‘I feel a bit like a dog returning to eat its own vomit,’ explained Victoria’s Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius, to…

Say what you want to about them, but I like pandemics. I particularly like Covid-19. Sort of. What I mean…

The nightmare of trying to compare Covid strategies

There is a reason so many Victorians support their loss of freedoms

Free societies do not need a state-owned broadcaster

It’s the modelling, stupid

The rebellious larrikin spirit disappeared long ago in Victoria

Rio Tinto’s ‘cave-in’: a major boost to shareholder activism A triumph of shareholder activism in a good cause – or…

The Covid saga is a Grimm tale

It’s 45 years since the Thrilla in Manila

Lockdowns are based on a monumental error

How many Covid deaths took place in institutions that were known to be unsafe?

He deserves credit for his foreign policy successes

Irrespective of whether Donald Trump ends up being a two-term president, surely no modern political figure has done more to…

Why the Japanese love face masks

Boris Johnson needs to find his purpose again

How I gave up an unnecessary habit

Sweden’s crime problem is out of control

It’s been an awful year for village fairs

Information overload The government’s plan to put ‘Covid wardens’ on the streets to enforce the new rule against more than…

China’s covered Sir: If Charles Moore had contacted the BBC, rather than conducting a fruitless Google search, we would have…

Pursuing last week’s theme, this week’s column raises the question: if there is no such thing as ‘race’ — since…

Home At one minute past midnight on Monday, new laws came into force prohibiting households in England increasing their numbers…

On the face of it, there could scarcely be better conditions for a revival of the Labour party. Even before…

I moved to this country from the USA 30 years ago and this year I’ve finally understood why: it was…

The government is bracing itself for a second wave of coronavirus. Everyone knew the autumn and winter would be more…

I had my first doubts about Lord Hall, the former director-general of the BBC, when he addressed a group of…

Readers may recall a column last month that laid out powerful evidence for the proposition that the ethnic and racial…

A small cheer for Liz Truss’s treaty with Japan. It is, says the official press release, ‘the UK’s first major…

Last week we broadcast my BBC radio Great Lives episode on Kenneth Williams. The effervescent comedian and presenter Tom Allen…

One of the most extraordinary features of the ‘cancel culture’ is how well it works. All decent people hate it,…

Ian Thomson describes Ravenna’s golden age, when classical Rome, Byzantium and Christianity met

I have a book of essays from 1986 by a group of British and American scholars called The Special Relationship.…

Susanna Clarke is a member of the elite group of authors who don’t write enough. In 2004, the bestselling debut…

One day a baby bird falls from its nest into an oily scrapyard in Bermondsey, south London and seems unlikely…

The line between obsession and addiction is as thin as rolling paper. Neither are simple and both stem from absence,…

This book made me almost weep with nostalgia, but heaven knows what today’s snowflakes will make of it. Fleet Street…

The British romance with Germany has always been an on-off affair. At the turn of the century, Kaiser Bill enjoyed…

It was sad the other day to hear of the passing of that scintillating lady of stage and screen Diana…

The world became aware of Sheku Kanneh-Mason when he played the cello at the wedding of Harry and Meghan Sussex…

The Last Night of the Proms came and went, and it was pretty much as anyone might have predicted, if…

Covid marshals have invaded theatreland. Arriving for a weekday matinee at the Bridge, I was greeted by stewards holding up…

‘Art is dead,’ declared Mark Steyn recently. He was referring to the new rules — copied from the Baftas —…

Grade: B– Of all the various subdivisions in that wheezing and crippled phenomenon that we call rock music, prog has…

Mervyn Peake’s unsettling illustrations reveal a gentle, kindly man with the soul of a pirate, says Daisy Dunn

The hand is one of the first images to appear in art. There are handprints on the walls of caves…

Listening to the tacky and incomprehensible audio-adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel seriesSandman, I couldn’t stop thinking about the 19th-century…

Cuties is the subject of a moral panic and a hashtag #CancelNetflix. It tells the story of Amy (Fathia Youssouf),…

Simon Collins ‘That’s 6 in a row. #Melbourne is, once again, the world’s most liveable city!’ So tweeted a proud…

About 15 years ago I noticed a few surviving chattel houses in Barbados and wondered what they were. As it…

Q. Almost a year ago I attended the funeral of my godfather — a bachelor and distant relation whom I…

Nothing courts us so nimbly as technology. Perhaps the chess computers have already won you over — I am dazzled…

Black to play. Jones–McShane, London Chess Classic 2019. Last year I played two games of no-castling chess with Gawain Jones,…

In Competition No. 3166 you were invited to supply a poem either celebrating or lamenting the cancellation of Philadelphia’s annual…

Unclued lights are ten words taken from a poem quoted in ODQ. The poet’s name (two words) will appear diagonally…

The perimeter quotation is from Mahler. Remaining unclued lights were names of symphonies: 12A Mahler / Schubert; 26A Haydn; 39A…

Every time I get on a horse I have to face the likelihood that a dog, or pack of dogs,…

Gstaad   I’m not usually nonplussed, but this is very strange: the memoir of Barbara Black, the wife of my…

My friend Ollie Burgess has just made the bold move of quitting his job in Manchester, and moving to London…

Hairpin bends in a stony forest. Downhill. Steep, then steeper. Smooth frictionless tarmac. I’ve got the car barely under control.…

Three bottles, three questions that delivered three different answers. I was in Dorset — cannot keep away — enjoying the…

A friend emailed me earlier this week in despair about the Prime Minister. ‘Boris reminds me of a hereditary king…

It is all, it seems, in the tweaks. So said Aidan O’Brien, Ireland’s master-trainer supreme, before his tough filly Magical…

My husband may not often be right, but he had some cogent criticism of the much-quoted words of Geoffrey Howe…