At the Garma festival in Arnhem land recently, the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, reached peak woke stupidity. The…

This is the story of the column I almost wrote, but which was overtaken by events. It all started a…

Constitution circumvented

Immigration versus the raised terror alerts

The Olympics’ low blow to boxing

Olympics opening ceremony fiasco again shows his shocking judgment

Albanese is destroying the Australian economy

...and why the media shares much of the blame

How safety rules have become the new strike action

Tony Burke moves onwards and upwards

Indigenous rights and shiny baubles

American politics seem particularly febrile in 2024. The sitting President has withdrawn from the election, days after his predecessor was…

It’s only when you read the old stories again, to a child maybe, that you become aware of the extent…

We’re told these riots are about immigration, racism, angry Islam, elite blindness and identity politics – and, to a point,…

Riotous summers seem to occur in Britain with about the same frequency as sunny ones: roughly every decade. Sometimes it’s…

The Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, Rotherham, is opposite an RSPB nature reserve. For months, its 130 rooms have been…

The fact that the Middle East stands on the brink of a catastrophic war can be explained by a scene…

Dhaka On Monday, Bangladesh’s long-serving prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled the country by helicopter to India. Parliament was…

Rod Liddle Rabbits, always rabbits. I remember at age 13 forcing my poor parents to trudge despondently across hilly downland…

Elon Musk’s Starship is the biggest rocket ever built. Sending it into space is hard; bringing it back to Earth,…

White, lacy cow parsley frothing along the roadside is a familiar sight during the British summer. But 2024 is the…

Deal or no deal Have public sector workers had a worse deal in recent years than private sector ones? –…

A lawyer who wished to serve on a jury but was no Christian was given permission to swear his oath…

The Olympics can hardly fail to be the greatest show on Earth. For the last two weeks, the world has…

Home A week of riots, with violence against the police, threats to Muslims, burning of vehicles and looting (Greggs, Shoezone,…

I’m a hopeless technophobe. I dislike the stylish laptop I’m using and its subdued pad pad pad. I still long…

Splitting the difference Sir: Hannah Moore’s article ‘Split personalities’ (27 July) is brutal. ‘There’s no such thing as a kind…

On a summer’s evening in 1978 I was standing on the platform at Redcar Central station, wondering if I had…

As the days slip by, the likelihood that anything will be learned from the recent rioting looks ever more remote.…

During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I…

A bout of global stock-market turmoil and an outbreak of UK street violence as adjacent news items gave an apocalyptic…

Dinah, a soul aficionado from Scarborough, persuades the forgotten elderly singer ‘Bucky’ Bronco to be guest of honour at a special concert. But will it all be hugely embarrassing?

Colin the Dinky Toys dealer, familiar from Baddiel’s TV documentaries, emerges from this memoir as a relentless bully, but at least the ‘fantasist’ Sarah provides suitably funny anecdotes

The night-time dismantling of a German radar site in Normandy was a feat of skill, courage and imagination. But there was little improvement to Bomber Command casualties as a result

The claustrophobic bullying in this story of a lesbian marriage that sours is so well done it’s nauseating

Three philosophers readily acknowledge the cryptocurrency’s shortcomings, but emphasise its one important function – as a means of challenging autocratic regimes

The North and South had been bitterly divided over slavery since the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, but the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861 would prove the point of no return

After decades of writing about Russian affairs, Rainsford now finds herself persona non grata – but admits she no longer feels nostalgia for the country

Journalists in the 1980s routinely mocked what was then known as synchronised swimming – until they tried it themselves, and emerged from the water gasping in shock

Fanny’s influence on her husband’s work was considerable, perhaps especially in the fine late novellas, rich in ironies about imperialism and the exploitation of South Sea islanders

Loved and admired by fellow writers, Paul Foot was competitive, witty and exhilarating company – a friend of the friendless and a tireless campaigner for justice

Maxim Vengerov is touted as one of the world’s greatest violinists, the kind of musician who can fill Carnegie Hall…

Salzburg Festival doesn’t mess about. The offerings this year include an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain in Lithuanian, a…

There’s sound thinking behind this summer’s resuscitation of London City Ballet – a medium-scale touring company popular in the 1980s…

Grade: B+ Games can be exciting, puzzling, scary, competitive and – occasionally – moving. Can they be funny? Not often.…

Remember when we all knew what indie meant? Indie was what John Peel played. It was music that was recorded,…

When the 15-year-old Maggi Hambling arrived at Benton End in Hadleigh, Suffolk – home of the East Anglian School of…

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away.…

Therapy seems to be the defining theme of this year’s Edinburgh festival. Many performers are saddled with personal demons or…

A Speccie reader has been in touch to complain about the use of the expressions ‘wind farm’ and ‘solar farm’.…

Off the beach of Ipanema where the tall and tanned girls go, they’ve found Brazilian sharks with cocaine in their…

With depressing predictability, the riots have led to calls for more censorship. Historically, it was the authoritarian right who blamed…

Q. I have invited some younger friends to stay with me at a family house in Spain. Among the party…

You knew it was going to be a superb Olympics from the moment Celine Dion belted out an Edith Piaf…

The word that Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, chose to describe the action of rioters was more interesting than…

Being mugged changes you forever. My encounter with highwaymen occurred three decades ago in a south London street, in the…

In Competition 3361 you were invited to submit a passage or poem whose meaning was affected by some missing, substituted…

The stench of burning rubber hung in the air as I trudged back to my hotel in Hull city centre last…

There are many old dishes in the UK that are hyper-regional, whose reach has never extended beyond geographical boundaries but…

You wouldn’t want to have been collecting the empties from Robins Farm, Chiddingfold, last week. There is no more sociable…

What can you say about the Rimstedt brothers that hasn’t already been said? They returned from the American Nationals in…

Relationships are about compromise and no wonder so many of us come a cropper in this department when we don’t…

I am working my way around the restaurants of the Old War Office (OWO), now an acronym and Raffles hotel…