Australia’s constitutional monarchy, much like Canada’s, is one of the great success stories to have grown out of the British…

There is an air of inevitability about the predicament facing the former sports minister Bridget McKenzie over the sports grants…

If you stay single long enough most of your married friends will stop trying to match-make you and take up…

Why we fell out of love with the reinstated Today host

You have nothing to lose but your brains

The Australian Left’s climate obsession reeks of moral vanity

Conservatism is looking pretty good

In helping to create the extraordinary growth of the American economy, Donald Trump himself is the subject of an extraordinary…

Impeachment has a noble past

There’s something familiar about the new religion of climate change

The great Brexit divide seems to have mended since the election

Remainers’ anger has subsided, but this is an uneasy peace

The handling of the coronavirus shows a one-party state in action

Britain needs to rediscover trial and error, serendipity and speed

The rise of ‘coffin clubs’

We Germans have been in denial about Brexit

How the word lost its glamour

 Shanghai ‘Do you want me to scan your temperature?’ asks the receptionist, brandishing an infrared thermometer. Arriving at my hotel…

The debate over whether Big Ben should bong to mark Brexit isn’t the first time the famous bell has caused…

The moment of Britain’s departure from the EU was always likely to be an anticlimax, both for those who expect…

Home Using a Parker fountain pen (a brand now made in Nantes), Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, signed the EU…

I still live in the same house, in London, in which I lived as a baby. I walk my five-year-old…

In the beginning How did Britain mark its entry into the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973? There were no…

Lord Heseltine’s electrifying hair once whipped the party faithful into paroxysms of euphoria. But since today he sees his hopes…

Enemies on the left Sir: James Forsyth’s article ‘Labour must change to win’ (25 January) describes how little appetite the…

It was with regret that I read that Albert, retired King of the Belgians, has finally had to admit, following…

Now that Britain is out of the European Union, it will be very hard to go back in. In the…

Most people won’t have heard of Selina Todd. The only reason I had was because some years ago the BBC…

I’m not one of these teetotallers who frowns on people who imbibe, like an angsty ex-smoker who petulantly swats away…

  The river of death has brimmed his banks And England’s far and Honour’s a name But the voice of…

I first wrote about the risks and rumours around Huawei — and made bad jokes about its name — in…

Dresden defined the horror of war: revenge and cold-blooded murder. It still does, says Christopher Priest

Those who conduct the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra may not be aware that musicians fill in a form after…

anna asMany of our favourite folk tales have lost much of their original Gothic horror in later versions. By contrast,…

The mutual animosity of the Far East Asian nations can strike some as baffling, given their shared history and cultures,…

Anyone reading Clement Knox’s history of seduction for salacious entertainment is likely to be disappointed: it contains no mention of…

In my twenties I once visited a lonely spot among the western Himalayas called Zhuldok in the Suru valley. Politically…

Lydia and Luca are hiding in the shower room of their home while 16 members of her family are murdered.…

In the middle of the last century, Robert Collison, one of the founders of the Society of Indexers, addressed himself…

Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian major-general blown up by the US over the New Year, will have seen himself arrested by…

Negativity has a power over us. You know how it is. One bad thing can ruin your whole day, even…

Ismail Kadare is a kind of lapidary artist who carves meaning and pattern into the rocky mysteries of his native…

Clive James (1939-2019), in the much-quoted words of a New Yorker profile, was a brilliant bunch of guys. One of…

Pregnancy has always been a public spectacle – and as the Foundling Museum’s new exhibition shows, a dangerous one

The Lighthouse stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson (and a very nasty seagull) in a gothic thriller set off the…

One of the many astonishing things about the BBC2 drama The Windermere Children (Monday) was that the real-life story it…

Uncle Vanya opens with a puzzle. Is the action set in the early 20th century or right now? The furnishings…

Every development in heavy music is derided by mainstream critics. When Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin emerged in the late…

So, you’ve fallen in love with a piece of classical music and you want to buy a recording. The problems…

‘Plunderers of the air’, Naum Gabo called the Luftwaffe planes. In Cornwall, during the second world war, Gabo kept cuttings…

A taciturn Glaswegian and an unlikely knight of the realm, David McVicar has directed several of Opera Australia’s most admired…

I was walking up St James’s and happy to be in London. For a change I was not rushing but…

There are no stairs or escalators to take you up to Terminal 4 from the underground Heathrow Express platform. Beyond…

Some might say it was a typical over-reaction on my part to erect hidden cameras at the horses’ field. First…

Have I mentioned that I played for England in the Camrose? And not for the first time either. Sadly this…

Looking at the first 12 games of the 2018 Carlsen-Caruana World Championship, which all ended in draws, I saw a statistical…

Black to move. Javakhishvili–Adams, Gibraltar 2020. Adams has a few plausible moves here, including Rf1, Rf3+ and Rxf7, but only…

In Competition No. 3133 you were invited to provide a passage about food written in the style of a well-known…

Eight unclued lights are of a kind with the 3 of the 30. Elsewhere, ignore two accents.   Across 1   …

The statement, ‘HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS (10/17) twenty-twenty’ was made by the FILM DIRECTOR (48/21) BILLY (4) Wilder (suggested by the…

I was slightly surprised when Greta Thunberg announced at Davos that we had eight years left to save the planet.…

Not everyone likes the Six Nations — a recent well-received book on the state of rugby union described it as…

Q. An elderly cousin gave my husband and me a wedding present of two weeks in his villa in the…

Wild Honey is a ludicrous name for this restaurant: there is nothing wild about it, and I do not think…

At this time of year in Colorado the crime of puffing is widespread. It is so cold that in the…