The High Court’s decision on whether or not to give leave to Peter Ridd to appeal his Federal Court loss…

The Spectator Australia Literary Investigations Unit is renowned for uncovering many long-lost masterpieces, but few match the significance of its…

Karl Marx was right about one thing. Throughout history, the ruling ideas of society have been the ideas of the…

This is no way to produce sensible policy

Après Xi Jinping, le déluge?

How cancel culture is dumbing us all down

The activists’ arguments against the name of our favourite cheese are full of holes

Bragging rights – and wrongs A significant intervention against free and private choice, based on the idea that government knows…

Is Australian academic freedom now dead in the water?

Expose the Democrat coup plotters before the election

Guess which theatre is the first to open to the paying public post-Covid? Not Lloyd Webber’s London Palladium, where small…

The public school elite who rule the wokerati

What should the world expect from a President Biden?

The mayor manning Portland’s barricades

Covid-19 is fast-forwarding us into retirement

Why do we still struggle to see Xi’s China as a threat?

Scotland’s statues attest to a history buried under sentimental nationalism

Why the US assassination of Iran’s top general didn’t spark a war

It is no credit to British democracy that we have the second largest legislative chamber in the world. The only…

Masking the truth Sir: Matthew Parris is right to laud the importance of embracing the scientific method (‘Why should opinion…

The first nanny state The Prime Minister’s strategy on obesity has been labelled a work of the ‘nanny state’ —…

Four years ago, I bought a ranch in Wyoming. Not that I was tired of New York, but I’m fascinated…

Home At a few hours’ notice, the government removed Spain from the list of countries from which it was possible…

Of all the sad and surreal things to happen in the past few months, the Catholic church’s decision to abandon…

As the government struggled on Saturday with the question of whether to impose a quarantine on those returning from Spain,…

When I worked in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur long ago, my office looked across Jalan Tun Razak, a…

Although Stephen Toope, vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, is committed to openness, it is a struggle to get information out of…

The case of Johnny Depp vs the Sun, heard over recent weeks at the High Court in London, certainly gives…

One of the genuine pleasures I always take in arriving back in the north-east after being in London is that…

Some faint hearts may sink at the idea of a torrid Swedish family drama peopled with nameless figures identified only…

Alexander Masters speculates on how the universe will end

Tim Parks is a seasoned, incisive observer of football, the railways, work, domestication and plenty more in his adoptive country…

In Russian, the proverb ‘Ignorance is bliss’ translates as ‘The less you know, the better you sleep’. For those who…

All it takes to turn a cast-off into a prized possession can be a bit of imagination. To a passerby,…

Home, as James Baldwin wrote, is perhaps ‘not a place but simply an irrevocable condition’. Sarah M. Broom’s National Book…

Keith Douglas is perhaps the best-known overlooked poet. He died following the D-Day landings in 1944, and his Collected Poems…

Covid-19 has been bad news for writers with books coming out — unless the book is about breathing. We’re all…

The montane forests of far-eastern Russia have given rise to one of the finest nature books of recent years, The…

Spare a thought for Victorian burglars. Just when they thought they could go back to ransacking South Yarra mansions while…

If you’d been in our house during the Coon cheese debacle you would have heard me shouting at the TV:…

First there were the home recitals: musicians playing solo Bach in front of their bookshelves, wonkily captured on iPhones. Next…

Is the world ready for the return of live rock music? On the evidence of the first gig in London…

Grade: A- This is worrying — like listening to a speech by David Lammy and finding yourself, against your better…

Nobody could argue that Andrew Davies isn’t up for a challenge. He’d also surely be a shoo-in for Monty Python’s…

Auditoriums can now reopen — but they will resemble prison camps, says Lloyd Evans

The BBC documentary on Rupert Murdoch is pure one-sided bile, says Kelvin MacKenzie

Make Up is the first full-length film from writer–director Claire Oakley, set in an out-of-season holiday park on the Cornish…

Statue deconstruction is becoming the Anglosphere’s most popular artistic genre. So why are our local avant-garde artists lagging behind? Sculpture…

Athens   This ancient city without tourists reminds me of the Athens I once knew and loved, but for the…

Provence-Alpes-Côte D’Azur   A burning ball appears over the brow of the hill at seven o’clock every morning and then…

From my seat in the greasy spoon café I looked out on a typical English row of shops on a…

London   Simon, proprietor of the sex shop opposite our Covid-19 testing centre in Soho, insisted on popping a pack…

Sexy Fish is an Asian fusion barn in Berkeley Square, near the car dealerships and the nightingales, if they are…

We know about the endlessly jaw-dropping greatness of Ben Stokes (a peerage soon, surely), the furious power of a supercharged…

Q. I am not expected to pay rent at the cottage which has been lent to me by a super-kind…

‘I’m with the King,’ said my husband. The king in question was Kingsley Amis, whose choleric The King’s English was…

I am sure I have posed more questions to the chess engine Stockfish than to any living being. I love…

Disaster struck the Young family last Friday. My 12-year-old son Charlie woke up with a temperature. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t matter,…

Last week I got an email from one of my readers — the other one is possibly away for the…

White to play. Stockfish–Leela Chess Zero, TCEC 18, Game 92, July 2020. It looks hard to make progress, despite the…

In Competition No. 3159 you were invited to supply a poem that does not contain the letter ‘e’. This fiendish…

Eighteen clues contain deficient wordplay, the missing elements of which, when highlighted, confirm the theme.   Across 1 Party with…

Unclued lights are Brewer’s ‘Chambersisms’ — words from that dictionary with quirky definitions. First prize Maureen Quarmby, Oldham Runners-up M.…