The awarding of a ‘free speech’ award to the Human Rights Commission’s Gillian Triggs left many lost for words. It…

Let’s keep Triggs for the fun of it I wouldn’t trust Malcolm Turnbull or George Brandis to pick what type…

Give credit where it is due, my mother used to say. So I must congratulate the Prime Minister on his…

When Geoffrey Blainey’s seminal work The Tyranny of Distance first appeared in Dymocks’ window many people didn’t realise it was…

We were saying things around the dinner table last Friday night and Gillian Triggs could not stop us. We were…

This isn’t an easy confession to make in the pages of this august publication, but I grudgingly admire the ACTU’s…

The writing may be on the wall for those lobbyist Liberal Party factional bosses who have successfully defied the decrees…

Under the guise of compassion and atonement for past injustices suffered by Aborigines, white activists, joined by overseas imports, have…

The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that ‘the proliferation of wind energy into the…

Buririggu deshita. Suraibi tōbu Wēbu de gairu to gimburu shite, Nante mimuji na borogōbu, Mōmu rassu autoguraibimashita ne. If this…

Tory activists last week were heard to refer to Mrs May as ‘Mummy’. No Corbynista calls their hero ‘Dad’. The…

I had 20 good years supporting Manchester United but now I follow Arsenal, and I find the treatment of the…

We were in a detention centre for migrants in Tripoli and we came to a big locked door. It was…

How to solve the problem of an unlucky 13 people at dinner? Developing a rational mind is the obvious answer,…

It’s a summer of change for the House of Windsor — out with the old, in with the young. The…

God forbid Irish police investigated Stephen Fry over a complaint of blasphemy, which is no longer a criminal offence in…

Watching the general election from my newsroom is an out-of-body experience. I’ve been involved in the last five general elections…

From ‘Schoolboy labour’, The Spectator, 12 May 1917: Work on the land, even though the time be stolen from books,…

It would be easy to dismiss Jeremy Corbyn’s launch of the Labour party’s election campaign this week on the grounds…

Lest we etc. Sir: What can account for the hysterical reaction in some quarters to Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Facebook post on…

Home After spectacular local election results, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘I’m taking nothing for granted over the next…

As the election campaign goes into full swing, we hear surprisingly little about the state of the UK economy —…

At a beautiful church service recently I encountered again a Gospel parable that left me, again, torn between sympathy and…

Normally, the first anniversary of a prime minister taking office is the occasion for a lot of opinion polls and…

Coming to a workplace near you, perhaps — masturbation breaks. The policy was first recommended by a psychologist at Nottingham…

Jeremy Corbyn wants to put up income tax only for people who earn more than £80,000 a year, he says.…

It’s an important subject: the existence of a permanent and significant minority within London’s life. Gay men and lesbians have…

The human urge for personal hygiene has had many improbable side-effects, and I can confidently assert that through the ages,…

For one who has, since boyhood, regarded the secondhand bookshop as a paradise of total immersion, it is quite shocking…

On 25 February 1980, Roland Barthes, the great French intellectual, was run over by a laundry van in Paris. He…

Every nation has the right to control its borders, but we in the West are getting a bit too comfortable…

In the 1860s, when British visitors first began to explore the high altitude pleasures of Kashmir, it was not just…

War Horse, by way of book and play and film, has brought the role of horses in war into the…

One afternoon in August 1978, Geoffrey Howe and Leon Brittan were flying from Beijing to Shanghai. They were on the…

Coined in 1944, ‘completism’ is a modern term for a modern-day obsession. What began as a phenomenon of possession —…

Imagine living in a country where the average age is under 16 (in the UK it’s currently 40 and increasing)…

Since completing season two of the brilliant Narcos, I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for a replacement serial drama that is more…

Ah, Blondie. Those happy days of glorious power pop, chilly disco and rich, fruity vocals — Debbie Harry yearning away…

Spare a thought for Emil Gilels, still revered today by Russians as the foremost pianist of the Soviet era. The…

English Touring Opera is playing safe this spring, with Tosca and Patience, and was rewarded, in Cambridge at least, with…

Obsession at the Barbican has a complicated provenance. The experimental Belgian director Ivo van Hove adapted the show from a…

Last week I lunched at the Coogee Pavilion on the most perfect day. The scene before me was almost identical…

If you want to appreciate why the return of Twin Peaks is so significant, then you need to know something…

There are bigger entities landing at your local multiplex this week. An ancient indestructible franchise is re-re-(re-)booted in Alien: Covenant.…

Picasso had a thing for bulls. Martin Gayford talks to the artist’s friend and biographer. Sir John Richardson about a lifelong obsession

In Competition No. 2997 you were invited to submit an obituary for planet Earth.   It was a smallish but…

Each of fifteen clues contains a misprinted letter in the definition part. Corrections of misprints spell the four-word title of…

The instruction was ‘SEND IN THE CLOWNS’ (21D/14) from A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim. The remaining unclued lights…

Q. My 23-year-old son has taught himself to play the piano, learning the theme tune to The Truman Show without…

Six Storeys on Soho is in a slender grey townhouse on Soho Square: a bar, restaurant and club. It is…

Much like the poor, the charity ball has always been with us, but lately it’s turned into a freak. Something…

I was sitting between mother and daughter on the sofa, and we were having a ‘wee night’ as Glaswegians put…

I laughed, in a sympathetic way I hope, when I read a letter in the Daily Telegraph pointing out that…

Well, there were seven of us in this chain, so it was a bit crowded, to paraphrase a princess. We…

Of the great sporting imponderables that have come into clearer view over the past few days — will The Archers’…

I’m due to debate the philosopher A.C. Grayling on Saturday about whether there should be a second EU referendum on…

The longer Donald Trump sits there the better Ronald Reagan looks, not least because he had a sense of humour.…

I realised long ago that I almost never play bridge with a partner worse than me. Occasionally, I cut a…

Four important events have taken centre stage over the past few weeks. These were tournaments in Shenzen (won by Ding…

White to play. This is from Kramnik-Adams, Shamkir 2017. How did Kramnik complete his rout of the black position? Answers…