As Labor politicians dragged their heels back to parliament this week, there are signs of progress through the five stages…

I made three gigantic mistakes in my political career. Not just the usual stupid things that politicians do, like wasting…

For the past three years, I had been looking to say something strong and substantial about Brexit. I first had…

A new golden age built with Australian coal Thanks to the British Raj, English has many words of Indian heritage.…

No longer can Brexit be considered inevitable: British democracy is on life support, and there are many who want to…

‘It was just a good title for a book’, Graham Richardson protested last week, after a federal Labor front-bencher blamed…

From President Eisenhower’s time in office to the end of President Obama’s, there were 27 vacancies on the Supreme Court…

The US and Australia will soon raise a glass to a ‘common vision for global peace, security and prosperity.’ On…

On my visits to Australia I have felt a strong sense of mystery and even apprehension. How is it that…

These are extraordinary days for the Anglosphere. As China and the EU show their contempt for ordinary people, the values…

In this year’s Star Chamber trial by media, Prince Andrew has been found guilty with instructions to with- draw from…

Every Monday, a group of unlikely bedfellows meet in Jeremy Corbyn’s parliamentary office. Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat leader; Ian Blackford,…

Boris Johnson’s opponents love to accuse him of using the ‘Trump playbook’. Some on the left have become so obsessed…

There’s a line in Desperately Seeking Susan where Madonna (Susan) reads aloud the diary of Roberta, the bored housewife she…

Boris Johnson is a gung-ho classicist. He has supported the subject throughout his journalistic and political career, is a generous…

In his memoir of office, Decision Points, George W. Bush writes about going to see Tony Blair in the Azores…

Watching Boris Johnson in Dublin, where he came to ask Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to get him out of a hole,…

 New York A biography of Freud to my left, a black leather lounger to my right. We were 30 minutes…

‘Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless?’ Jane Eyre asks Mr…

Another week, another set of economic figures that suggest the country is showing remarkable resilience while politics implodes. Rather than…

Home A bill sponsored by Hilary Benn and supported by Alistair Burt and other dissident Tories was passed — becoming…

I could be that rare thing: a former chancellor who is still a member of the Conservative party. Philip Hammond…

Party speak Should the next Speaker of the House of Commons be a Labour MP on the basis that John…

We read much about ‘fake news’ these days and of efforts to rid the internet of it. But what of…

Shambles at sea Sir: On 19 July Iranian Republican Guard forces captured the UK flagged tanker Stena Impero, as described…

An election might still be months away, but the parties have already made their big strategic choices. The Tories and…

The BBC featured a gay wedding on Songs of Praise recently. Of course it did. The thinking was, I assume:…

American liberals perceive it as a jarring inconsistency: my opposition to Trump and support for Brexit. Especially outside the UK,…

Imagine a country where women have no jobs, no rights and are valued only for reproductive success. Imagine a country…

Long ago in my investment banking days I had a glimpse into the mind of the British Airways long-haul pilot.…

Towards the end of this tale of imperial intellectual expansion, Susan Sontag’s publicist goes to visit his shrink and, dealing…

The novelist and essayist James Meek’s confident new medieval romance is conducted in brief passages separated out by three icons,…

Those who think Essex is boring, or a human waste bin into which only the most meretricious people find themselves…

It is to Peter Quennell in his memoir The Wanton Chase that D.J. Taylor owes his concept of wartime London’s…

Doxology covers five decades and a spacious 400 pages, with all the subplots and digressions you would expect of a…

He would want to be remembered as the debonair war hero who delivered Indian independence and became the royal family’s…

This novel is strikingly brave in two ways: first, in the fortitude of its writer, the redoubtable Edna O’Brien, who,…

Probably this happens to every generation: the moment when you can’t believe what’s going on; when events seem too preposterous…

A boardful of company directors are summoned to explain themselves to a Whitehall select committee. The Bank of England has…

Ultras (Italian football hooligans) initially evolved along the same lines as their more infamous English counterparts, emerging in the 1960s…

Frank Dikötter has written a very lively and concise analysis of the techniques and personalities of eight 20th-century dictators: Mussolini,…

‘Imagination is my world.’ So wrote William Blake. His was a world of ‘historical inventions’. Nelson and Lucifer, Pitt and…

The much-anticipated film version of Downton Abbey has arrived and I suppose you could describe it as the Avengers Assemble…

Conducting is one of those professions — being monarch is perhaps another — where the less you do, the more…

Because the rise of the Nazis is a topic so rarely mentioned these days, least of all in schools, the…

There were so many ear-catching moments in Peter Hennessy’s series for Radio 4, Winds of Change, adapted from his new…

Hit them with your best shot? Or save the best till last? Almost 30 years after Alvin Ailey’s death in…

Hansard is the debut play by actor Simon Woods, who enjoys a deep knowledge of his subject. The characters are…

It’s entirely possible for a band to be quite the most brilliant thing in existence for the briefest of times,…

It was hailed as a masterpiece at its premiere in Vienna in 1786; it still is a masterpiece. The Marriage…

He was a Falstaff in his drinking and in his celebration of life, but his greatness lay in his friendships.…

The receptionist with brown lipstick showed my son and me into a faultless waiting room, whose centrepiece was a big…

‘The reason vets are so expensive now,’ explained the vet in her snazzy green uniform, ‘is because we can do…

Sorry is allegedly the hardest word to say — so Carolyn Harris, chair of the all-party parliamentary group studying gambling-related…

Not many male bridge players over a certain age (ten) would call themselves feminists. I won’t repeat what the partner…

The Hungarian/American grandmaster Pal Benko has died at the age of 91. Among his numerous distinguished achievements was his double qualification…

White to play. This position is from Benko-Jeney, Budapest 1950. Benko has just sacrificed rook for knight. What is his…

In Competition No. 3115 you were invited to submit a fable for the 21st century, complete with moral. James Michie,…

The unclued lights (two individually, both of two words, one an abbreviation, and five pairs) are of a kind. One…

The unclued Across lights are words abbreviated by F which includes ‘40’ and the unclued Down lights are abbreviated by f…

I think my colleagues on the pro-Brexit side of the aisle have been a little unkind in their response to…

In 1891, a 29-year-old man moved from Philadelphia to Chicago intending to start a business. With $32 to his name,…

Q. We often have friends coming to stay before (and after) we all head off for Glyndebourne, a 20-minute drive…

What do you get if you cross a dyslexic, an insomniac and an agnostic? Someone who wakes up at 4…

Fotherington-Thomas was introduced by Nigel Molesworth, the narrator of Down with Skool!, in 1953: ‘As you see he is skipping…