Next week Australians head to the polling booths to elect a new government or to return the old one. With…

In the Australian recently ‘a senior Liberal front-bencher’ reportedly said that voters ‘want to return us to office, but they…

We move away from fossil fuels at our grave peril

Rewarding the Libs guarantees a further drift to the left

The threat of a Labor-Greens Senate unity ticket

Prepare for Labor

What was once far-fetched is now the daily news

New Zealand teeters on lawlessness

The truth is struggling to survive in the modern West

Toxic femininity takes centre-stage

Buffalo are now living in the fens of Kent. Why – have we slipped into the metaverse of Lewis Carroll?…

Russians must mobilise their own culture against Putin

Conservative values have fallen out of fashion

What’s next for Labour – and the Tories?

The new GCSE in global warming

The negative discrimination of Oxbridge admissions

Why won’t banks help fraud victims like my daughter?

The lockdown penalty charges keep coming

The march of the ‘menosplainers’

Disarming by default Sir: Underpinning Rod Liddle’s amusing article on use of nuclear weapons last week is the reassurance provided…

The Ukraine crisis has transformed international affairs, forcing countries the world over to rethink their alliances and interests. New patterns…

Home The Prince of Wales delivered the Queen’s Speech at the State Opening of Parliament sitting on a throne next…

I wonder at times how some of my fellow hacks in America get out of bed in the morning. The…

Did Vladimir Putin ever use his infamous ‘historical’ account of Russia-Ukraine relations to consider how Ukrainians might react to his…

Biergate Sir Keir Starmer was facing the scandal of ‘beergate’. Biergate is a lane in the Lincolnshire village of Grainthorpe.…

Before we start, let’s firmly establish my long-standing affection for the United Kingdom. Why, some of my best friends are…

Would Andy Haldane, the economist who left the Bank of England to run the Royal Society of Arts, have made…

At long last the state of Oregon has got around to installing tampon machines in the male lavatories of its…

When I was a lobby journalist, I never went to the State Opening of Parliament. I much regret it, because…

There has been a considerable hoo-hah in the press about the recent World Health Organisation report estimating Covid-related deaths internationally…

I wonder if we will ever be able to resist fixing the suffix ‘gate’ to the end of any not-yet-sufficiently-salacious…

When David Cameron was prime minister, the Tories flirted with the idea of a Queen’s Speech with no bills in…

So you think you know the story of Britain’s notorious atomic tests in Australia? In that respect, the name of…

Justin Marozzi on the troubled history of a small, much-coveted country

Almost half of the terrorists hadn’t even turned up. Still, on the night of 23 February 1820, 25 men, including…

The village of Oberstdorf lies in the Bavarian Alps, geographically remote but, as this gripping book demonstrates, deeply etched by…

David Shields is an American author who has decided to collate many of the questions he’s been asked in interviews…

Reviewers who make fancy claims for genre novels tend to sound like needy show-offs or hard-of-thinking dolts. So be it:…

What does home mean? Where your dead are buried, as Zulus believe? Or where you left your heart, as a…

According to Vladimir Putin, liberalism is an ‘obsolete’ doctrine, a worn-out political philosophy no longer fit for purpose. In this…

Douglas Stuart has a rare gift. The Scottish writer, whose debut novel Shuggie Bain deservedly won the 2020 Booker Prize,…

Cressida Connolly’s new novel begins with a couple of endings. It’s spring 1855, and on the battlefields of the Crimea…

The Perfect Golden Circle is ostensibly about male friendship. Two men, flotsam of the 1980s – Calvert, a Falklands veteran,…

Tariq Ali, the Marxist writer and activist, believes that a ‘Churchill cult’ is ‘drowning all serious debate’ about the wartime…

1922 is the wonder year of twentieth century literature, the so-called annus mirabilis: T.S. Eliot published The Waste Land, James…

The Battlegroundpodcast on the wars of the 20th century, said presenter Saul David happily, ‘will have lots of bombs and…

We’re doing multiverses now. Last weekend, a friend dragged me to see Marvel’s latest product, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse…

How thriller writers must miss the Cold War! Early John le Carré and Len Deighton had it easy when trying…

Artist, actor, social justice warrior, serial killer. Laura Gascoigne on the many faces of Walter Sickert

There are many things to enjoy in the Royal Opera’s revival of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, but perhaps the most surprising…

Drummers are patient chaps, in the main. Think of Ringo in Peter Jackson’s recent Beatles docuseries, Get Back. Lolling around…

‘I fink I doan luv yew any maw.’ A marital bust-up drama at the National Theatre opens with a whining…

Are conservative journalists more endangered than polar bears? Unlike the habitat of the world’s largest land carnivore, the landscape across…

‘We are not changing any of the settings and I don’t believe we need to change any of the settings’…

In Competition No. 3248, you were asked to submit the last will and testament of a fictional character. In a…

White to play. Averbakh-Zita, Szczawno-Zdroj 1950. Black has just interposed Rb6-g6, so White needs an accurate finish before e3-e2 mate…

The emoticon which formed the title of the puzzle suggested George Smiley, Le Carré’s nemesis of MI6 moles, ordered as…

The unclued lights (one of two words) can be resolved into six pairs, in some way related. Ignore one acute…

Yuri Averbakh had a wry explanation for why he was made chairman of the USSR Chess Federation in 1972. There…

Simon Kuper’s Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK is a wonderful compendium of anecdotes…

I was reminded of the worst liquid that I have ever consumed. It was the last occasion on which I…

Q. Some years ago, much to the surprise of our many friends in London, my husband and I moved to…

‘They were living at le Grau du Roi then and the hotel was on a canal that ran from the…

I saw in last week’s Spectatorthat the tractor MP had applied for the stewardship of the Manor of Northstead. After…

The girl wound down her window, stuck her mobile phone out into midair, and started to take pictures of the…

My driveway now lies in the middle of an ‘Average Speed Check Zone’. It’s a wonderful arrangement – for me…

New York Alexandra rang me from London to enquire about a man by the name of Klaus Schwab: ‘He sounds…

‘Some of our players can hardly write their names,’ moaned one leading football manager. ‘But you should see them add…

The Spring Fours is one of the great events in the English bridge calendar – a five-day knockout attracting many…

When I first made Eccles cakes, I’m not sure I really knew where Eccles was. I certainly didn’t think I’d…