This summer, Australians of all backgrounds and ethnicities must ask themselves whether the great Australian dream of multiculturalism has failed.…

Merry Christmas, Aussie Spectators! Yes I know December is not looking too Chrissie prepared, with rising electricity costs, aircon over…

Christmas at our home this year is the festival of the risen dog. I mean no disrespect to Christianity, and…

Free speech

Stalin and I exchange insults at the Kremlin

If memory serves me well

The West wakes up

A ‘tail’ for our times

And on how to save the West

My plans for an Australian climate change gabfest

May your days be merry celebrating dud climate change predictions

On the left’s obsession with wiping out the past

A trip to Italy reveals hidden perils

I’m travelling to the ends of the Earth

A foundation pillar of Western civilisation

I have just returned from a tour of Australia and New Zealand, on whose citizens I inflicted An Evening With…

Buenos Aires ‘I never wind down,’ says Argentina’s President Javier Milei when we meet in his Presidential Office at the…

‘It’s like a start-up,’ Kemi Badenoch explains of her new job, as she plumps down on a sofa in the…

It’s Christmas, and the far left have a gift for us in their stocking: a cultural boycott of Jews. They…

I visited Mycenae for the first time this autumn. While the ruins of classical Athens can seem almost familiar, the…

Jonathan Meades       This is a crowded field. A few years ago, I was delighted when Tracey Emin walked out of…

The most irritating word of the year was ‘unwind’. ‘Unwind with one of our artisan cocktails in the curated ambience…

Georges Remi, better known as Hergé, the creator of Tintin, was a failed journalist. His first job after leaving school…

I’ve started rehearsals for the pantomime Beauty and the Beast at Richmond Theatre: two shows a day and just 13…

Whenever my son’s primary school ring up, they have, very sensibly, a calming form of words: ‘It’s the school here…

Christmas came early this year. No, I’m not moaning about the carols that my local café started piping at the…

There is something otherworldly about Rory McEwen’s paintings of plants, leaves and fruit. They are indisputably beautiful, often breathtakingly so,…

I was in Washington D.C. during The Election, living halfway between the Capitol and White House. Concerned friends suggested I…

Towards the end of last year, the production company Optomen TV contacted Jacob about the possibility of filming a documentary series…

They passed into the harbour of Favignana at the beginning of spring, the island’s single small mountain heaving into view…

Anniversaries. Back in mid-December 1998, 26 years ago to the month, we wrapped my first (and probably only) feature film…

If you are of a traditional turn of mind, you might well go to church this Christmas, sing the carols…

This is my second Christmas as a Christian. As an atheist, I had dismissed the bright lights and customs of…

January. When the assisted dying bill comes in, I’ll be first in the queue. Non-stop nosebleeds, Covid-esque symptoms, leg cramps,…

It’s half an hour before lights out when my dad arrives at my bedroom door holding Roald Dahl’s Danny the…

This Christmas, a Royal Navy Trident submarine will be quietly prowling the seas as part of the Continuous At Sea…

Many people today feel an ambivalence towards the history of the Christmas festival. They sense that it has deep pre-Christian…

It’s 500 years since Martin Luther, along with the preacher Paul Speratus, put together the first Protestant hymn book, the…

Rick Rubin is a legendary American record producer who co-founded Def Jam records, which helped popularise hip hop. He has…

Recently, scientists were baffled by the discovery that ice cream is a superfood. Yes, that’s right, people who eat ice…

People offended by name-dropping are absolutely no fun. I’ve experimented with this concept on five continents – OK, four: Antarctica’s…

January After an ITV drama, the government suddenly proposed to do something about the unjust prosecution of sub-postmasters. Junior doctors…

‘Ring out the old, ring in the new…’ This was the year I discovered that one of my ancestors had…

For what should we give thanks this Christmas? The faith that sustains millions through life’s challenges and inspires countless acts…

Ancient Greek thinkers tried to explain every natural phenomenon in human terms, without reference to magic or gods. That was…

Betting men Sir: The bet between Martin Rees and me that Matt Ridley recounts pits two kinds of scruples of…

Please excuse the tone of jubilation, but I have been dancing around my kitchen for the past couple of days,…

We are just recovering from the village play. This annual Christmas event was taken over last year by our son…

Santa will have a tricky time this year fulfilling all the Christmas wish lists in Westminster. Keir Starmer is desperately…

Now that John Lewis has produced a Christmas ad that celebrates family, starring white people as humans, all sorts of…

It is that time of year when people in churches across the land have to face the difficult question of…

As we sat down at the Royal Opera House to watch one of the Royal Ballet’s soloists perform Letter to Tchaikovsky,…

