The decision by the Labor party, in cahoots with the hypocritical Greens to vote against the Same Sex Marriage plebiscite…

Not all words are equal. People who speak or write for a living are more aware than most that some…

In the wake of South Australia’s instant State-wide blackout on September 28, and the political storm that followed the physical…

Let me say it upfront: on greyhounds, the Government got it wrong. Banning the industry was a mistake, and we…

While the NSW Government worked itself into a lather over greyhounds chasing ‘live bait’, speaking emotively of bunny rabbits being…

The recent ABC documentary Recognition – Yes or No? concluded with Andrew Bolt in a fold-out chair on a lawn…

Those amused or alarmed by the pictures of former Army Chief and Australian of the Year David Morrison mincing about…

Earlier this year, Mark Latham stirred up outrage with these comments on domestic violence: … it’s about how the men…

An emaciated figure in Auschwitz’s prison rags stands across a desk from a tall, thin, blond German named Doktor Pannwitz.…

 Calais On Sunday evening a British motorist, Abraham Reichman, 35, from Stamford Hill, north London, hit two Eritrean migrants who…

At the end of Sunday night’s US presidential debate, the moderators snuck in a final question from a slightly shell…

It’s tempting for a Brit to look over the Atlantic and smugly conclude that, after 240 years, the American experiment…

‘When you’ve shouted Rule Britannia, when you’ve sung God Save the Queen, when you’ve finished killing Kruger with your mouth…’…

A white van pulls up outside St Giles in the Fields, an imposing 18th century church in central London, around…

Woody Allen said of crime that the hours were good and you meet a lot of interesting people. I don’t…

The brilliant thing about Hong Kong is that you don’t have to worry for a second about all the culture…

Understand what this government is trying to get away with, and think about how it is trying to get away…

Driving into Greenwood after dark, we pull into a gas station and ask directions to a late-night grocery store. ‘Sir……

Ever since it was founded in 1895, the National Trust has been considered a good thing. That oak tree sticker…

In 1402, when the Turkic conqueror Temur, better known in the West as Tamerlane, was poised to do battle with…

Fears of a clown Professional clowns complained that the current craze for scaring people by dressing in clown outfits was…

‘If you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere,’ proclaimed Theresa May in a speech…

Cathedral going Sir: While I enjoyed much of Simon Jenkins’s analysis of why England’s cathedrals are thriving (‘Why cathedrals are…

From ‘Decisive victory at sea’, The Spectator, 7 October 1916: The only excuse for changing our views of the magnificent rightness…

Home The pound fell against the dollar and the euro, weakening by 19 per cent against the dollar from its…

On the face of it, this year’s Nobel Prize awards have been a triumph for British scientists. No fewer than…

Abstract profit Sir: I once worked in a factory opposite a sign writer who used a large panel to test…

To Edinburgh to get married, but first my toyboy groom John Playfair (he’s a mere 69) shows me the city…

Remember how much fun it used to be getting a new phone? I think of a friend a few years…

The financial crisis defines our age. It helps explain everything from the presidential nomination of Donald Trump to Jeremy Corbyn’s…

This column comes from Puerto Pollensa in Majorca, my favourite off-season watering-hole. The hotel is full of elderly Daily Mail…

Given all the outrageous things that Donald Trump has done and said already, why has he got into so much…

Perhaps it’s age, perhaps disillusion, or perhaps party conferences really aren’t what they used to be, but I have struggled…

I never really agreed with the central-thesis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — that ‘42’ is the answer…

Doorstoppers, slim volumes, loose leaves stacked in a box, bound pages fretworked with holes, epistolary exchanges, online postings, palimpsests…. Fiction…

‘Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three,’ Philip Larkin famously announced in his poem ‘Annus Mirabilis’, ‘Between the end of…

In 1919 the economist and sometime prophet John Maynard Keynes left the glittering ballroom of Versailles feeling profoundly despondent. The…

When the old curmudgeon Edgar Degas died in 1917, a stunning trove of works by Edouard Manet — eight paintings,…

There was a touch of Raymond Radiguet, the young literary sensation of 1920s Paris, about Tara Browne. In life poetically…

The McNulty family in the novels of Sebastian Barry have a definite claim to be one of the unluckiest in…

When I started this book, I have to admit, I did not think it would be as absolutely fascinating as…

Aethelred the Unready (c.968—1016) has not, as Levi Roach acknowledges, enjoyed a good press. In recent times there may have…

It is difficult to write well about slavery. As with the Holocaust, the subject’s horrific nature lends itself too easily…

This is a strange book. Peter Stothard, the editor of the TLS, is packing up his office. It is a…

Looking for the Outsider is the biography of a novel, from conception through publication to critical reception. Alice Kaplan’s life-story…

There’s a folder in my computer’s external hard drive in which you’ll find 24 complete recordings of the Bach Cello…

We don’t know what Caravaggio himself would have made of Beyond Caravaggio, the new exhibition at the National Gallery which…

As a general rule, I would not wish to spend nearly three hours in a mini-van with young people who…

The other day James Lovelock, the sprightly 97-year-old inventor of Gaia theory, told a mildly surprised Guardian interviewer that he…

Travesties is a multi-layered confection of art, song, literature and pastiche. Tiny snippets of it are true. In Zurich, in…

When Jane Garvey announced to the audience who had just ‘taken part’ in the 70th birthday celebrations of Radio 4’s…

Shiny swags of gold cloth hang in front of the curtain before David McVicar’s production of Der Rosenkavalier, and that’s…

First performed 21 years ago, it’s title was The Eighth Wonder. This year it is being revived under a cumbersome…

Daphne’s serves Italian food in South Kensington. (I like the name because Daphne was the name Jack Lemmon chose for…

The name was The Spectator. THESP (SARAH BERNHARDT: 37/19), EC (EAST CENTRAL: 36/20), TAT (HEMPEN MATTING: 5/15) and OR (LOGIC…

Against all odds, I almost got through an entire Brexit dinner with dignity, and without opening the valve in my…

I first encountered the Triskelion, the traditional coat of arms of the Isle of Man, when I saw Laurence Oliver’s…

The Hubert Phillips is one of the EBU’s quirkier knockout tournaments. Firstly every team must contain (and play) at least…

White to play. This position is from Mamedyarov-Kramnik, Moscow 2016. White’s next concluded the game. What was it? Answers to…

Monty Don, the television gardening presenter, always comes across on screen as irrepressibly cheerful and enthusiastic, but this is a…

In Competition No. 2969 you were invited to submit a poem about autumn in the style of the poet of…

The only downside about going racing is irritation born of encountering pig ignorant people who talk through their pockets. Beside…

Clockwise round the grid from 21 runs a timely quotation (9,5,3,5,2,7,3,11,5) (in ODQ) followed by the initials of its author,…

The post The Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator.

Of the contribution to English that Polari is claimed to have brought, perhaps naff is the most current-sounding. An older…

I’ve been thinking about poor Shami Chakrabarti and the drubbing she’s suffered since it was revealed she’s sending her son…

Q. My father has been on the warpath to eradicate Tineola bisselliella, the common clothes moth. He told me to…

New York   This is a good time to be in Manhattan, the weather’s perfect, the park and foliage still…

Six months ago Sally was living in a third floor flat in Glasgow. Then she was thrown into the back…

As the final chords of the Wagnerian epic that is ‘The Dropping of Wayne Rooney’ fade away, we can leave…