The US mid-term elections are the most important in recent history and not just for Americans. Since 1788, Australia has…

I don’t know if media coverage of the Geoffrey Rush defamation trial boosted Australian cinema attendances for last week’s simulcast…

There was an undesirable intervention this week into the debate about African gangs in Melbourne, namely that a judge thought…

A standard political tactic (of all sides) is to paint your opponents as inhumane or wreckers and wilful destroyers of…

Exit, stage right, Ross Cameron.   Sky TV has fired its second Outsiders host. This time the charge was racism and…

The brouhaha that followed the federal government’s announcement that Australia will consider moving Australia’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem continues to…

There are two types of people in political parties. One type joins a party because he or she thinks that…

There’s a long tradition in this country of washed-up troupers from overseas turning up on our shores for a gig,…

When Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and gunned down eleven Jewish victims, his purpose was…

When the Lisbon Treaty was signed in 2007, the inclusion of Article 50 was hailed as a concession to British…

For a millennium and a half now, one of the great pleasures of being a commentator on current affairs has…

The story is part of family lore. How, during the Battle of Mons, on 23 August 1914, two long columns…

On Sunday morning, in Puy-en-Velay, I climbed the 275 volcanic steps to the tiny chapel of Rocher Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe. There,…

Emmanuel Macron was elated when France won the World Cup in July. The photograph of him leaping out of his…

Should university students really feel ‘satisfied’? Or would we rather they felt challenged? For the honchos of higher education, the…

My wife and I have a set routine after landing back at Gatwick. We collect our bags, clear customs and…

Donald Trump can, at the very least, claim to have killed off political apathy. Americans this week voted in greater…

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off for St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Mons, from which she was to…

How on earth should one do it? How should the centenary of the end of a war be marked? Not…

It is cricket The use of a baseball expression, backstop, for possible arrangements over the Irish border could upset some…

From ‘Thanks be to God’, 16 November 1918: The thought that filled the mind of the nation on Monday, and…

Hubris and nemesis Sir: Douglas Murray’s assessment of Angela Merkel’s decision to stand down as German Chancellor (‘Europe’s empty throne’,…

 Washington, DC President Donald J. Trump thinks only in terms of winning and losing. On Tuesday, he won and he…

As someone who has recently discovered he is black, I have watched with incredulity the treatment doled out by the…

Reader, may I call you John? Now imagine, John, that you are my employer and I know (or claim) that…

At my lecture in Sheffield last week, the final question in an otherwise temperate Q&A was antagonistic. My last Spectator…

We may or may not hear news soon of a settlement of the Irish border issue that will allow Brexit…

The sixth of November 1918 was remembrance day for my great-grandfather, Norman Moore. It was the fourth anniversary of the…

Andrew Motion Short stories seem to fare better in the US than the UK, and among this year’s rich crop,…

Reflecting on the scenes of celebration, the ‘overpowering entrancements’, that he had witnessed in November 1918 on the first Armistice…

Ask most people whether they fancy a four-month, 5,000-mile trek across the Middle East and they might conclude you need…

Rupert Christiansen’s City of Light opens on the evening of 5 January 1875, with the inauguration of Paris’s new opera…

The striking yet subtle jacket image from Donatello’s ‘Madonna of the Clouds’ announces this book’s quality from the outset. Its…

At the beginning of August this year, the England test team played what is supposed to have been the 1,000th…

Immigrants to the United States in the late 19th century discovered in Upper New York Bay, after a long, uncomfortable…

Early on the morning of 6 May 1840, a young housemaid in a respectable Mayfair street discovered that her master,…

Among the myths of Ancient Greece the Cyclops has become forever famous, the Talos not so much. While both were…

You could call The Remainder a literary kaleidoscope: look at it one way and you see how the past lays…

Anne Summers in 2011 was named by Vogue magazine as ‘one of the world’s wisest women’. After reading her memoir…

A cascade of poppies falls from ‘weeping windows’ across Britain. A 50-metre drawing of Wilfred Owen appears in the sand,…

Lauren Gunderson’s play I and You opens in the scruffy bedroom of 17-year-old Caroline. Lonely, beautiful and furious, she’s unable…

‘I want big things to do and vast spaces,’ Edward Burne-Jones wrote to his wife Georgiana in the 1870s. ‘And…

I wonder if Wisconsin has any idea what an international embarrassment it has become? By rights it ought to be…

‘It was so unreal,’ said one of the first world war veterans about the long-awaited Armistice. It was the most…

Let’s get the ‘was-it-good?’ stuff out of the way first. Yes, it was good. It was better than good. It…

Wildlife is an adaptation of the 1990 novel by Richard Ford about a family coming apart at the seams, and…

Arriving in Budapest, I receive a summons I cannot refuse. Gyorgy Kurtag wants to see me. Famously elusive, the last…

So there I was in Soho Square on a cold and rainy morning, nibbling my complimentary almond croissant and eagerly…

As the most subscribed theatre company in the country, the Melbourne Theatre Company can be deservedly proud of its long…

New York An old-fashioned party is a gathering of friends invited by the host or hostess, who foots the bill.…

Three years ago we were given a bag of skunk, Catriona and I, provenance Glasgow. It was one gigantic dried…

If you are wondering, any more than usual, how your tax is being spent, you should know that I have…

Fairy tales can happen. On Sunday the filly God Given won Italy’s only Group One race of the season, the…

This autumn has been the busiest (bridge-wise) I can remember. It started with the Crockfords final at the beginning of…

Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, those two gladiators of the mind, will duel in London during the remainder of this…

White to play. This is from Carlsen-Caruana, Bilbao 2012. Black has blundered right out of the opening. How did Carlsen…

In Competition No. 3073 you were invited to submit a short story in the Gothic style with a topical twist.…

Unclued lights, singly or correctly paired, are of a kind, as given in Chambers. Ignore one apostrophe.   Across 5   …

The word ladder connecting UNITED and STATES goes: UNITES (1D), URITES (18), WRITES (7D), WHITES (34), WHILES (30A), WHALES (7A),…

‘Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument,’ wrote Sir Roger Scruton. ‘Your views are irrelevant, your…

Imagine a world where employers judged applicants solely on their dress. Anyone in frayed clothes or scuffed shoes would never…

Q. At every drinks party one will be in mid-conversation with another guest and someone will walk over and loiter…

Darkness, but not the blanket of the dark. This was a sinister darkness, beset by smoke and flames, by the…

Someone on the wireless was talking about marrying in the Liberty of Newgate before the Marriage Act of 1753, and…