‘Contrary to the breathless assertions that climate change is behind every weather event, in Australia, the floods are not bigger,…

Black-on-black hate The problem of violence in Aboriginal communities is well known to anyone with an interest in Aboriginal affairs.…

There was something touchingly naïve about the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear…

Bugger off, Boris I observed, in this illustrious journal, on 5 March 2016 that, if Brexit succeeded, Boris Johnson could…

The private island resort of Bedarra was once a byword for excess: champagne baths were not unheard of. But when…

The car industry were amateurs compared to these guys. During the last great assistance package to the car sector, the…

Not all homosexuals are cowering in corners as they suffer the dreaded hate speech of the same-sex marriage debate; indeed,…

Driving south from Auckland you might well ask why the big volcanoes are spread all over the North Island unlike…

The Peking duck arrived on a platter the size of a solar dish and the party of prosperous retired couples…

The first railway line in Spain, from Barcelona to Mataro a few miles up the coast towards the French border,…

Pals are a luxury, not a necessity

The Great Storm of 1987 doesn’t have a name like those hurricanes that devastate the Caribbean and the United States…

In the 1962 Japanese sci-fi classic King Kong vs Godzilla, the two giant monsters fight to a stalemate atop Mount…

Robert Harris on fake facts, his new novel – and why totalitarianism is in the air again

It was World Mental Health Day this week — and it drove me mad. I don’t have ‘mental illness’. I…

Since the EU referendum result last June our nation has been divided: not only by the vote but also by…

The giants of the internet have long said that they are not publishers but mere platforms — or couriers —…

Let’s talk about guns Sir: I was surprised that the cover stories on the recent shootings in Las Vegas (‘Say…

I used to long for mid-October when I could say goodbye to the hot rooms, cold buffets, and warm white…

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, when asked by Iain Dale in an interview on LBC: ‘If there was a…

It’s been nearly two weeks since Stephen Paddock committed mass murder in Las Vegas and the FBI is still casting…

As from the Manchester conference hall I watched Theresa May’s big moment falling apart, as I buried my head in…

‘Bombardier exposes post-Brexit realities’ was the FT’s headline after the Trump administration imposed a 300 per cent tariff on sales…

The Catalan nationalists surely chose this October deliberately for their attempt, now faltering, at UDI. It is the centenary of…

‘Worst week ever’ is one of those phrases that journalists are, perhaps, too quick to use. Alastair Campbell once quipped…

A car driver ploughs into a bunch of people outside the Natural History Museum in London and lefties are furious…

It is sobering if not downright depressing to be reviewing two new books whose authors can be described as warriors…

Edward Lear liked to tell the story of how he was once sitting in a railway carriage with two women…

The name of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, is on the lips of most left-wing, liberal politicians and intellectuals…

Much has been made of the American novelist Jennifer Egan’s mutation, in her latest novel, from purveyor of metafiction and…

If you think you know what to expect from an Alan Hollinghurst novel, then when it comes to The Sparsholt…

Princess Margaret was everywhere on the bohemian scene of the 1960s and 1970s. She hung out with all the famous…

In this giant, prodigiously sourced and insightful biography, John A. Farrell shows how Richard Milhous Nixon was the nightmare of…

I first heard of this tragicomic spy romp around Israel and Palestine when Julian Barnes sang its praises in the…

A young woman, naked and covered in blood, totters numbly down a night road. A driver spots her in his…

They were at sea for more than two months in desperately cramped conditions. The battered ship, barely seaworthy, pitched violently…

In the 1890s, when British-owned ships carried 70 per cent of all seaborne trade, legislators worried about the proportion of…

Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling (4th Estate, £12.99) has the word masterpiece emblazoned on the cover, alongside quotes from several…

Gracie Fields used to sing: ‘I took my harp to a party but nobody asked me to play’. I can’t…

Sally Potter’s The Party, which unfolds in real time during a politician’s soirée to celebrate her promotion, is just 71…

‘Art by its very essence is of the new… There is only one healthy diet for artistic creation: permanent revolution.’…

I know I keep saying that in Decline of the West terms we’re all currently living in Rome, circa 400…

If two concert pianists are performing a work written for two grand pianos, there are two ways you can position…

Previously on Giulio Cesare… English Touring Opera’s new season caters cannily to the box-set generation by chopping Handel’s Egyptian power-and-politics…

  Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict…

The first pastry cook Chaïm Soutine painted came out like a collapsed soufflé. The sitter for ‘The Pastry Cook’ (c.1919)…

There’s no doubting her passion for the programme of which she is now chief of staff. Talking to Roger Bolton…

Somewhere between 1 and 3 a.m., I turn off the lights but I can’t turn off my whirring brain. Cards…

White to play. This position is from the above game, Praggnanandhaa-Howell, chess.com Masters. What is the accurate move White needed…

In Competition No. 3019 you were invited to submit a limerick describing a feat worthy of inclusion in Guinness World…

‘Kiss me mucho,’ sang my husband with a revolting leer, ‘and we’ll soar. And we’ll dance the dance of love…

They are building the bonfire already. In the dip where winter flooding sometimes creates a small lake, the wood and…

Twelve-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa scored a sensational result in the recent Isle of Man Masters. At the age of ten years…

Unclued lights suggest nine different words, each made up of the same five letters. These letters will appear in the…

The suggested title is Brideshead Revisited, HEEDS/RABID (6A/42) being an anagram of BRIDESHEAD. The six characters, all members of the Flyte…

Q. A well-known television mogul,whom I had met only once, came to dinner at my house. I was on good…

I smell a rat when it comes to Harvey Weinstein. Let’s take it from the start. The telephone rang very…

Early on Friday morning I flew from the north of Iceland to Reykjavik, from Reykjavik to Heathrow, then I hopped…

The Mandrake is a new ‘design hotel’ in London, which means it is for people who treat Elle Decoration magazine…

During a riveting session at the Cheltenham Literary Festival with sporting brainboxes Mike Brearley and Matthew Syed, discussion touched on…

According to an ex-employee of Harvey Weinstein’s, the movie producer once whispered something to himself that she found so disturbing…

The mission was simple: take a load of garden refuse to the council dump and be back in time to…