Seventy-five years ago this week, a Canberra meeting convened by Robert Menzies decided to establish a new political party, the…

I am just amazed that we seem to be sleepwalking into a complete overthrow of our structure of government and…

At the time of writing, December 2020, the #newedition movement can be considered a truly global phenomenon. As it sets…

I have a modest proposal. Lately, there have been some commendable if flawed solutions put forward to deal with the…

Dear Greta, You should feel very proud of yourself. Your crusade against Climate Warming has taken you into the homes…

The President of the United States is a sort of elected monarch, which is why the office itself is imbued…

‘Gee our schools are good!’ a friend once said. ‘By the time our kids are 12, they know everything!’ No…

Scott Morrison’s recent speech to the Lowy Institute was the most important prime ministerial foreign policy announcement in some years.…

The biggest news story for years has been a real-life depiction of those classic cartoons, Coyote and Road Runner. In…

Well, there’s certainly a fair bit of action coming out of Canada, Britain and the US these days.  In my…

There will be no last-minute deal. The talks between the UK and the EU have effectively broken down. It isn’t…

A few years ago I was sitting on the sofa at Sandringham enjoying a ham sandwich with the Queen’s then-head…

The UK was the ‘sick man’ when we ‘joined Europe’ in 1973. Now, with Britain on the cusp of leaving,…

The French writer Michel Houellebecq has a disconcerting habit of correctly predicting unsettling events. In 2001 in Plateforme he predicted…

We’ve begun to behave as if young people are special; more virtuous and wiser than adults. It’s wrong and it’s…

More than a decade ago, four Dutch nurses decided something needed to be done about their country’s care in the…

I went to a gaudy last weekend. Several British universities now host these splendid events; mine was at Worcester College,…

The past few months have been characterised by weeks of high drama which, for all the excitement, have resolved nothing.…

Home After a telephone conversation between Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, a Downing Street…

We’ve just launched the US edition of The Spectator and the reaction so far has been great. Americans can be…

A slice of history Pizza Express is to undergo financial restructuring, leading to fears that it could go under. How…

Extinction Rebellion is blocking the streets again, foolishly demanding the impossible on a very important issue. But what does one…

Deny Remainers oxygen Sir: Your correspondent Richard Dawkins seems to have a very tenuous grasp of logic for an academic…

I walked down Villiers Street to Embankment Tube station. In front of me were two Extinction Rebels, a mother and…

Exciting news from the BBC, where every employee has just received a flyer from the Director-General, Lord Hall, informing them…

Riddle: when is discrimination against a historically disadvantaged racial minority perfectly legal? Answer: when they do too well. The first…

In the great days of the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Simple column, when I was a youth, that acid but hilarious…

Minding my own business at 67 Pall Mall — the private members’ club favoured by oenophile West End hedge-fund managers…

In their lifetime, and afterwards, the Soong sisters from Shanghai seemed like figures from a Chinese fairy tale. There were…

It’s fun to look for what’s missing in a memoir; the forgotten egos, the policy howlers buried for posterity. Some…

Neil Hegarty’s new novel, The Jewel, is a mass of contradictions. It’s about an art heist, but it’s not fun.…

Richard Humphreys spent a good part of five years, between the ages of 18 and 23, living inside a nuclear…

In Hamlet a gravedigger asks the riddle: ‘What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or…

In the mid-19th century, around lunchtime, a pale young man with an enormous beard could be seen in the British…

No nation’s defeat is ever quite straight-forward, and sometimes downfall can bring its own kind of posthumous victory. By the…

The Berlin Tunnel was an Anglo-American eavesdropping operation mounted against Russian-controlled East Berlin in 1955–56.  It was a technical and…

Vibrations, chemicals and light-waves exist in the world; sounds, tastes, smells and colours only seem to. ‘Many sensations which are…

In the Chinese zodiac, 2016 was the year of the monkey, a trickster year full of the unhappy and the…

On 25 November 1895, Camille Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien. He described how he had bumped into his erstwhile…

Michael Frayn’s backstage comedy, Noises Off, is the theatre’s answer to Trooping the Colour. Everyone agrees that it’s an amazing…

It’s Act Three of Emma Rice’s new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Eurydice (Mary Bevan) is trapped…

I have never ever watched a TV series I have enjoyed more than Succession (Now TV). There’s stuff I’d put…

Grade: A– The outlaw country genre has shifted a little over the decades since Waylon and Willie, with each proponent…

The Day Shall Come is a second feature from British satirist Chris Morris and like the first, Four Lions, it…

Call me soppy, but when the credits rolled on ‘Wooden Boulder’, a film made by earth artist David Nash over…

Tolstoy’s most fascinating character, Anna Karenina clearly fascinates David McAllister who has recently announced his 20th and final season as…

New York   The Roy Cohn documentary Bully. Coward. Victim: the Story of Roy Cohn was successfully screened at the…

Fumbling outside my door in dripping swimming trunks for my room key, I was hailed cheerily by the maid from…

Inspired by Harry and Meghan I decided to get on a plane. I hadn’t been anywhere for so long it…

Two hours after showing her father, the Marquess of Anglesey, the wedding dress in which she was to marry the…

After all the excitement of England making the playoffs in all four events at the World Championships in China, only…

‘Chess is a constant struggle between my desire not to lose and my desire not to think.’ I’m fond of…

White to play. The final game of the match between Radjabov and Ding. White’s safer king confers a huge advantage,…

In Competition No. 3119 you were invited to submit a poem about yellowhammers. This sparrow-sized songbird has inspired poetry from…

7A can be linked to nine unclued lights (three of two words, one of which repeats 7A) – in five…

The unclued lights relate to SUPERMAN (6D), his alter ego CLARK KENT (26A), nickname (the) MAN OF STEEL (8), planet…

I ventured out into Westminster earlier this week to take a look at the Extinction Rebellion protest and it reminded…

I recently learned from a doctor friend that salt isn’t necessarily bad for you. Yes, there is a minority whose…

Q. My sister runs a yoga school and a middle-aged gentleman has joined. Although she is delighted to encourage male…

Poor Old Girl. The final act may not have been sanglante, but as the third volume of Charles Moore’s life…

It is easy to speak a sentence never spoken before since the world came fresh from its mould. It’s not…