‘Loose lips sink ships’ was the famous Second World War phrase which accurately warned of the dangers of allowing careless…

LINO takeover Did that curious phone call really mean I was to be dragged before some Liberal inquisition to suffer…

A strange game The organisers of terrorist attacks in various European cities over recent times seem to seriously misunderstand the…

After two Popes of towering intellectual and spiritual strength, it is difficult to become used to the fact that their…

Islam has exported its primitive, age-old and endless Sunni vs Shiite war of religious violence around the world, expanding it…

In 1939 Paul Hasluck published ‘Our Southern Half Caste Natives and their condition.’ It was a pamphlet based on a…

If the UK general election had been a military battle it would be taught in Army staff colleges around the…

What’s left of Australia’s manufacturing industry needs to get its political hands dirty. If it really wants to survive it…

The authoritarian attitude of Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has been challenged by Robin Speed, the President of the Rule of…

Political correctness is eating itself. It’s in very real danger of destroying us, and will do so while apologising for…

Some of the time, most of the time, it’s tricky to believe in God. There’s just too much that’s sad…

The lady’s slipper orchid, Cypripedium calceolus, is both a beautiful and silly–looking plant. It is the strangest of our native…

Dear Uncle James, Thank you for your note (‘Letter to a Corbynista’, June 24). Firstly, of course we’re still friends,…

Is Islam inherently misogynistic? That old charge arose again after the Manchester bombing in May, with the suggestion that Salman…

Who will you cheer for if Andy Murray meets Roger Federer at Wimbledon? It’s not a straightforward question, at least…

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Nigel Dempster, once the world’s best-known gossip columnist. For three…

It starts as soon as I arrive. In Den Haag Centraal railway station, the kiosks, windows, lift shaft, piano and…

One of the most disappointing things about the general election for me was how few people must have read Nick…

There is unlikely to be much of a legacy from Theresa May’s premiership, which could yet be truncated a short…

The Tory quagmire Sir: While the media has been preoccupied in divining what went wrong with the Conservatives’ appalling election…

Home In preparation for the vote on the Queen’s Speech, the Government, after weeks of negotiations, bought the support of…

Also in Sam Leith’s Diary: the best 18th-century novel since the 18th century and gossiping with David Miller

There’s a passage in Philip Larkin’s All What Jazz, the collection of his writings as the Daily Telegraph’s jazz critic,…

I saw him — the loneliest man at Glastonbury. He was wearing a neon-green Hawaiian shirt, and he was next…

I do find it odd that I’m so often having to write about the science of global warming, species extinction…

Sometimes crises end simply because all of the participants are exhausted. Essentially, this is what has happened with the post-election…

At Guildhall on Tuesday, the Centre for Policy Studies held its Margaret Thatcher Conference on Security. Its title is an…

It is conventional wisdom in the publishing industry that, despite the old adage, readers do indeed judge books by their…

The practical difficulties of extracting keys from the pockets of tight-fitting trousers while ascending stairs; the logistical hazards of seducing…

Trust scientists to ruin all our fun. The spectacularly beautiful 2014 film reboot of Godzilla, it turns out, is anatomically…

Milan Kundera’s novel Immortality wryly depicts Goethe preparing for immortality — neatly laying out his life in Dichtung und Warheit…

In 1981, an FBI team visited Donald Trump to discuss his plans for a casino in Atlantic City. Trump admitted…

Anthony Warner is angry. He’s angry about diets. He’s angry about detoxes. He’s angry about pseudoscience — and he has…

Just over halfway through this grim and gripping book, the author describes herself and her girlfriend ‘lying on my bed…

This extraordinary book has two main characters: Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), an early Zionist and the founder of the modern study…

Patty Yumi Cottrell’s blackly comic and sophisticated debut Sorry to Disturb the Peace (And Other Stories, £10) opens with Helen…

It has taken much of a celebrated literary life for Elif Batuman to produce a novel. At the beginning of…

Wyndham Lewis was a painter, poet, publisher and picker of fights. No target was too grand or too trivial: sentimental…

Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is an action, heist, car-chase film that is said to reinvent the action, heist, car-chase film.…

Politics and art can make for an awkward mix. Much more than with religious subjects it seems to matter whether…

As Kraftwerk took their 3D show around Britain last week, a document from 2013 surfaced online, purporting to be their…

It’s not unusual to see a pop concert on TV where teenage girls and a group of middle-aged men are…

If you want to see an opera director kicking a genius when they’re down — and I mean really sticking…

Hand it to the Americans. They know how to hype a young talent to death. The latest to be asphyxiated…

It was most odd. Four decades after I’d walked into the Sun to start my first shift as a news…

We may have seen them before, but the prospect of the Australian Impressionism show is very alluring; it has now…

In Competition No. 3004 you were invited to submit an extract from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Trumpland. As I was…

Seven clues contain a redundant word, each defining one unclued light. These seven unclued lights all undergo partial 1 across…

Extra letters in clues gave SAM GOLDWYN, to whom are attributed I’LL GIVE YOU (5) A DEFINITE (8) MAYBE (1A),…

Q. We have friends to stay each year in Scotland and it’s always a pleasure. Guests know there is signal…

‘Stands Scotland where it did?’ As the bottles circulated, we were able to answer Macduff’s question in much more optimistic…

A major Greek ship owner, whose political knowledge matches his wealth and business acumen, explained to me what the Qatar…

I got up, made a pot of coffee and sat and read the paper. A churchgoing charity worker had stolen…

‘Ha, ha!’ said my husband, waving the Spectator letters page in the air. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ He was overcome by…

Since moving to my dream home in the country a month ago, I’ve only had to fight a parking dispute,…

On the face of it, there is nothing complicated about the politics of Harry Potter, who made his first appearance…

Laikipia, Kenya   During our evening walk on the farm, Claire kept looking around nervously instead of engaging in conversation.…

Although it is commonly assumed that faster-than-sound passenger travel died with Concorde, this isn’t quite true: it overlooks the Caledonian…

I’ve just returned from two weeks playing in the European Open Championships in Montecatini in Italy, and I’m so whacked…

Can chess and bridge be considered sports? According to a European Court of Justice judgment earlier this month, bridge is…

White to play. This position is from Caruana–Carlsen, Paris 2017. Can you spot White’s winning coup? Answers to me at…