A broken clock is right twice a day.  When it comes to accuracy and reliability, that’s infinitely better than federal…

Even Australians who consider the Commonwealth Games a meaningless anachronism must have been pleased with our team’s performance last month.…

You might remember that a year ago I criticised the decision of the Victorian government to settle a court action…

The great US columnist Charles Krauthammer once noted this truth about contemporary political life in America: ‘To understand the workings…

The questions around little baby Alfie’s death aren’t going to go away. They raise a timely and extremely important issue.…

This is the winner of the 2017 Spectator Australia Thawley Essay Prize, the theme of which was ‘The great Australian…

What gives with Bob Carr? Why, for that matter, has so much of the Left in the democratic world turned…

A little over a decade ago former Labor speechwriter Don Watson wrote a series of books bemoaning the decay of…

Beria born again in the usa You could have thought the central feature of French President Macron‘s visit to Australia…

For someone so frequently denounced as a liar, Donald Trump keeps an awful lot of promises. In the 2016 election…

In the White House on Tuesday, with the world just where he wanted it — eyes on the TV, transfixed…

Smiley face. Sad face. Smoochy face. Sick face. Edvard Munch ‘Scream’ face. How are you feeling today? Any of the…

Midnight in Shoreditch, and snaking round the brickwork of old east London is a line of chattering clubbers. Everyone seems…

British universities have serious problems. The recent strikes protesting against a sudden reduction in pension rights were unusually effective, and…

To anyone who has dreamed of becoming a journalist, the thrill of walking into a national newspaper office never goes…

When friends speak, you should listen — and you would be hard pressed to find a better friend of this…

The Premio Rezzori literary prize — held every May in Florence — is named after the Austrian writer Gregor von…

Since its inception, cryptocurrency has been regarded as technically fascinating but fundamentally unreliable. Those who invested £10 in Bitcoin eight…

I spend my life moving. Over recent years it was research. Now it’s caused by that research. But I have…

Home Although the world was led to believe that, thanks to the vote of Sajid Javid, the new Home Secretary,…

Alfie Evans was seven months old when he went to hospital with seizures. When more than a year later doctors…

From ‘The situation on the Western Front in light of the Paris speech’, 11 May 1918: Instead of the Western…

Where capitalism fails Sir: James Delingpole is right, of course, to extol the virtues of capitalism (‘We don’t deserve capitalism’,…

The point behind the argument about the Iran nuclear deal goes beyond precise nuclear facts. It is like the row…

Theresa May’s Brexit dilemma is becoming more acute. Last week, she failed to garner the support of the Brexit inner…

Rosé wine is, I know, considered naff. Were you unaware of this you’d fast conclude as much from the incidence…

Hey, Londoners — been stabbed or shot yet this week? Just thought I’d check as the place seems to resemble,…

In deference to public exhaustion, I’ve largely avoided Brexit in this slot. But a columnist’s output ought rightly to echo…

The bank holiday turned out to be a hot one, not least in the takeover arena. First, Shire Pharmaceutical accepted…

When Peregrine Worsthorne was on Desert Island Discs in 1992, he chose as his luxury item a lifetime supply of…

Lionheart! Saladin! Massacre! There is no shortage of larger-than-life characters and drama in the epic, two-year siege of Acre, the…

This is a wonderful and moving book of correspondence and biographical documents promising one Tchaikovsky in its subtitle and introduction,…

In 1975, the 24-year-old Ian Buruma (now an award-winning essayist and historian, and the editor of the New York Review…

In his robust new biography of Alcibiades, David Stuttard describes how the mercurial Greek general shocked his contemporaries by adopting…

On 9 May 1502, a young Spaniard joined the fleet setting sail for the newly discovered Americas. The boy, Hernando,…

One would have thought this particular can of worms might, after nearly 80 years, be well past its sell-by date.…

The age of dinosaurs is a perennial favourite on any time traveller’s wishlist. Even though we’re technically still in it…

Is there anything more depressing than the prospect of reading a writer’s collected essays, journalism and occasional pieces? Most of…

In the early days of the atomic age, Soviet students debated whether it was nobler to become a physicist or…

Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rab C. Nesbitt excepted, it has become quite difficult to infer much from people’s appearance. In these…

When a man is tired of Samuel Johnson, he’s tired of life. James Boswell intended his biography of Dr Johnson,…

Fire up YouTube on the iPad, tap in ‘tap’, then wave goodbye to the rest of your day: clip after…

Grade: B+ One of my favourite songs from the 1990s was about a Chinese adulteress forced to walk around town…

Now here’s a series that would make a brilliant podcast but is also classic Radio 4 — they don’t have…

A conservator at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum was recently astonished to find a tiny grasshopper stuck in the paint of…

Twenty years after it first appeared, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is back for a brief, week-long anniversary run…

Nine Night refers to a Jamaican custom that obliges bereaved families to party non-stop for more than a week following…

Apparently it’s called ‘expectation management’. Pollux, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s new work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, takes its name from…

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is set in the 1970s and has punk as the backdrop and an…

We need to remind ourselves that there was once a time when there were no Keynesian socialist bureaucracies determining ‘cultural…

New York Talk about high life this is not. I smelled a rat long ago, but then the scent got…

Should I or shouldn’t I go and see The Death of Stalin, showing at the French village cinema last Sunday…

The first time I saw a woman leading a horse down the lane on a lead, both she and it…

I suppose, given the income and the opportunity to indulge, you could eventually tire of even Meursault, Mauritius and Mrs…

This year’s Schapiro Spring Foursomes, England’s best tournament by a mile, wasn’t held in the usual Stratford-upon-Avon venue but in…

Matthew Sadler was the star of the evening on the night of the Royal Automobile Club annual dinner which I…

White to play. This is from Sadler-Speelman, 4NCL 2017. White is two pawns down in this endgame but all Black’s…

In Competition No. 3047 you were invited to supply an imaginary testimonial for a high-profile figure that is superficially positive…

Unclued lights are words from a poem, its author and a relevant location. Elsewhere, ignore two accents.   Across 7   …

13 1A 23 22 is from SHELLEY’S ‘Ode to a Skylark’. Other unclued lights had ‘a poet hidden in the…

Towards the end of 2009, shortly after I announced my intention to set up England’s first free school, I debated…

Nearly ten years ago, a lorry driver known only as ‘Michael Harry K’ adopted an extreme response to combating what…

Q. My 50th birthday is looming and I am hosting a small dinner in a restaurant. This has proved challenging…

Indian Accent is an Indian restaurant in Albermarle Street, deepest Mayfair, on the site of Rohit Khattar’s Chor Bizarre (‘thieves…

I sat up with a jerk, after contemplating the wallpaper in the television dramatisation of The Woman in White, when…