National pride matters. And symbols or displays of national pride carry huge significance. That is the lesson of the brave…

The war in Iran has produced a classic example of the practice of politicians twisting the meaning of words which…

Why the right would rather lose than unite

DEI spells disaster

The NDIS is Australia’s most expensive policy failure

When compliance is more important than conscience

The Juukan Gorge travesty

The cowardly response to Iran is more than revealing

An unsung anthem heard around the world

History says she’s right

‘Donald Trump is a complicated person with simple ideas,’ said Kellyanne Conway, the former White House senior counsellor. ‘Way too…

A Labour MP, reflecting on the problems the Prime Minister faces over the war in Iran, observed this week: ‘Keir…

I’m conscious that, just as the easiest way to lose an argument is to mention Hitler, so the easiest way…

I spent my last year as editor of this magazine trapped on an auction block, hunting for a new proprietor.…

In January 1894, an assistant of Thomas Edison made a five-second silent film of Fred Ott taking snuff and then…

Sir Stephen Watson, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), is Warrington-born, Rhodesia-raised. His father was an engineer in the…

No one likes a blatant boaster. So, as adults, we learn that if we want to boast, we must be…

As a birthday treat, a good father might take his ten-year-old daughter to the ballet or a Disney movie. Three…

From time to time, I’ve given some famous pianists a bit of a kicking in the arts pages of this…

Those for whom the welfare state does not provide as much welfare as they would like might care to reflect…

Six people meet for a picnic on Richmond Green. They eat Popeyes chicken nuggets, Sainsbury’s sausage rolls, M&S sandwiches, Cadbury…

George III has not been well remembered on either side of the Atlantic. Despite reigning for almost 60 years, in…

Less near Where exactly is the Middle East? – The term was first popularised in an article by Alfred Thayer…

The West’s track record Sir: I read with much sadness Matthew Parris’s reservations about western attempts at regime change in…

I am glad that Radio 4 is producing a series called How Reading Made Us, presented by the subtle, super-literate…

Beamish, the living history museum in County Durham, invites visitors to ‘step into the past’. It shows how people lived…

Murton is a rather frowsy former pit village in County Durham, about half a dozen miles down the A19 from…

Sometimes the obvious is so obvious that people forget to state it. So let me observe one small footnote among…

Twenty minutes into what seemed a routine softball literary interview for Bloomberg TV in London last month, the conversation took…

Shares everywhere dived for cover as missiles started flying. But one stock ahead of the pack, and responding to a…

A powerful Jewish family flee Salonika in 1912 – only to fall apart in France on the eve of the second world war

Everyone in Dubai’s confected utopia is reinventing themselves and failing miserably in this dark satire on greed, stupidity and regret

Keza MacDonald describes how Mario, the company’s mascot, became not only an icon of Japanese culture but a global hero

While considered a safe pair of hands during the financial crisis of 2007, Blankfein skirts around some of Goldman’s more controversial decisions at the time

Apart from the atrocity of 7 October 2023 itself, it is the reaction of neighbours and even family that appals Jacobson’s protagonist in a novel that still manages to be darkly comic

A beguiling memoir boasts intimate encounters with many of the 20th century’s most celebrated writers – but should we believe a word of it?

Ordinary citizens faced two enemies in the war, and it as hard to know who was more dangerous – the Allies or their own deranged leaders

Leaving London with her husband and daughter to make a new home on the edge of Dartmoor, Sylvia Plath longs for ‘everything to be perfect… and hasn’t learned yet that, in life, nothing can be’

By the age of 18 we will have spent far more time with our brothers and sisters than we will ever spend again – suggesting that blood ties do not guarantee intimacy

Grigory Rasputin was no Machiavelli but a simple, venal man who wielded an influence far more dangerous than he could ever comprehend

Isn’t it odd the way we can start watching a streamer in absolute disgusted disbelief only to discover that we’re…

‘Oh dear, you look like an old person,’ said Girl, greeting me in the interval of the Bach choir’s St…

I got my first paid writing gig back in the early 2010s, for an online magazine fixated on the then-current…

Interest in Dracula seems to go on for ever. Kip Williams has chosen Cynthia Erivo to star in his new…

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is the film that fans of the television show have long been waiting for, so…

Bring me my bow of burning gold; or failing that, the opening notes of Elgar’s Second Symphony. That’s how I’ve…

The title of David Byrne’s most recent album and current tour is Who Is The Sky?. The phrase works two…

More than 30 contemporary artists have contributed to the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition, which asks what it’s like to age…

I’ve probably enjoyed as many long lunches as any old adman, and in the 1980s and ’90s may well have…

Are our governments guilty of ‘menticide’? This uncommon word is recorded from 1951, in which year it first appeared in…

Kenya While we were loading two stud bulls and eight hoggets onto a lorry in my ranch’s yard in the…

For Competition 3440 you were invited to supply a diplomatic thank-you letter for an unwanted gift. According to a recent…

On Monday, the Communities Secretary Steve Reed rose in the House of Commons to unveil ‘Protecting What Matters’, the government’s…

‘I want to learn Iranian,’ said my father, resolutely, as he watched the bombing on the television. ‘Farsi,’ I said,…

My late grandmother used to say that seeing Pope John Paul II descend by helicopter into Dublin’s Phoenix Park in…

Q. We have recently moved out of London and have met charming, married lesbians who are living locally. They are…

Last Monday, I delivered a speech to mark the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s second-best book: An Inquiry into the…

I’m thinking of becoming a magistrate. Before applying, I was advised to attend a few sessions and find out how…