The election victory of Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party came as welcome news this week. Welcome news…

Some recent events in Melbourne and in the Federal Court have shown us what is in store for us if…

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has thrown his support behind truth-telling as a softener for the emotional campaign for the Voice…

How low did Phil go?

China’s birth rate woes

Climate change policy: a greater risk than climate change?

Is Bill Gates really beyond meat?

Australians must never again allow such draconian authoritarianism

The latest ploy to destroy our healthy diets

The end of an era

No time Albo, for vanity issues

A tough week for Trussonomics

Warhammer is a tabletop battle game. Players build and paint little models of aliens, tanks and killer robots and then…

Is it fascist or anti-fascist to quote G.K. Chesterton, or neither?

There’s a growing sense that tomorrow belongs to Sinn Fein

Red kites should never have been reintroduced to Britain

Why has Oxford killed off a much-loved Catholic college?

I began the week in Miami, looking forward to what a friend of mine describes as ‘the finest sight in…

Cautious optimism at the Labour party conference

Putin’s options Sir: I agree with Paul Wood that Vladimir Putin is on the back foot (‘Cornered’, 24 September). His…

  Moscow A week of somewhat mixed messages from the Kremlin. One day Vladimir Putin opened Europe’s largest Ferris wheel…

The Labour party’s contribution to the national debate this week has included the idea that someone can be ‘superficially’ black.…

Home Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented a far-reaching ‘fiscal event’ (ineligible to be called a Budget), said…

The German branch of the ‘green’ organisation Peta (‘People for the ethical treatment of animals’) is demanding that, until men…

Fit for a king King Charles III, it has been reported, is reluctant to move into Buckingham Palace. Who was…

There is almost nothing I like more than a running battle. As my friend Julie Burchill also says, when a…

Not least among the shivers down my spine as I listen to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng pump up the…

Vice-chancellor Stephen Toope claims it was ‘inevitable’ that a university ‘as long-established as Cambridge’ would have links to slavery. Now…

‘Fury at the City slickers betting against UK plc,’ shouted the Daily Mail on Tuesday, after Monday’s mayhem saw the…

This year’s Conservative party conference was supposed to be a moment of celebration for the new Tory leader. Instead there…

There was an article recently in the increasingly woke but still useful New Scientist which attempted to gauge the degree…

Yes, but why did the IMF put out its Tuesday night statement? Even if all its criticisms of the government’s…

Every summer, during our holiday in Orkney, there is a moment of panic. We’re standing on a dizzying cliff –…

The Radetzky March must be one of the dozen greatest European novels – but its author was frighteningly unpleasant, says Philip Hensher

For 25 years, Abed Takkoush assisted foreign reporters like Jeremy Bowen when they arrived to cover the chaos and conflicts…

Richard E. Grant pulls off a feat here. The title is twee but the content isn’t. With unselfpitying dash the…

It is the contention of Peter Wilson, professor of the history of war at Oxford University and the author of…

William Boyd taps into the classical novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man’s century-spanning life, even to the…

All the different aspects of a culture collide and interconnect. Melbourne is the undisputed capital of Australian rules football (which…

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is a comedy-drama based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico about a cheerful, kind-hearted…

Jonathan Meades on the art of menus

It would be easy to be a little dismissive of George Ezra. A wholesome late twentysomething hailing from the rock…

You’d have to pay me an awful lot more than I get for this column to review Monster: The Jeffrey…

Leos Janacek disliked long operas, and the first act of The Makropulos Affair is a masterclass in how to set…

Subversive is a podcast that documents the world of the ‘New Right’, a strange development in conservatism. Host Alex Kaschuta,…

Art is a fundamentally childish activity: painters dream up images and sculptors play with stuff. It was while playing with…

Eureka Day is a topical satire set in a woke school in America. An outbreak of mumps has led to…

Prior to the threatened rewriting of the Australian constitution can we stop re-writing the English dictionary and the meanings of…

According to American journalist Kaylee McGhee White (writing in the Washington Examiner) it is now officially okay to use the…

Black to play and win. A variation from the game Aronian-Ivanchuk, Julius Baer Generation Cup, September 2022. Ivanchuk could have…

In Competition No. 3268, you were invited to recast an extract from children’s literature in the horror genre. In the…

The swallows who nest yearly in my garage have agreed that ‘that’s enough baby-making for this year’, and started their…

The support group groupies have issued another ban. They have attempted to slap an exclusion order on another long-standing member,…

In 2015, Holborn Underground station was suffering from serious overcrowding at peak hours, with a bottleneck forming in the space…

Singers will know that where ‘Q’ = ‘the number of’: Q34/22A x Q41/39/1D x Q3/8/38 = Q the 14. 41/39/1D…

A beautiful Greek island; a warm sea; delicious al fresco dinners; and bridge from morning till night with Andrew Robson.…

Two football friends, brothers, Mick and Pete, came to visit last week. We’ve been going to matches together since 1969,…

Harvard man Russell Seitz has sent me an extraordinary present as an object lesson in ‘what a magazine should be…

The Budget (which the revolutionary fiscal act last week was technically not) is directly connected with bilge and with one…

Q. I shall be spending more time in the company of newer acquaintances in the West Country and would appreciate…

I’ve agreed to interview the author and journalist Andrew Doyle about his new book at the Conservative party conference –…

As suggested by the quotation by John Donne around the perimeter, the other unclued lights were all kinds of trumpets.…

If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, then a Trinity or Cambridge burnt cream must taste…

The latest flashpoint in the Carlsen-Niemann saga took place in the sixth round of the preliminaries at the Julius Baer…

We were discussing bourbon and whether American whiskey could ever rival Scotch. I recalled the first time I ever tried…