Forty years ago this Christmas I visited Hong Kong for the first time – a few days after the signing…

I adhere to a pretty iron-clad rule: not only do I avoid the bumper cars of social media, but I…

My pick of the Aussie books of 2024

How many can you spot? For answers, click here

Max Boot’s contention that Reagan was a lightweight pragmatist who played little part in reviving America or winning the Cold War is absurdly revisionist

Brian Vickers aims to ‘restore’ Kyd to greatness – but claiming too much on too little evidence does the playwright no favours

For scandal, sleaze, hubris and treachery, no financial institution has been a serial offender like the disgraced Swiss bank. Little wonder it was dubbed Credit Swizz or Debit Suisse

The rise of Queer Studies and Black Lives Matter has led to renewed interest in Baldwin – who was exasperated in life with being categorised by colour or as ‘gay’

Dark, unsettling stories set mostly in the world of social media and panic rooms are, strikingly, as much about love as death – and how love is stronger

Annie Gray is refreshingly unsentimental about the days when cooking for the family involved time-consuming visits to the butcher, the greengrocer and baker

The queen’s repeated warnings to Alix and Ella of the danger of marrying Russians were ignored, and both Princesses of Hesse would die appalling deaths at the hands of revolutionaries

It’s impossible to say which side excelled in imaginative barbarism in this blood-soaked history spanning 1,300 years

Richard Loncraine and Peter Broxton, designers of surreal ‘executive toys’ in the 1960s, reveal the frailty and vanity of a time when ‘poets, pop stars and miniskirts were everywhere’

Faber’s text-only, strictly chronological four-volume edition of the prose is fatally purist – though admittedly cheaper than the eight-volume Johns Hopkins version

The elderly spinster with a fine sense of evil was a creation Agatha Christie never tired of – unlike the ‘tiresome, egocentric’ Hercule Poirot

It’s a strange time, the summer holidays in Australia. Some people have riveting memories of Boxing Day tests, of Australian…

Why, my sharp-minded colleague Tom Utley once asked after a Telegraph Christmas Carol service, should anyone think God would abhor…

Ruination begins with an ironic prologue in which a choric figure warns the audience that what follows makes unlikely matter…

John Savournin has been busy. That comes with the territory for a classical singer – things often get a little…

More than a thousand musicians took part when Handel’s Messiah was performed in Westminster Abbey in May 1791. It wasn’t…

The Devil Wears Prada is a fairy tale about an aspiring female novelist, Andy, who receives a job offer from…

Tirzah Garwood, wife of the more famous Eric Ravilious, is having a well-deserved moment in the sun, benefiting from this…

At last, a film about the G7. There have been more movies than you can shake a stick at set…

Queer, which is based on the novella by William S. Burroughs, is the latest film directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call…

Reviewing Sky’s The Heist before Christmas last year, I suggested that all feature-length festive television dramas begin with credits announcing…

For a press tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the Church of the Resurrection, the…

It is customary for magazines like this to devote some of the final issue of the year to an appraisal…

The clever lexicographers at the Australian National Dictionary Centre have chosen ‘Colesworths’ as their Word of the Year 2024. They…

I have set my husband a Christmas game. He wins a small chocolate sprout each time he spots a word…

  Events, dear boy In 2024: 1. Twenty-two tons of what were stolen from Neal’s Yard in London? 2. Down…

Last year, my new year’s resolution was to make fewer careless mistakes at the bridge table. Easier, surely, than cutting…

You didn’t want to approach Davy Russell before a race. He spurned selfies with owners and didn’t talk to the…

Ouidah, Benin On a free afternoon in Benin, I decide to walk the slave route in Ouidah, the port from…

What hope is there for artists following the sale recently of the robot Ai-Da’s portrait of Alan Turing, entitled ‘A.I.…

‘Life is changed, not ended,’ said the slogan on the lectern as the priest told his flock what to think…

My parents gave up on Christmas altogether once I left home for university. They had never been people for celebrations…

For as long as we’ve been serving food, we’ve been unable to resist a bit of culinary deception. Making one…

Late in the evening six months ago, my wife and I were driving back to our hotel in the dark…

This has been the most fascinating political year I can remember. I have even found myself dreaming about politics –…

It was quite a year for some of the worst of sport – America’s golfers, already among the richest and…

Back in January, I wrote about my new year’s resolution to cut down on my drinking. The thought of total…

From Tina Brown Q. I have been dogged all my career as ‘the Queen of Buzz’, which makes people assume…

Back to the past: it’s safer there. There is a themed restaurant dedicated to George VI of all people, near…