Not since the deportation of Joe Cocker in the dying days of Billy McMahon’s government has there been a celebrity…

The Test matches between Australia and England in Australia have not been much of a test of the Australian side.…

And neither should the government — don’t hand out tests for free

Damned if you’re vaxxed, damned if you’re not

Brits are more rebellious than Aussies

With a bit more courage we can reach herd immunity

The slogan of anti-democratic autocrats

The West needs to unite in defence of rules-based order

Parliament House is no different to other workplaces

The election was rigged It was inevitable that 6 January would be used in a desperate attempt to breathe life…

The spectrum of ‘bestowing homemade gifts on one’s friends’ ranges from giving to foisting. Pure giving is when you make…

My strange encounter with the foot fetishists

The spectre of revolution is stalking Putin

The London mayor’s new policy on cannabis is a disaster

Can Berlusconi become Italy’s next president?

Why should I be sacked for refusing the Covid vaccine?

The trouble with dating a social media star

Boris Johnson is in the worst trouble of his premiership

On Monday, I had a whinge-walk with Lizzie, my friend of 47 years. We met at breathing classes for our…

On 20 May 2020, the Metropolitan Police issued a statement on social media which summed up the conditions in the…

Take care Sir: Your editorial (‘Counting the costs’, 8 January) makes valid points regarding the funding of social care. The…

Home Boris Johnson admitted to attending evening drinks for about 40 staff in the garden of 10 Downing Street on…

No vax There is nothing new about the anti-vax crowds supporting Novak Djokovic. Organised protest in Britain began with the…

The statue of the Bristol merchant Edward Colston is apparently guilty of a hate crime. Let us hope that the…

According to the new Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the Russians wish to ‘put at risk…

Well, I did warn you. As I typed my column last week on the imminent end of Covid I said…

People seem surprised and a little doubting that the Prime Minister is incapable of remembering if he attended a party…

If I could lift one thing from younger generations, unpeel one idea from their anxious minds, it would be the…

So farewell, Hunterston B, the nuclear power plant on the Firth of Clyde that shut last week after 46 years’…

Even Boris Johnson’s longest-standing supporters now think he might be on the way out. His admission that he attended a Downing…

When I was a fifteen-year-old student at Melbourne High School, I tried to join the Communist Party of Australia. One…

When is a life worth telling? The Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky’s six-volume autobiography The Story of a Life combines high…

In the world of books, a modern classic is an altogether more slippery thing than a classic: it must walk…

At a village train station in deepest Kent two men and their pet mongoose are setting off on their honeymoon.…

The premise of White Debt is that the author’s ancestors ran a business selling a product grown by slaves. Therefore…

On 8 April 1864 an Austrian archduke with a penchant for daydreaming agreed to be emperor of Mexico. As Edward…

Claire Keegan’s tiny, cataclysmic novel takes us into the heart of small-town Ireland a few decades ago, creating a world…

There’s a scene in Martin Amis’s 1990s revenge comedy The Information in which a book reviewer, who’s crushed by his…

‘Male writers now are the opposition party, and that may not be such a bad thing for them.’ So Rob…

Last year was the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the war of Greek independence in March 1821. It has…

It could be said that the power of a horror story depends on the possibility, however minute, of it being…

Tessa Hadley is the queen of the portentous evening, the pregnant light and the carefully composed life unwittingly waiting to…

My daunting brief: to tell you about Hanya Yanagihara and her new, uncategorisable 720-page novel in 550 words. It’s the…

Covering 20 per cent of the Earth’s surface, the boreal forest is the largest living system, or ‘biome’, on land.…

‘We didn’t need dialogue’, glares Gloria Swanson’s crazed silent picture star midway through Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. ‘We had faces!’…

Philip Hensher explores the origins of fairy tales

How strange to revisit the Nova in Lygon Street, Carlton, where a lifetime of films have been experienced, after an…

If there’s any form of entertainment that I will reliably find time for, no matter how big the to-read pile…

 Grade: A I have persisted in buying everything Neil Young releases since I first heard On the Beach as a…

Hampstead Theatre has revived a play about Peggy Ramsay, the legendary West End agent who shaped the careers of Joe…

In 1950 the 21-year-old painter Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, went to an exhibition at New York’s Betty Parson’s…

Igor Toronyi-Lalic talks to the film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul about sleep, Tilda Swinton and VR

Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra began the year with a world première. Unsuk Chin’s Second Violin Concerto…

As you may have noticed, it’s something of a golden age for TV shows about how invisible middle-aged women are…

The latest film from Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank, American Honey) is a feature-length documentary about a cow, starring…

I am writing this in Old South Wales, in the visitor suite of my mother’s assisted living facility. When I…

In his column in the Weekend Australian just before Christmas demographer Bernard Salt expressed his fear that the Australian language…

In this pangrammatical puzzle, the unclued lights are of a kind near 21A. Ignore all accents.   Across 7 Fresh…

White to play. Maxime Lagarde-Thai Dai Van Nguyen, Reykjavik 2021. Lagarde found a brilliant finish, forcing mate in just a…

In Competition No. 3231, you were invited to supply an example of pretentious wine writing. Space is tight and the…

One of the village vegans gave the bacon sandwich resting on top of the recycling bin outside my house an…

It is a truism that there is never enough schnitzel (‘slice’, German); or, rather, schnitzel does not get the attention…

Kenya Wondering what this year will bring, at dawn this morning I stood in the waves in front of our…

My husband is forever being sent magazines from his Oxford college inviting him to give it money. I suggest he…

The unclued lights (3 composers, 3 artists and 3 writers) are all buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. The name should…

Q. My cleaner is industrious and trustworthy but she doesn’t have many people to talk to and evidently looks forward…

I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Don’t Look Up, the new satirical film on Netflix. It’s about a couple of…

Why is defence so difficult? Why do I have to suffer partner’s incredulous face when I play the wrong card…

The four portraits of four siblings that Catriona had painted from their photographs over four months were framed, hung and…

Gstaad Who was it who said good manners had gone the way of black and white TV? Actually it was…

Full homage to the nail-biting cricketing miracle in Sydney, while bearing in mind that miracles, like lightning, rarely strike twice…

Recently, with some regret, I declined an invitation to play chess in the Netherlands. I fancied the trip, but alas…