will say this:…

And they wonder why their supporters are deserting them… The whole 18C hate-speech saga is now verging on the pathetic.…

The criminalisation of separatism When Indonesian President Joko Widodo visits Australia this coming week, he may be surprised to find…

I once heard a panelist on Q&A say she’d had an abortion and didn’t ‘give a rat’s arse’ about the…

A colleague who had recently arrived from the Middle East wondered why it seemed that everybody was on the verge…

The secretly foreign-funded multinational greenie global-warming activists, who keep losing their vexatious battles in Australian courts, are nevertheless doing worryingly…

If the Senate votes down the same sex marriage plebiscite bill it will amount to one of the most undemocratic…

Going through my library recently I came across a small, rather battered blue book: the 1943 edition of The Last…

The mood in California was apologetic. Most people we met seemed embarrassed that their country’s dirty laundry was being aired…

This weekend at the Edenbridge bonfire in Kent, near where I live, an effigy of Donald Trump will be burned.…

For the past few weeks, British news-papers have been informing their readers about two contrasting battles in the killing grounds…

There are lots of signs at Gatwick about how it is unacceptable to be ‘rude or abusive’ to Border Force…

‘I am a Messianic Jew,’ says the jittery young man at the rectory door. He is pale and drawn, with…

Enrolling at Parsons College in New York the other day, a friend was asked to state her name, subject and…

‘Prefabs to solve housing crisis,’ screamed the front page of the Sunday Telegraph last weekend. Can the shortage of homes…

The exchange of letters this week between Mark Carney and Philip Hammond made it very clear who the supplicant was.…

Strike force Nissan is to expand its plant in Sunderland, building two new models there. The Japanese company is praised for…

From ‘Romance’, The Spectator, 4 November 1916: There is indeed a glamour and a pathos about the private soldier, especially when, as so…

When a Prime Minister flies off abroad with a few business-leaders it is seldom worthy of comment. Such trade missions…

An MP’s first duty Sir: Toby Young writes (Status anxiety, 29 October) that Zac Goldsmith’s decision to campaign for Leave in…

Home Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, said he would stay on for another year when his…

Doctors are being urged not to tell patients what is best for them but to lay out the options and…

Polite, well-heeled New Hampshire is the last place you’d expect to see a voodoo doll. But there it was, pointed…

The new series of The Missing is surely the gloomiest television of the year. But it has nothing on the…

I’ve now just about reached that delightful stage in life where you’re no longer exposed to the horrors of other…

Washington The outcome of America’s elections might become clear in the first minutes of vote-counting next Tuesday night. That is…

There was a comedy programme about Nigel Farage on the BBC this week, entitled Nigel Farage Gets His Life Back.…

It is a great relief that there will be no inquiry into the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ in 1984. The weirdness…

‘Oh the Mediterranean addiction, how we fall for it!’ So sighed Sybille Bedford, who spent the 1920s and 1930s in…

When he first came to public notice, Rasputin was described in a Russian newspaper as ‘a symbol. He is not…

We financial hacks have been encouraged, indoctrinated perhaps, to think that London’s Big Bang was a Very Good Thing. That…

Lady Anne Barnard is a name that means almost nothing today, but her story is a remarkable one. She defied…

Teenage girls all over the world have suddenly developed electro-magnetic powers that can be unleashed on anybody who bugs them.…

A preoccupation with death is felt from the start of Margaret Drabble’s new novel, which opens with Francesca Stubbs, in…

Richard Francis’s new novel covers ostensibly familiar ground. Set in and around Boston in the 1690s, it tells the story…

In 2011 the New York Times’s chief dance critic, Alastair Macaulay, asked: How should we react today to ‘Bojangles of…

The Light Between Oceans is one of those films that comes issued with a handy how-to-use manual. Shudder as hero…

The Romanovs were a hot topic in 1967: it was the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, memories of Ingrid…

On 2 August 1933 one of the more improbable meetings of the 20th century took place when Albert Einstein had…

Antioch on the Orontes River, founded in late 4th century BC, became an important city in the East of the…

Wexford is to opera-goers what casinos are to gamblers. The uncertainty, the hope, the exhilaration — they’re all a crucial…

There’s nothing new about Radio 3 tearing up the schedules, temporarily abandoning regular favourites such as Private Passions, The Early…

In 2015, the first series of Humans (Sunday) was apparently Channel 4’s most watched home grown drama since The Camomile…

I shall never forget my first encounter with Abel Gance’s Napoleon. I saw it under the most unpromising circumstances —…

Amadeus by Peter Shaffer is haunted by its own antecedents. Viewers are apt to feel that a new production lacks…

I’ve just spent a day looking after our one-year-old vizsla and, to be blunt, I have some sympathy with Michael…

The post The Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator.

In Competition No. 2972 you were invited to supply an ode on a Grayson Perry urn. Frank McDonald wasn’t keen:…

The perimetric quotation (referring to October), AMBIGUOUS MONTH, THE MONTH OF TENSION, THE UNENDURABLE MONTH’, is followed by DL, the initials…

Q. Some elderly friends of mine love to entertain in their London club on their visits, but a problem arises…

Sixty years ago this week all hell broke loose: Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest and put down a nationalist uprising…

For almost 400 years, since it was built on the orders of Pope Urban VIII in the 17th century, the…

‘Look at them, they’re all fat,’ he said. I’d slowed the car to allow four children to cross the zebra…

Staring at a brown envelope, my husband said: ‘I’ll deal with that post-breakfast,’ and then laughed as though he had…

For three months after I move to the country, I am told, I am going to be in the most…

One fairly reliable rule of thumb is ‘never buy anything at an airport if you can help it’. Something about…

My ten-year-old football-loving son thought I was making some silly joke when I told him last weekend that I was…

Black to play. This position is from Nakamura-Carlsen, chess.com Blitz Final 2016. The position looks quiet but after Black’s next…

Unclued lights are three groups of three words of a kind, each group relating differently to a theme word. This…

An aeon ago, when I was first invited to the odd City lunch, there was a standard formula: G&T, white,…