This week’s budget is a tale of Covid-induced devastation. Instead of being Back in the Black, there is a deficit…

I suppose two fundamental departures from traditional Liberal party positions in a week or so is about par for the…

Our politicians are secure in the knowledge they can ignore the base

Only Donald Trump can pull off a US post-Covid recovery

Was the Cardinal’s accuser being paid with Vatican funds?

Europe’s intransigence threatens regional and global peace

The authoritarian health lobby has murky roots in fascism

Davos 2021 will launch its own Green New Deal. Be afraid.

Tying scholarships to race helps nobody

The debate format was flawed but the answers revealing

How to stop trawlers from trashing the North Sea

The hidden costs of the lockdown puppy boom

The Covid divide is triggering political tensions

Spare me the ‘chic lit’ cult

It’s as ignorant to demonise Aung San Suu Kyi as it was to idolise her

They’re one of the country’s most famous married couples. You just need to spot his colourful jester outfit and the…

Americans are, in my experience, the warmest, most kind-hearted and open-minded people in the world. I have found this to…

Thérèse Coffey on stemming the unemployment tide

The announcement of the ‘Rule of Six’ policy last month was met with much furore – in the south of…

Home Coronavirus was on the increase. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 4 October, total deaths (within 28 days…

I first visited Orford in 1970, at peak Cold War when this stretch of the East Anglian coast was one…

The centrepiece of Boris Johnson’s speech to Tory party conference this year was his Damascene conversion to the merits of…

Vice squad Donald Trump catching Covid-19 has concentrated minds on what happens if a US president dies in office. Normally,…

The Covid-19 pandemic is apparently causing a large number of mental health problems. On that subject, one could do a…

Misplaced Trust Sir: Charles Moore is as ever bang on target (The Spectator’s Notes, 26 September). National Trust members have…

In Pence and Harris, we are looking at the future of the Republican Party

Should we wear our masks? The question has been on my mind as I have been battered that way and…

What a triumph of entrepreneurial empire-building — if that’s still an acceptable phrase — is the £6.8 billion acquisition of…

There are two striking things about the new book, 100 Great Black Britons, which was compiled to celebrate the achievements…

It took me several weeks, after returning to the Spectator office, to work out what was missing. It wasn’t the…

When Helen Macdonald was a child, she had a way of calming herself during moments of stress: closing her eyes,…

Philip Hensher admires a witty account of the horrors of modern film-making

Für dich, Tommy, ist der Krieg vorbei. However, many British servicemen, officers especially, didn’t want their war to be over.…

Talbot Kydd, film producer; Anny Viklund, American actress; Elfrida Wing, novelist; these make the trio of the title. Private lives…

‘I was what they call an “independent scholar”’, confides the narrator of Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill, a middle-aged writer from…

In June 793, a raiding force arrived by boat at the island monastery of Lindisfarne, on the Northumbrian coast. The…

After Stalingrad, Hitler desperately needed an encouraging novelty. Wernher von Braun, Germany’s leading rocketeer in the second world war, expertly…

What a strange phase the world of theatre – the world of artistic activity – is going through at the…

They led the way back into the spotlight. Richard Tognetti and members of the Australian Chamber Orchestra were the first…

Martin Gayford explains why the Royal Academy would be wrong to sell Michelangelo’s ‘Taddei Tondo’

When Kwame Kwei-Armah took over the Young Vic he strapped a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign over the front of the…

Dr John called James Booker ‘the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced’. Booker died…

A woman is eating a pie in her car as it gets an automatic wash. Careful to keep the pie…

In the week Jenni Murray left Woman’s Hour, I was listening to Alan Partridge on his new podcast, From the…

Saint Maud is a first feature from writer-director Rose Glass and it’s being billed as a horror film. But it’s…

Curious thing, writer’s block. If you believe it exists. Terry Pratchett didn’t. ‘There’s no such thing,’ he said. ‘It was…

Anyone who invited the Russian composer Mily Balakirev to dinner had to be jolly careful about the fish they served.…

Brendan Ward A re-run of Cathy Freeman’s heart-stopping 400 metre race at the Sydney Olympics in September 2000 recently animated…

Once upon a time here in New Zealand, when political dinosaurs still roamed the earth, Prime Minister Keith Holyoake startled…

One of the things that makes bridge so endlessly fascinating is that it is forever changing and growing. At high…

Gstaad Juliette Gréco’s recent death in her nineties brought back some melodramatic memories. In 1957 Gréco was one of France’s…

My French friend André speaks perfect English and is the kindest of men. After reading last week about my futile…

‘Please be aware there is now a Covid surcharge,’ I told the builder boyfriend one morning, as we discussed the…

Black to play. Khodashneli — Willow, European Online Youth Championship U18, September 2020. White has just advanced 40 g3-g4, and…

Clockwise round the grid from 3 run three song titles (totalling 13 words) with 3D/16 (five words in all) giving…

In Competition No. 3169 you were invited to submit a poem about autumn in which the last letter of each…

The poem was The Brook by Alfred Tennyson. The words were HERN (8A), LINGER (20), BRIMMING (32A), FLOW (40), TROUT…

I can’t tell you why the Armenian grandmaster Tigran Petrosian was found guilty of cheating last month, because I don’t…

At a Conservative party conference fringe event last Sunday, Lord Bethell, a health minister, was asked where he thought Britain…

Pity the gilded restaurants of Mayfair, if you can: they are dying. Some have reopened; they ache on like men…

Q. I am running out of suitable responses to a friend who now has the slightest possible connection to one…

I take it personally that a word I practically saw being born is now unrecognised by people almost old enough…

The Liverpool defence might have decided in a rare show of togetherness to demonstrate what the word ‘appalling’ means, and…