By what authority does the Turnbull government believe it has a mandate to lay waste to the economy and destroy…

I am genuinely concerned for the welfare of the leading figures in the Liberal party. I don’t mean I am…

‘Oooooo,’ coos the middle-aged box office lady with a wink, as I pick up my tickets to the World Science…

There has long been a conventional wisdom in some foreign policy circles that runs like this: solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…

On June 5 in Brighton, Melbourne, at a spot I have driven past countless times, there was a terrorist incident.…

The foxes have already been let into the henhouse. Led by the nastiest fox of all, the thuggish, serial law-breaker…

‘Whatever it is I’m against it,’ Groucho Marx sang in the 1932 film Horse Feathers. Bill Shorten’s Labor Party is…

In springtime in our family, we always have the same old argument: where should we go on our summer holiday…

At the start of the year, a Facebook friend messaged me, telling me that she and a chum had been…

At last, there is light in the north. The long Scottish Tory winter has finally ended, giving way to the…

Since the election, Jeremy Corbyn has been parading himself as prime-minister-in-waiting. ‘Cancellation of President Trump’s State Visit is welcome,’ he…

 Paris While Theresa May flounders in a mess of her own making, Emmanuel Macron is striding out on to the…

Why do we do it? We really need to stop supporting the snake-oil industry. We know there is no such…

Readers of The Spectator will be familiar with the argument that climate change, like Britpop, ended in 1998. Raised on…

Had Theresa May won the election with the landslide she expected, she’d have fired several of the cabinet with her…

Nobody inside CCHQ was prepared for election night’s 10 p.m. exit poll. Lynton Crosby’s last text to me predicted that…

The lessons to be learned from the Conservatives’ poor showing in the election could fill more pages than the national…

Lucky Sir: The customer attempting to have a good time in a gloomy pub (cartoon 03/06/17) should consider himself lucky.…

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, spent the week confronting the consequences of the general election that she had called…

Take no notice of the resilience of the FTSE100 index, which, having reached record pre-election highs, shed barely 100 points…

The opposition wants to raze your house to the ground. No, bear with me. Analogy. They say they’ll pull it…

On the morning after the election I was drinking coffee with one of my heroes, Sir Roger Scruton. We talked…

‘Science,’ wrote Jules Verne, ‘is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because…

The Conservative party lost the general election, even if they are still in power (at time of writing). It was…

Before knowing the result of the election, I composed my Chairman’s message in the newsletter of the Rectory Society. In…

Citizens of New World nations – North and South America, Australia and New Zealand – invariably assume that anyone settling…

Wallace Stevens gave us ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’. The German scholar Ulrich Raulff, in this meaty book…

Olga Tokarczuk examines questions of travel in our increasingly interconnected and fast-moving world. The award-winning Polish writer channels her wanderlust…

In our age of elasticated leisurewear, ready meals and box sets on telly, it is exhilarating to read about people…

In 2006, after five decades, Shaun Greenhalgh lost his enthusiasm for the British Museum. From a very early age, he…

When he came to power Hitler had a dowser scour the Reich Chancellery for cancerous ‘death rays’. Before flying to…

‘The area’s isolation has given it a strong sense of community and independence,’ runs the Wikipedia entry on New Addington.…

In this magnificent book, Thomas Morris provides us with a thoughtful, engaging and rigorous account of how cardiac surgeons through…

I used to worry that I would never be a good writer because my childhood wasn’t interesting enough. I now…

After school last Wednesday, I watched my five-year-old daughter pop a dead cricket on to her tongue and proclaim it:…

One of the great challenges in life, writes Richard Ford in Between Them, ‘is to know our parents fully —…

There’s a moment in A Boy in Winter where a young Ukrainian policeman has to escort his town’s Jewish population…

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ That is the arresting opening line…

Is Evgeny Kissin, born in Moscow in 1971, the most famous concert pianist in the world? Probably not, if you…

The star of this film is the music, composed by Lorne Balfe. I really liked it, which was just as…

Late one afternoon, early in the year, I was walking through the Vatican Stanze with a small group of critics…

When techno first appeared amid the urban wasteland of mid-1980s Detroit, its futuristic sound palette was inspired by the whirring…

‘History is not the past,’ says the writer Hilary Mantel in the first of her Reith Lectures on Radio 4…

At one uncharacteristically low-key point in Sunday’s Poldark — back for a third series on BBC1 — Ross (Aidan Turner)…

The National Theatre could hardly resist Barber Shop Chronicles. The play shines a light on a disregarded ethnic community, black…

French supermarket cashiers won’t be hurried. Nor will their customers, many of whom seem caught out by a bill at…

Language is a weapon to do down others. ‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella disdainfully of Pip…

And so, as it must, the pilgrimage to find a local GP surgery begins. This is a great British tradition,…

I first met Nick Timothy in July 2015. He had just been appointed director of New Schools Network, the free…

In every respect bar one, those bloody Corbyn-supporting students have a much tougher time of it than I did, what…

How is it possible to be assigned four ‘away’ matches on the trot? Strange, but that’s how it was for…

The powerful tournament in Stavanger, Norway, draws to a close at the end of this week. World champion Magnus Carlsen…

White to play. This is a variation from Karjakin-Giri, Stavanger 2017. Can you spot White’s fine winning coup? Answers to…

In Competition No. 3002 you were invited to provide lyrics to the European anthem.   The anthem has as its…

The unclued lights, as well as KEITH, are Scottish place names. TARBERT was required at 28A, rather than LARBERT. First prize Una…

Q. Having retired, my husband is now an enthusiastic observer of the goldfinches, greenfinches and bullfinches in our garden. Their…

I have been thinking about the Dark Ages. This has nothing to do with Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. A…

I was busy explaining to a 23-year-old American girl by the name of Jennifer why the election result was not…