What a mess! Australia has the world’s largest readily available supplies of coal, gas and uranium yet our power prices…

What an amazing contrast. Here I am in Bayreuth, Bavaria, to see Richard Wagner’s monumental Ring Cycle, probably the greatest…

Hate gets a bad rap these days. Children are taught that they mustn’t hate each other, divorcees are counselled not…

A few years ago I returned to Sydney after nearly a life-time spent working in England. With my interest in…

An article appeared two weeks ago in this magazine entitled ‘Iran is our natural ally’. Images came to mind of…

Look across the entire democratic world and you will notice that some countries have only one legislative chamber. New Zealand…

Surfers were the last of this planet’s great explorers. They followed the paths forged centuries earlier by missionaries and colonisers,…

The federal government’s proposed drug testing trial for selected unemployment benefits claimants has been greeted with depressingly predictable objections from…

Next month, Theresa May is expected to launch her long-awaited audit into racial disparities in public services. We are being…

Are university vice-chancellors paid too much? The government clearly thinks so, and is planning to fine universities that can’t justify…

‘The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision,’ said Maimonides. How right he was. Today,…

It’s not easy to get hold of Ángel Hernández, the legendary Mexican chemist who for a decade provided illicit performance-enhancing…

Enough has been written about a Conservative government that knows its electoral success depends on Britain remaining a property-owning democracy,…

Last month Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice, warned that anyone who yelled Allahu Akbar (‘God is the greatest’) in…

When people come to Dover, it’s usually to pass through. The magnificent castle on the cliffs may be a tourist…

Spreading the word Sir: Yesterday, I left my copy of last week’s Speccie behind at the optometrist after an appointment.…

Jeremy Corbyn has never been very keen on parliamentary democracy. He may be changing his mind now. The British electoral…

Home The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill was given a second reading by 326 votes to 290, with seven Labour MPs…

I never expected to visit Iceland, let alone play cricket there. But the Iceland national team was off to play…

One of the reasons that coalition governments are so unusual in Britain is that both main parties are coalitions themselves.…

A fascinating story has emerged from a north-western leftie quadrant of the United States: the sacking of British conductor Matthew…

Apologies for my absence from this column. My editors kindly let me get on with the final volume of my…

Should we place faith in a survey, conducted in June but published this week, that says London is still the…

Entering the Bulawayo Club, you step out of the blinding African sunshine on that safe and friendly city’s wide streets,…

All Involved, Ryan Gattis’s breakout novel about the LA riots of 1992, was an absolute blast. Ballsy, vivid and immersive,…

As literary editor of the Sunday Times in the early 1980s, when the rest of the editorial staff routinely papered…

It is a pretty safe bet that for every 1,000 people who know of William Wilberforce, no more than the…

Daniel and his big sister, Cathy, do not go to school. They live with their father, a gargantuan former prizefighter,…

Life has far more imagination than we do, says the epigraph from Truffaut that opens Salman Rushdie’s 12th novel —…

Much romantic nonsense has been written about the runaway slaves or Maroons of the West Indies. In 1970s Jamaica, during…

This is a monumental but inevitably selective survey of all that occurred in Britain, for better or worse, in the…

Desmond de Silva was born in the colony of Ceylon in the early months of the second world war, the…

In the late years of Empire, and early days of Christianity, there were monks who didn’t wash for fear of…

As Roddy Doyle’s 12th novel begins, Victor Forde, a washed-up writer, has returned to the part of Dublin where he…

Trying to reconcile a belief in the literal truth of the Bible with the facts of the world as we…

We are gripped by gossip. Curiosity is a tenacious emotion. In her essay on Push Comes to Shove, the autobiography…

‘We’re going to live for ever!’ declares Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler at the end of Ken Russell’s 1974 biopic.…

Anyone who thinks that an artist’s life is irrelevant to their artistic achievement, and for that matter anyone who thinks…

The film-maker Darren Aronofsky says he wrote Mother! in five days as if in a ‘fever dream’ and, as a…

Rachel Whiteread is an indefatigable explorer of internal space. By turning humble items such as hot-water bottles and sinks inside…

The inimitably pukka voice of Jacob Rees-Mogg echoed through Radio 4 on Thursday morning. He was not, though, talking about…

Tin Star, the latest Sky Atlantic drama, has a comfortingly familiar premise: Jim Worth (Tim Roth), an ex-detective from London…

A fortnight ago, the debut album by a young British guitar band entered the chart at No. 6. You might…

The Royal Opera’s one production that, it has always confidently been claimed, need never be replaced has been replaced. John…

Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two middle-aged couples who knew…

Founded in 2002, Pinchgut Opera has presented 19 rarely performed works with such distinction that its audience has grown along…

In Competition No. 3015 you were invited to submit a poem about Big Ben’s bongs.   The decision to remove…

Q. My partner and I recently had two close friends — one a Peer, the other a former Member of the…

Piles of black plastic rubbish sacks lie in the streets of Birmingham because, since the end of June, the dustmen…

Stefano and his boys got to work with gusto and within a few days the upstairs of my house started…

This summer was the longest I have gone without playing bridge since I began about 20 years ago. Not one…

Genna Sosonko is a writer and grandmaster who straddles two great chess cultures, Holland and the USSR, his chosen and native…

Black to play. This position is from Carlsen-Bu, Fidé World Cup, Tbilisi 2017. Can you spot Black’s winning coup? Answers…

Five unclued lights are titles of works by a person whose name is formed by two unclued lights. Three clues…

11, 42 and perimeter entries are titles of COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILMS.  First prize B. Midgley, Ettington, Stratford-upon-AvonRunners-up Arabella Grandage, Bradenham, Bucks;…

I’m in Venice for the film festival that just ended and, as an American humorist once wired his paper: ‘Streets…

The army patrols at Nice airport go around three abreast, steely-eyed, fingers on the trigger. They walk slowly and scrutinise…

Poor old Roy Hodgson, why did he take on Crystal Palace? He was having lunch at a Côte in a…

Last month, two law professors named Amy Wax and Larry Alexander published a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer praising ‘bourgeois’…

Racing moves off the back pages only when its opponents have bad news to gloat over. Two examples lately have…