With people swarming the aisles of our supermarkets grabbing every multipack of dunny paper they can lay their hands on,…

As Chairman of Apologies Inc. I am pleased to report that we have had another bumper year and that business…

A friend recently invited me to a Sydney gallery opening to see paintings by a group of first nations artists…

The Coalition’s appointments are woeful

No fossil fuels: no boards, no wetsuits, no trips to foreign surf breaks

Climate change activists may only have a few years left

The World Health Organisation launders China’s appalling record

Coronavirus, death and despair... so plenty to laugh about, then?

The more serious the allegation, the more satisfied one must be of the proof

Russia and Saudi Arabia have chosen this moment to go to war over oil prices

Could freeports help ‘level up’ the north?

The cellar room is almost silent save for the sound of slurping and spitting and the odd gentle sigh. One…

Italy is being consumed by panic

How British science can flourish after Brexit

Sanity no longer seems a useful quality in US presidential candidates

Coronavirus may be more widespread than we think – and less deadly

America is caught in the crossfire

Last Monday night and Tuesday were our Jewish festival of Purim, when we recall the events described in the Book…

Plagued by the past

Home At the beginning of the week 319 people in the United Kingdom had been found to be suffering from…

Musical inspiration Sir: The interview with Antonio Pappano was splendid  for those of us who admire him in Australia but…

It’s always tempting for governments to respond to economic trouble with a debt-fuelled spending splurge, but it’s a notoriously blunt…

I have been trying to write about a great unpleasantness for some time: the trans debate that we don’t really…

‘It’s a ghost town,’ said the officer manning the body scanner at Manchester airport — Manchester, New Hampshire, that is,…

I was mansplaining to my wife earlier this week about why we ought to be very, very concerned by the…

At least none of us will have to pretend that we read Woody Allen’s memoirs. This week the publishers Hachette…

The most surprising thing about the letter from Guardian and Observer journalists moaning about Suzanne Moore’s supposed ‘transphobia’ is that…

Monday night’s Commons rebellion over Huawei was on a surprisingly serious scale for a new government with a big mandate.…

British politics has not lost its flair for the dramatic. If it was not enough to have Sajid Javid resign…

Two years ago, the counter-extremist analyst Julia Ebner decided she needed to delve deeper into the extremists trying to disrupt…

Emma Smith examines the peculiarly disruptive effect of Shakespeare’s plays on American society over the centuries

The Mediterranean-centred era spanning a century or so either side of 1492 is filled to the brim with stories. There…

The Moroccan-born Leïla Slimani has made her name writing novels of propulsive intensity. Lullaby, the story of a nanny who…

Louise Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, was tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa when the US Congress imposed…

Historians argue endlessly and pointlessly about the extent to which the human factor rather than brute circumstance determines the course…

Short, fat and shy, the protagonist of Adam Mars-Jones’s latest novel doesn’t have much going for him; even his name…

Were this a less good book than it is, it would be called How Bach Can Help You Grieve. As…

Forty-seven years ago, Virago paperbacks, with their stylish green spines and hint-of-the-transgressive colophons of a red apple with a bite…

In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English…

Kiley Reid’s Philadelphia-set debut, Such a Fun Age (Bloomsbury, £12.99), is a satire on white saviour syndrome, woke culture and…

The artistic leadership of a major performing company is, by definition, important. The Australian Ballet has a forthcoming vacancy of…

Who was the most influential figure in 20th-century classical music? Stravinsky? Pierre Boulez? What about Bernstein or Britten? John Cage…

Exhibitions about fungi, bugs and trees illustrate the depth, range and vitality of a growing field of art, says Mark Cocker

Misbehaviour is a film about the 1970 Miss World contest that was disrupted by ‘bloody women’s libbers’ — that’s what…

‘No matter what they take from me,’ sang Whitney Houston towards the end of a peculiar evening in Hammersmith, ‘they…

Sky One’s Breeders (Thursday) bills itself as an ‘honest and uncompromising comedy’ about parenting. To this end, the opening scene…

Sebastian Barry talks to Robert Jackman about family folklore, the joy of writing playsand why he is not an ‘Irish’ novelist

It must have been hard for Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young to live up to the success of 2016’s devastating…

Here’s the problem. Much communication is done online, especially by youngsters, and much drama focuses on communication. So how do…

Sadly it looks as though the 2020 Six Nations may have to go down with an asterisk and an explanation…

Africa   ‘Ah, Africa,’ the French scientist sighed contentedly. This was 1995 and all around us was an Ebola epidemic…

The game was up when I put on a pair of size 14 jodhpurs at the country store and they…

Black to play. Tomashevsky–Lomasov, Nutcracker Battle of the Generations, Moscow 2020. A position with a surprising twist. Tomashevsky has just…

Four pairs of unclued lights (17/5, 22/27, 29/31 and 8/26) form anagrams of the titles (one hyphened, three of three…

41/1A/10 is MISQUOTATION. 1D/24/33, 15, 34, and 38/16D are examples of common misquotations. First prize Dianne Parker, Dover, KentRunners-up Vincent…

Gstaad   Rumours about the virus are flying around this village. First there was talk of a hotel being temporarily…

Just back from Monaco, the tiny principality famously dubbed ‘a sunny place for shady people’ by Somerset Maugham. Pierre Zimmermann,…

The greater the enervation, it is said, the greater the appreciation of a work of art. There was no place…

In Competition No. 3139 you were invited to submit a four-line verse epitaph for a well-known person, living or dead.…

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and it sits like a red-brick crab on the…

In the 1800s, several chess matches were conducted by telegraph. Modern technology ought to make long-distance matches easier than ever,…

I’m no fan of Steve Bell, the Guardiancartoonist. I can’t say I’ve ever laughed at one of his squibs, which…

Q. How can I stop a member of the household from glutting out on the chocolate supply I have stockpiled?…