How fitting that the clarion call to liberate Victorians from the lunacy of lockdown came forth from Miner’s Rest in…

You really have to live in Melbourne to appreciate the depressing and disturbing  atmosphere that embraces it at the present.…

Mike Carlton does not deserve his gong Welcome to modern Australia, where encouraging the strangulation of women, calling them crazy,…

How did we become as bad as Cuba and North Korea?

We should learn from those who have stared down other potential doomsday threats

The Andrews government’s school closures are an abomination

Porky pigs more equal than others in Danimal Farm

A refugee’s tale

How I discovered my truest self

It’s time to take back our country

Why do schools want to erase the past?

The government wants us back in the office — catching trains, buying sandwiches and actually seeing colleagues and clients rather…

The race for a Covid vaccine is about much more than finding a cure

We don’t need more laws – just better policing

Don’t protect seagulls

Virtual tickets just aren’t the same

Bassam Tibi’s 40-year fight against fundamentalism

Why are protestors risking it all to challenge the king?

Referendum risk Sir: James Forsyth’s excellent analysis (‘To save the Union, negotiate independence’, 5 September) has one flaw: it is…

One of the many ironies of the past few months is that young people, while least affected by the virus,…

This is a very British story. Because we Brits are often warlike but never militaristic, we often make a balls-up…

Home Gatherings of more than six people from more than one household were made a crime in England from 14…

Rod Liddle has questioned whether Ms Jolly, chief librarian of the British Library, was right to say that whites invented…

Lyrical errors ‘Rule, Britannia!’ begins with the lines: ‘When Britain first, at heaven’s command/Arose from out the azure main.’ —…

‘Every country has a political problem with its fishermen,’ wrote Peter Walker, the Conservative minister who negotiated the first effective…

Large parts of the senior civil service regard Brexit as almost illegal. Some of them regard loyalty to the EU…

I have become allergic to ‘cute’, bad-tempered biddy that I am. Cuteness and the requirement to be cute have spread…

I don’t know how much of a shock this will come to you as — perhaps none, because you are…

Backbenchers are discussing when to give Downing Street a bloody nose, a former prime minister is on the warpath and…

Poor Tony Abbott. It would seem being prime minister of Australia doesn’t bring you to the attention of the British…

Conservationists are frequently criticised for focusing on glamorous species at the expense of others equally important but unluckily uglier —…

One hot summer’s morning, as a nine-year-old girl living on the rim of a Scottish loch in the hotel owned…

Wagner gripped the communal mind for decades after his death. Philip Hensher examines his enduring influence

‘Free Tibet!’ used to be a rallying cry for Hollywood A-listers and rock stars. Richard Gere hung out with the…

Never was a monarch so undone by water as Henry I. A fruit of the sea killed him in 1135:…

The West End was always something a little apart. Some years ago, I used to go drinking with a man…

Rose Tremain has followed her masterly The Gustav Sonata with an altogether different novel. In 1865, Clorinda Morrissey, a 38-year-old…

The biologist Merlin Sheldrake is an intriguing character. In a video promoting the publication of his book Entangled Life, which…

It’s easy to forget that John F. Kennedy lived such a short life. At 43, he was the second youngest…

It is often said that the left does not understand human nature. Yet it is difficult to think of anything…

Sophie Macintosh’s Blue Ticket is not classic feminist dystopia. Yes, it is concerned with legislated fertility, a world where women’s…

When I studied anthropology back in the early 1980s, Neanderthals were still largely the bulk-browed brutes of yore, grunting in…

A friend of mine, a bit of a watermelon really like most of the cultural milieu, asked me why I…

They are possibly the most politically incorrect authors in the world.  And they have universities squarely in their sights.  Helen…

Selina Mills on Maria Theresia von Paradis, the gifted but forgotten 18th-century composer, whose story will finally be told in a new chamber opera

It has roughly the same proportions as Shakespeare’s Globe. The Roman Theatre in Verulamium (St Albans) is an atmospheric ruin…

‘You may think our modern world was born yesterday,’ said Simon Schama at the beginning of The Romantics and Us.…

If you’ve been listening to The Archers lately, you’ll know how tedious monologues can be. The BBC has received so…

Our college choirmaster had a trick that he liked to deploy when he sensed that we were phoning it in.…

The Painted Bird opens with a young boy (Jewish) running through a forest and clutching his pet ferret. He is…

Giles Auty While clearing our cellar recently my wife and I came upon a compact printing press which her late…

Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard political philosopher, has a lot to answer for. Some armchair psychologists think the reason I…

A man without a mask appeared to be dying of Covid, or something quite like it, on the London to…

You suspect that a bar of duty-free Toblerone, no matter how supersized, wouldn’t really do the trick when hapless England…

Q. I have just been out to my first lunch in months. Ten of us sat around a table in…

A ghost review, now, of a ghost restaurant: the Connaught Grill, which is yet to reopen after pandemic shuttered its…

The old dog was in a companionable frame of mind and she trotted along at my side, glancing up now…

The bridge world has lost some glittering stars this (ghastly) year, the latest being France’s Catherine d’Ovidio — multiple world…

Political commentators love talking about the optics — the way something looks to voters. Just at the moment, though, everyone…

31 3 worked for the 43 of 21. The 43 of 34 got him for 24 35 and sent him…

In Competition No. 3165 you were invited to supply a job reference for a well-known public figure, past or present,…

Gstaad It snowed on the last two days of August up here, and why not? We’ve traded freedom of speech…

Black to play. Rios–Adams, Online Olympiad, August 2020. The White king is running short of squares. Which move did Adams…

It was as baffling to me as quantum entanglement. Every time the Algerian player on the Zoom call shared his…

The unclued lights can be preceded by BLACK. First prize Stephanie Reeve, Papworth Everard, CambridgeRunners-up Hilda Ball, Belfast; Peter Chapman,…