One of the mistakes that plagued Tony Abbott during his period as Prime Minister was his stubborn commitment to the…

After such a long hot summer it is oddly refreshing to be back in Canberra for the start of the…

The Trump presidency is less than 48 hours old as I wing my way from Los Angeles to Washington DC,…

Conservatism is the new Punk The other day, I logged onto eBay and ordered a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat.…

First, an apology. In my cover story last week (‘The Cory revolution’) I implied that Miranda Devine supported the Turnbull…

The best chance of sound and honest government returning to Australia will be the emergence of, if not a grand…

On February 8, the Australian published a full page advertisement paid for by 72 organisations calling for the evacuation of…

President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats in the United States are about to engage in political warfare about who will…

Last time around they managed to put her in gaol. Now they are rolling out the red carpet. Pauline Hanson…

The hot days of summer inspire two impulses, a good clean up, curiously called a spring clean, and the desire…

Bob Hawke is a respected former Labor PM, but in a recent article in the AFR he incorrectly elevated Israeli…

Why will people simply not believe you when you tell them that you don’t want to dance? Their reactions mimic…

Whatever calamitous infelicities David Beckham did or did not email to his publicist, few will doubt that he has lived…

Arguably the cruellest thing you can do to human beings is to rob them of faith in their own sanity.…

The girl who posed for Auguste Rodin’s figure of Eve on the ‘Gates of Hell’ was, the sculptor said, a…

Twenty years ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world. Now it is one of the poorest.…

Ask any publisher of popular non–fiction anywhere in the world which book they would most like to sign, and it…

RIP the Bullingdon Club, 1780–2017. It isn’t quite dead — but it is down to its last two members. That’s…

These are the last days of the ‘caliphate’. The place Isis made their capital, Raqqa, in Syria, is encircled and…

When I was little I owned a set of pencils that had my name engraved on them. I didn’t have…

Many are still questioning the enthusiasm with which newspapers have implicated Archbishop Justin Welby, as a young man, in the…

Special forces Cathedral constables at York Minister got back their powers of arrest, which they had held from the 13th…

I’m boning up on conversational Spanish for a trip to the Primera Persona festival in Barcelona with Alexei Sayle. We’re…

From ‘The confiscation of enemy property’, The Spectator, 17 February 1917: It is perfectly possible to remove German influences without…

Living room Sir: Sajid Javid is quoted as saying that the biggest constraint on building more houses is the ‘lack…

Home The Queen opened a new National Cyber Security Centre in London. Britain’s contribution to Nato has fallen below the…

Just as it seems that Labour has reached the bottom of the abyss, Jeremy Corbyn and his party somehow manage…

One of the striking features of Britain’s unwritten constitution is how it relies on various people keeping their opinions to…

How does Vladimir Putin think about the world? It becomes dangerously important to know. I still have not seen a…

Many thanks to the stampede of readers who sent news of bank branch closures. There’s certainly a national pattern, and…

I’ve always sensed a whiff of sadness in Florida, perhaps because so many people go there to die. Although not…

James Duddridge is not wrong. The Tory MP for Rochford and Southend East, who has put down a ‘no confidence’…

Somewhere between his first and second drafts, Victor Hugo decided to change the title of his great novel from Les…

The dust cover features one of the best-known caricatures of Richard Wagner, his enormous head in this version opened like…

What the secretary sawSarah Churchwell Big Bosses: A Working Girl’s Memoir of the Jazz Age by Althea McDowell AltemusUniversity of…

On 21 December 1945, Ezra Pound was confined to St Elizabeths hospital in Washington DC. He had broadcast for Rome…

‘A tricky part of my job,’ the GP said, scrolling through the next patient’s notes, ‘is breaking good news.’ As…

Oddly enough, one of the most historically influential pieces of British writing has turned out to be an essay that…

A feeble king and his scheming minister, a hunchback noble and the Daughters of Repentance, a botched assassination and a…

This is an extraordinarily compelling novel for one in which nothing really happens but everything changes. Sara Baume’s narrator is…

Ayelet Waldman is, surely, not the first writer to have scrolled through a list of ‘Books of the Year’ and…

James Lasdun’s latest novel, billed as a psychological thriller, opens in Brooklyn in the summer of 2012. Charlie and his…

In the introduction to his new book Steven Johnson starts out by describing the ninth-century Book of Ingenious Devices and…

‘Eppur si muove’ — And yet it moves. Galileo’s defiant insistence that the Earth revolves round the Sun, his refusal…

Moonlight is, in fact, a traditional story about identity, and finding out who you are, but it has rarely been…

Vladimir Putin notoriously declared the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 to be one of the greatest disasters of…

The story so far: in 1986 English National Opera hired Jonathan Miller to direct Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. The…

The Indian Prime Minister has twigged something that President Trump has yet to understand. On Monday, celebrated as World Radio…

Recently on holiday I did a very bad thing. I nearly left the Fawn to die on a precipitous mountain…

Sandi Toksvig’s new play opens in a Gravesend care home where five grannies and a temporary nurse are threatened by…

Make sure you are in Melbourne between late April and early July to see the important Van Gogh exhibition coming…

What can be more regrettable than picking up a huge hand and landing in the wrong contract?   It happened…

The cause célèbre at the Tradewise tournament in Gibraltar, which finished earlier this month, was the extraordinary protest by Hou…

White to play. This position is a variation from Hou Yifan-Ju, Gibraltar 2017. Hou lost this game to her compatriot.…

In Competition No. 2985 you were invited to provide a poetic preview of the day Article 50 is triggered.  …

Each of nine clues contains a misprinted letter in the definition part. Corrections of misprints spell a two-word phrase. Clues…

Perimeter words are names of the most recent GEOLOGICAL PERIODS.  First prize J.P Green, Uppingham, RutlandRunners-up Paul Jenkinson, Zollikon, Switzerland;…

Q. My husband and I like to go to concerts and recitals but he is an artist with a very…

Ralph’s Coffee & Bar is in the Polo Ralph Lauren flagship store on Regent Street. It is rare that fashion…

Gstaad One’s unpopularity on account of calling it a night diminishes in direct proportion to the severity of the next…

A deep frost in the winter of 1821–22 killed the orange trees in Nice. The Anglican minister to the English…

‘It is rocket science,’ said my husband waving a pinnately lobed leaf snatched from his restaurant salad. He doesn’t much…

Fine, so I got it completely wrong. It turns out the sale of my flat was not held up by…

Perfection in sport: unattainable, but sometimes you can come close. Moments, people, actions you never tire of watching: Roger Federer’s…

I was astonished to discover in conversation with another dad last week that he and his wife intended to introduce…

The drumbeats are quickening ahead of the Cheltenham Festival and at this stage there really is no substitute for going…