First up, congratulations to Premier Gladys Berejiklian for, presumably, being the one to hit the ‘Eject’ button on the appointment…

The demonisation of men Much of the current political campaign about women is actually an expression of Left-feminist hatred of…

Somebody please tell the PM

On Covid-19 responses and their disastrous consequences

Five ‘sliding doors’ elections

It’s time to replace the IOC

The ALP muzzles Danby and rewards human rights abuses

Will rock stars be the next victims of cancel culture?

Let’s play politics with the vaccine

Now it’s Martin Luther King versus Ibram X. Kendi

Peter Ridd’s High Court case is as important as Cardinal Pell’s was

St Tiburtius’ Day, on 14 April, is traditionally when you will hear the first cuckoo. Since at least the Middle…

Schools and the problem of ‘rape culture’

Can we escape the cult of cosiness?

Britain’s vaccine success was supposed to lead to freedom. What happened?

Prince Harry’s very questionable new job

The misguided plan to ‘retain and explain’ statues

When I arrived a month ago, one wouldn’t believe LA was suffering a major pandemic. The roads were still busy…

Vaccine passports are already redundant in Israel

The PM has always been against ID cards… until now

The last patient I treated was 105 years old. She has lived through two world wars, a depression and at…

A leap of faith Sir: I live not far from the ‘London Temple’ of the Church of Jesus Christ of…

Protests are being staged against the proposed bill to change the laws on protest. But there is a bigger issue…

‘The government would love to put issues such as these beyond the bounds of debate by creating an air of…

Home The government sketched a scheme for a coronavirus passport, or ‘Covid status certification’, to be tried out at the…

Positive thinking The government wants us to test ourselves for Covid-19 twice a week, using lateral flow kits which will…

No prime minister wants to be dependent on the opposition to get the government’s business through the House of Commons.…

On Grand National Day at Aintree this Saturday, the Rose Paterson Trust will be launched. This time last year, Rose…

In my teens, rubbishing the implacable edifice of the United States felt like kicking a tank in trainers. Richard Nixon’s…

The market emphatically endorsed my negative opinion of the Deliveroo share offer, which bombed from its offer price of 390p…

In principle I’m in favour of vaccination passports, and don’t understand how — again in principle — anyone could be…

We have a government which is basically libertarian in its instincts, despite its current affection for telling us what we…

Bob Dylan didn’t just assimilate the Great American Songbook – he vastly increased its size and variety, says Andrew Motion

No one can accuse Linda Colley of shying away from big subjects. This one is as big as they come…

Referring to the precarious future of the Union of England and Scotland, the authors of Englishness: The Political Force Transforming…

If you had asked me a year ago how a pandemic-panicked world of stockpiles, curfews and social isolation would influence…

Naomi Ishiguro began writing Common Groundin the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. The title refers to both Goshawk Common in…

John Ruskin believed the most beautiful things are also the most useless, citing lilies and peacocks. Had he known about…

Gwendoline Riley’s unsentimental fiction hovers on the edge of comedy and bleakness, and has drawn comparisons from Jean Rhys to…

The name ‘Carré’ immediately evokes the shadowy world of espionage. Ironically, however, few people today have heard of the real…

The comic David Baddiel has written a book which explains that much of the far left hates Jews. There are…

In the cloud-capped highlands of Rwanda, even the rain-makers sound like crashing snobs. When two teenage pupils from Our Lady…

This book does not mess about. It tells the story of the fighting on the Western Front between 1914 and…

I was first sent a version of Undreamed Shores: The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology in June last year. I…

At a certain point, the critic Robert Hughes once noted, at the heart of American cities churches began to be…

Sometimes a crime show on TV turns into something higher and better, a transfigured thing. The Victim, from Scotland, falls…

These days, you’d need to be as game as Ned Kelly to run an opera company. It’s a chancy enough…

Agatha and Poirot was one of those programmes that had the annoying effect of making you feel distinctly snooty. ITV’s…

I’d forgotten what a rich and deep and characterful voice John le Carré had. Listening to author and lawyer Philippe…

Some pictures are now so mediated that their actual physicality has long been dwarfed by a million reproductions. The ‘Mona…

Everyone knows Helen of Troy. The feckless sex popsicle betrayed her husband, Menelaus, and ran off with the dashing Paris,…

Richard Bratby meets the hidden men and women composing melodies to make you buy

One thing about a streamed festival is that the toilets are better than at the real thing. The other thing,…

The multi-Oscar-nominated Sound of Metalstars Riz Ahmed as a heavy-metal drummer whose life is in freefall after losing his hearing.…

Australia’s iconic hippie playground is in the news. This time it is not about real estate booms or Hollywood celebrity…

I haven’t yet read the report published by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. But, looking at the recommendations,…

Q. I have just been invited to a wedding where the groom will be the only person I know. Much…

In Competition No. 3193 you were invited to submit clerihews (two couplets, AABB, metrically clunky, humorous in tone) on members…

7 Down has wordplay to only half its grid entry. The undefined part is the first word of a 9-word…

The unclued lights consist of the names of two countries overlapping by two or three letters: eg 25D ‘JAPANAMA’ gives…

Bridge is a complex game, and is played by humans. Put those two things together and you have a guarantee…

Black to play. Livaic-–Oparin, Fide World University Online Championship, March 2021. After 1…Rxc5 2 Rxb4, a draw was soon agreed.…

Twenty players were disqualified from the Fide World University Online Championships, out of almost 900. Does that call for moral…

It takes a very good writer to produce prose that provokes an emotional response in a reader, even when it…

After refusing to issue my HRT without a blood pressure test, the GP surgery rang to offer me an appointment.…

There is a more depressing subject than the lockdown. The evening began with a bottle of 18-year-old Glenmorangie. It was…

In the waiting room I thought about the Duke of Edinburgh. In particular, I pictured him saluting the cenotaph on…

Judging from the reaction to last week’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report, you’d think it had been written…

Laikipia In the past I had a low opinion of sheep. During my first forays into farming I saw them…

A reader sent in a television preview from the Daily Star for Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds in which ‘Brad Pitt leads…