At some point during this week, an unvaccinated person will stroll into a newsagent in New South Wales to buy…

Where mythology now is science

Plenty of illiberal economists

Is floor-crossing a sign of government chaos?

On the cost-benefit analysis of vaccinating the young

Electoral fraud isn’t just an American problem

Sometimes the truth is chased out of our legal system

When churches become mosques

The sad decline of men’s neckwear

‘You can appoint your own chief executive,’ boomed the PM over a rather sad bottle of wine. He was asking…

I’ve been occupied this year recording and promoting a new album. I was pleased to finally see the release of…

Why is China self-isolating?

The destruction of Oxford continues

The dangers of Nato’s Ukrainian policy

Give us a snog. Pucker up at the Christmas party. Kiss me quick at the Nativity play. Will you be…

A plan to tackle Britain’s drug problem was long overdue

In normal circumstances, no one would care if staff in No. 10 held a Christmas party. But last year, Boris…

I was born and raised in Sheffield, a proud steel-making city which drew much of its energy from a sense…

Time to settle the Great Omicron Question. First, there is no word omikron (and no c) in ancient Greek. Second,…

Flood relief Sir: In my lifetime there have been at least two major flood emergencies when the armed forces have…

Home Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said that the Omicron variant of coronavirus was spreading by community transmission in ‘multiple…

Is it rude to refer to the Vice President of the USA as the world’s most famous diversity hire? Possibly.…

I have been reading 39 Ways To Save The Planet by the BBC journalist Tom Heap, which includes such ingenious…

If the phrase ‘stranded asset’ hasn’t yet entered your vocabulary, here’s a useful example of what it means. The 178…

If, in the days after Storm Arwen, the north of England began to suspect that the south didn’t much care…

One midnight last month, Jon Wiltshire, who lives in a cottage just outside our Sussex village, was woken by a…

One of this government’s favourite tactics is to act as if the beginning of its time in office was the…

She’s done it again: J.K. Rowling has written a captivating children’s book. The Christmas Pig(Little Brown, £20) is about a…

Dan Rhodes’s career might be regarded as an object lesson in How Not to Get Ahead in Publishing. Our man…

Imagine a new take on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. A love-shy artist makes a woman out of marble who…

Ten years ago, David Graeber was a leading figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He and his fellow protesters…

Novelists are leery about letting the buzzwords of recent history into their books. The immediate past threatens to upstage the…

This memoir from Sir Richard Needham, 6th Earl of Kilmorey, businessman and former Northern Ireland minister, has a frank opening:…

When the shrill air raid sirens blared their familiar warning cries over the city at 6.01 p.m. on 29 December…

Apart from what the title tells us, these stories are about a fundamental difference in cultures. Huma Qureshi writes like…

The old adage that everyone has a novel in them has a new version: anyone can write a thriller. Celebrity…

All the questions around Britney Spears can be condensed into this one: who should we blame? For a long time,…

A headline in the Mail on Sunday, taken up eagerly by the BBC’s Todayprogramme, claimed recently: ‘The SAS is getting…

Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was guttering to its close. Those of us who were there remember the exhilarating…

James Ivory and Ismail Merchant formed the most successful cinematic partnership since Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger. Between the founding…

It has to be one of the most extraordinary stories of lockdown — how Tom Hanks’s assistant Sooki Raphael, undergoing…

Love her or loathe her, Enid Blyton and the safe, sunny world she cleverly marketed will remain a publishing phenomenon, says Sam Leith

A new film by Jane Campion is always going to be a magnetsing prospect and the idea of it suddenly…

 Grade: B It must have been an interesting day in the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s press office when Blair Tindall’s memoir…

When you first hear that a remake of West Side Story is on the cards, it’s: God, why? Why would…

It’s not everyone’s idea of fun, a trip to Huddersfield in the depths of November. But as any veteran of…

Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi is a complicated organism. The action starts in southern India where we meet a…

Growing up on a farm outside Lima, I was aware that indigenous Peruvians did not understand time in the same…

Hermione Eyre talks to an irascible Paolo Sorrentino about therapy, Vesuvius and why he kept things simple and easy for his latest film

A couple of years ago, in that near-forgotten era when we could travel almost freely, I canvassed social media as…

Eleven years ago, Kirat Assi received a message on Facebook from a man named Bobby. There was a family connection…

The slur issued by Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe in the Chamber last week towards Hollie Hughes reaffirmed one thing, that…

Nick Cater has coined what I think is a brilliant new expression the ‘laptop class’. This is his vivid and…

In Competition No. 3228, you were invited to provide a well-known extract from adult literature rewritten for inclusion in an…

White to play and mate in 2. Composed by W.A. Shinkman, Montreal Spectator, 1880. As things stand, White has no…

All the best people play bridge. Stephen Sondheim, who died two weeks ago, was mad about the game. In his…

Noticing via this Low Life column that I had trench fever, the Western Front Association treated me to a year’s…

In the first such case for 20 years, former rider Freddy Tylicki, paralysed and wheelchair-bound since his mount Nellie Dean…

‘Did you hear it?’ said a friend of mine, red-faced with the flush of a piece of news she couldn’t…

My grown-up friends don’t use based in its new slangy sense, so I asked Veronica (whom I still think of…

Game 6 of the Carlsen–Nepomniachtchi world championship match was one for the ages. After draws in the first five games,…

The good citizens of Stevenage would be well advised to prepare extensively for the likely open-top bus parade of their…

Soho is so gilded nowadays that even drug addicts look down on it. The wasteland without must match the wasteland…

Q. My mother-in-law has remarried and now lives in South America. She has a large family with nieces, grandchildren, godchildren,…

The Law Commission has published a string of recommendations following its recent consultation on changes to hate-crime laws in England…

New York Imagine a European country today in which a newspaper in its most populous city launches a mendacious project…

Unclued lights are three sets of three words of a kind, along with a name which connects them all (two…

‘From harmony, from heavenly harmony, this universal frame began’ opens JOHN DRYDEN’s Song for ST CECILIA’S DAY (22 November, a…