Just when the thirtieth consecutive Newspoll loss for the Turnbull government is looming, and it looks ‘Goodnight Irene’ for Malcolm…

Three Billboards outside Batman, Victoria It all started when I was driving home in the Tesla from a meeting of…

‘A woman preaching is like a dog walking on his hind legs,’ said Samuel Johnson, ‘It is not done well;…

The feminist revolution is already over. Men lost. International Women’s Day is a day when women of the chattering classes…

He died in 1900, but my great grandfather, Archibald Richardson, outback explorer and early Rockhampton pioneer, is even today spoken…

Washington is now the capital of a resurgent nation, rejecting the untenable proposition that she is in terminal decline, a…

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has again flagged his intention to deliver a national apology to the victims of institutional child…

Australia is not a racist country. Compared with much of the world, Australia is a paragon of virtue when it…

It’s no easy job keeping up with the 45th presidency. Events occur in a perpetual whirlwind. Presently, the shock of…

Hands up if you read Paul Kelly in last Saturday’s Australian? He was writing on the state of conservatism in…

It is a striking fact, but little acknowledged, that the Left in this country is largely funded by the taxpayer.…

Vladimir Putin’s spies have a dizzying variety of weapons at their disposal. This week Britain learned of a new one:…

I first met Sergey Nalobin in 2012 at Soho House. He introduced himself, in accented English, as from the Russian…

We are in a hotel suite at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Zurich when Stephen K. Bannon tells me he adores…

‘Good morning, my name’s Cowdrey.’ England batsman Colin, later Lord Cowdrey, to the Australian fast bowler Jeff Thomson. ‘That’s not…

The first book that Tomas Venclova read in English was Nineteen Eighty-Four. Not a bad start in the language, given…

‘I want to see Venice, and the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses.’ So wrote Lord Byron in 1814, some two years…

Whenever a Hollywood actress complains about some lecherous man, there’s blanket coverage. Even our MPs feel the need to tut.…

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told the Commons that the chemical that put in hospital Sergei Skripal, a Russian…

If I needed a safe space, I would nominate California. Against most odds this seedbed of censorious liberalism has thrown…

President Trump’s acceptance of talks about denuclearisation must have been as big a shock to Kim Jong-un as his offer was…

Growing our own Sir: Rod Liddle is clearly right that ‘the people of Europe do not want any more immigration…

Gimson’s Prime Ministers, out this week, is a crisp and stylish account of every one of them. I happened to…

The single most important domestic policy decision that the Conservatives must take is what to do about public spending. After…

Last time I was in South Africa I spent two weeks deep in the Karoo, that desiccated wasteland in the…

As I write, a great gale is blowing in from Lake Turkana. The dry hills on the other side, always…

Ever since Theresa May’s clarion address of the UK’s housing shortage (and how many successive PMs have embarked on the…

As ‘business lobby groups’ go, the Institute of Directors has always struck me as worthy but unexciting: a more authentic…

Sea Shepherd is a radical protest group made famous — or notorious — by the American cable TV series Whale…

‘And this is good old Boston/, The home of the bean and the cod,’ John Collins Bossidy quipped in 1910,…

On 25 April 2005, Jawed Karim sent an email to his friends announcing the launch of a new video site…

‘Dreaming spires’? Yes, but sometimes there are nightmares. Brian Martin, awarded the MBE for services to English literature, is at…

We all know that physics and maths can be pretty weird, but these three books tackle their mind-bending subjects in…

On the wall of her tumbledown house in central Baghdad, an elderly Christian widow named Elishva has a beloved icon…

Taste has a well-noted ability to evoke memory, so it is curious how infrequently most wine writers mine their pasts…

After three hot-water-bottle-warmed evenings of highly satisfying bedtime reading, I can confirm that, even in a world where Francis Spufford’s…

Operation Columba was one of the most secretive arms of British Intelligence during the second world war. Between April 1941…

Donald E. Westlake wrote crime books that were funny, light and intricate. Help I Am Being Held Prisoner (Hard Case…

It’s more than 160 years since the death of the computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage’s ‘enchantress of numbers’ and…

There is a culty YouTube video shot three years ago on the laptop camera of Ruben Ostlund. It shows the…

René Magritte was fond of jokes. There are several in René Magritte (Or: The Rule of Metaphor), a small but…

Babylon Berlin (Sky Atlantic), the epic German-made Euro noir detective drama set during Weimar, is so addictively brilliant that I’d…

Janacek is the master of the operatic title. Think of the slippery, sleight-of-hand emphasis of Jenufa in its original Czech…

‘Close your eyes and be absorbed by the storytelling,’ urged Jon Manel (the new head of podcasting at BBC World…

The Best Man by Gore Vidal is set during a fictional American election in 1960. Two gifted candidates seek their…

Blue Gadoo is one of those cats whose face looks like it’s been bashed flat with a wok. He lives…

This biopic of Mary Magdalene is a feminist retelling that may well be deserved but it’s so dreary and unremarkable…

The things we collect can say a great deal about us; so can the way we disperse a collection. The…

Gstaad I never made it to Zurich but met up with Steve Bannon through the miracle of technology, thanks to…

The flight from Gatwick to France was cancelled and there was no prospect of another for three days. Paddington station…

We live in a cynical world. One cannot simply advertise something for sale and expect people to believe what one…

In the days when it was fashionable to mock the IQ of an American President who had taken the showbiz…

Little did I know, when I was railing at how Britain comes to a standstill at the first flurry of…

The three most important events in the World Chess Federation calendar are the World Championship match, the Olympiad and the…

White to play. This position is from Kramnik-Andreikin, Tal Memorial 2018. White now finished off quickly. What did he play?…

In Competition No. 3039, which was inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s phenomenally successful memoir Eat, Pray, Love, you were invited to…

The unclued lights, (two of two words), individually or as a pair, are of a kind and can be resolved…

The unclued lights are LETTERS in alphabetical order which, when rearranged, give the names of eight CAPITAL cities.  First prize Lucy…

Last Saturday was shaping up to be one of the best days of my life. Freddie, my ten-year-old son, had…

The maximum amount you can save in an ISA for the tax year 2017-2018 is now £20,000. The maximum annual…

Q. How does one avoid power handshakes? Twenty-five years of wicket-keeping have left me with pathetically fragile knuckles, and each…

The Rhône is a strong river. The Loire derives graciousness from its châteaux. The Rhine and the Thames have been…