Talkfests are rarely inspiring but the G7 summit last weekend was the final straw. Irritating, unmasked leaders tottered around the…

First rate scholars set the record straight on Indigenous history

Social media threatens the ruling classes

Aside from Covid, it’s a government of mushy lefties

The press is becoming unfree

Xi’s subjects are in danger of getting old before they get rich

The ABC of Aboriginal child delinquency

Even arch critics like Niki Savva recognise his great skill

Highly credentialled whiste-blowers sound a warning

Four words that became four-letter words

Now they blame Trump

Boris and Biden have placed their faith in the power of big government

What politicians’ paintings say about them

The fraudulent business of recycling

Andy Haldane on the true cost of cheap money

Covid or no Covid, we’re all going to snuff it

Bitterns are booming, both literally and metaphorically. These handsome brown birds from the heron family make a noise quite unlike…

The tech industry is braced for the post-pandemic blues

Where did it all go wrong for the Sun?

Home The lifting of coronavirus restrictions was delayed from 21 June until 19 July, probably. The motive was to avoid…

If Britain had been unable to agree a trade deal with Australia, then Brexit really would have been pointless. The…

A new prescription Sir: It is maddening to see the British people being refused face-to-face GP appointments and subjected to…

I’ve worked for some media thoroughbreds — including the Financial Times, ITN and CNN — so I know the sense…

The mob is at work again in Oxford, protesting against the existence of Oriel’s statue of Cecil Rhodes. But this…

On this day Would 19 July make a suitable ‘freedom day’ (assuming Covid restrictions are lifted even then)? There is…

If it is true, as Lords Hall and Birt told a Commons committee this week, that Martin Bashir succeeded in…

Boris Johnson’s predecessor was destroyed by her inability to meet deadlines. Theresa May extended the Brexit transition period so many…

By the side of the road from Sudbury in Derbyshire to Ashbourne, there is a lone eucalyptus tree. This is…

The snatching of a 12 per cent stake in BT by French entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, last seen here when he…

During the political car crash of 2019, I couldn’t imagine ever agreeing with Theresa May. Yet last week she exhibited…

A couple of decades back the Radio Society asked me to moderate a debate for its summer festival. ‘Between who?’…

The image of the birch tree in popular Russian culture is as manifold as the trees themselves, but we could…

Along with coral reefs and their fish, tropical butterflies and birds of paradise, hummingbirds must be among the most beautiful…

Wyl Menmuir’s first novel, The Many, was a surprise inclusion on the 2016 Booker Prize longlist. It drew praise for…

Almost any promising writer of spy fiction can expect at some point to be called the ‘next Le Carré’, an…

Cricket in Latin America sounds like an oxymoron. Yet in almost every country in the region willow was hitting leather…

Adam Sisman describes the toxic atmosphere in Berlin after the end of the second world war

Ethel Rosenberg was an exceptional woman. Born with a painful curvature of the spine to a poor family of Jewish…

Before Billy Wilder became the celebrated director of films such as Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment…

National Treasure is a remarkable piece of TV drama, and it looks for a long, bewildering moment like a masterpiece.…

Two weeks ago, a fire broke out at the Universal Studios in Hollywood, 13 years to the day after another…

In The Heights is an adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash-hit stage musical — the one he wrote before Hamilton —…

Richard Bratby talks to one of Britain’s most successful impresarios about his promoter’s nose, Arts Council spinelessness and ENO madness

Godot Is a Woman opens with three tramps standing on a bare stage beneath a solitary upright. This isn’t Samuel…

When Trojan Records attempted to break into the United States music market in the early 1970s, it hit an insurmountable…

Now that all of the billionaires are going into space, the night sky holds a special new kind of allure.…

Amid the greatly exaggerated reports of the death of painting issued and reissued over the course of the past century,…

Let me start with a spot of admin: if you’re wondering what The Speccie makes of GB News, it’ll be…

One of the advantages of being an internet sensation is that it greatly reduces the likelihood of you being eaten.…

The settlement of Christian Porter’s defamation action against the ABC produced the predictable sneering responses from the activists at the…

Where do you want to go? China or India? I have always found India infinitely more fascinating — for a…

The unclued lights (including the pair at 24/28) are CHEESES. First prize Rhidian Llewellyn, London SW14 Runners-up H. Sarson, Guernsey,…

I’ve just written an essay for the People’s Lockdown Inquiry, a new collaboration between Buckingham University, the Institute of Ideas…

The 12 unclued lights (one of two words) are somehow paired and one solution in each pair is of a…

It is hard to decide which is more depressing, the extension of the lockdown or the public support for this…

Q. Last night I went to dinner with people I had never met before. Because the host was a friend…

In Competition No. 3203, you were invited to supply an extract from the newly discovered Shakespeare play Charles III. I…

Mammadzada — M. Muzychuk, May 2021. In this messy position, Black’s next move prompted instant resignation. What did she play?…

Seeing my husband in his armchair snoozing, as his unacknowledged habit is, head back, mouth open, stertorous and blotchy, it…

January normally brings cheerful photos from the Gibraltar Chess Festival, where visiting chess-players get an impromptu snap with the Barbary…

A second week recovering in bed in this pleasant south-facing bedroom. If I sit up, my back resting against whitewashed…

Immense excitement in the relatively tiny world of bridge — the English Bridge Union has announced that the Premier League…

While we were looking forward to Freedom Day, the National Health Service was busy planning something extra special to coincide…

New York I haven’t felt such shirt-dripping, mind-clogging wet heat since Saigon back in 1971. The Bagel is a steam…