Forget about the ‘culture wars’. What Australia, and indeed the West, is now being subjected to, and in many ways…

Would Bill Shorten’s plan for government take Australia in the direction of East Germany, as Finance Senator Mathias Cormann has…

When I was a small boy growing up in England, the expression ‘ to have bats in the belfry’ was…

Deep in the bowels of the Australian Safe Schools Supporters (ASSS) headquarters, a planning session was taking place. All those…

Captain Cook and Lachlan Macquarie are being hunted down by didactic leftists. Last Friday one of these ‘correctors’ of history…

When the Nazi knifepoint was at Britain’s jugular in 1940 Winston Churchill told the nation that all it could look…

It was 18 years ago last weekend that then-PM John Howard moved a Motion of Reconciliation, including an expression of…

Last month Hong Kong celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its 1997 handover. In those far-off days many Hong Kongers felt…

The (thankfully) former president of the Australian Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs suggested recently that the same-sex marriage debate was…

The notion of a ‘Great Australian Silence’ about Australian history and the treatment of indigenous people might have been accurate…

Deep in the bowels of the Australian Safe Schools Supporters (ASSS) headquarters, a planning session was taking place. All those…

Oxbridge is an ivory-tower state of mind, perhaps, or at least two ancient rival universities, but how about this: in…

For the sound of his horn brought me from my bed/ And the cry of his hounds which he oft…

The numbers are awesome. In a matter of hours, Hurricane Harvey dumped nine trillion gallons of rainfall on Houston and…

 Laikipia, Kenya Following Kenya’s recently concluded elections, I took a walk on my Laikipia farm and lit up a cigar,…

The Saudi town of Awamiya — like so many countless cities across Iraq, Syria and Yemen that are witnessing an…

I am not surprised that the mother of a white Christian girl should be upset that her daughter was placed…

As a young sub-editor on the Times in 1926, Graham Greene, future author of The Quiet American and Brighton Rock,…

To begin with, Theresa May was not planning to take a three-week holiday — but she was subtly advised that,…

There is a growing perception that Britain is floundering in its EU negotiations, with a professional team from Brussels running…

What’s the question? Sir: Will the wording of the postal plebiscite be set to harvest a ‘Yes’ vote to distort…

Boris Johnson is inspecting the guard of honour and we are doing our best not to giggle. The Foreign Secretary…

Later this year, the Advertising Standards Authority will reveal to the world their list of rules designed to wipe out…

I first met Theresa May, or met her properly, way back in the last century. I’d been invited to speak…

In Houston last November I spent an evening at the city’s industrial-scale food bank, where I heard a presentation on…

The Red-haired Woman is shorter than Orhan Pamuk’s best-known novels, and is, in comparison, pared down, written with deliberate simplicity…

Iain Sinclair is leaving London — like the croakiest of the ravens taking flight from the Tower. It is a…

If you were to compare Mozart to a bird it wouldn’t be the starling. Possibly the wood thrush or nightingale,…

Patrick McGrath is a master of novels about post-traumatic fragmentation and dissolution, set amid gothic gloom. His childhood years spent…

Few publishing phenomena in recent years have been as gratifying as Chris Kraus’s cult 1997 masterpiece I Love Dick becoming…

If there were a prize awarded to the book with the best opening line, A. N. Wilson would be clearing…

The title of this book, By the Pen and What They Write, is a quotation from the Qur’an and comes…

Fantastic fiction loves contrasts made explicit: Eloi and Morlocks, orcs and elves, and above all humans battling vampires, Martians or…

‘I frankly hate Descartes,’ states a character in Nicole Krauss’s new novel, Forest Dark: ‘The more he talks about following…

Towards the end of his life, Robert Louis Stevenson travelled widely in the central and southern Pacific Ocean. As well…

Hidden behind Kensington Palace, in one of London’s smartest streets, there is a grand old house which played a leading…

If someone was to lob the name Antigone about, many of us would smile and nod while trying to remember…

Imagine yourself a middle-class person in England in the 1870s. You sit down to drink a cup of tea while…

Her shop was one of the glories of Rowe Street, itself one of the glories of old Sydney, before it…

Una is a psychological drama about a woman who was abused by a man when she was 12, and who…

Stand in front of ‘Fall’, a painting by Bridget Riley from 1963, and the world begins to quiver and dissolve.…

No, The State (Channel 4) wasn’t a recruiting manual for the Islamic State, though I did feel uneasy about it…

Against by Christopher Shinn sets out to unlock the secrets of America’s spiritual malaise. Two main settings represent the wealthy…

Three weeks before Classic FM launched, I was on the radio in Hong Kong, introducing hits by Rick Astley and…

He walked onto the seaside balcony like he was walking onto a yacht, to paraphrase Carly Simon. The only difference…

In Competition No. 3013 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of August.   There was…

Q. Our best friends own a house in Morocco which sleeps about ten. They rent it out but go two…

It’s like whipping cream. All of a sudden it goes stiff and you can turn the bowl upside down without…

The event was THE GLORIOUS TWELFTH (1D/29) (12 August, opening day of the grouse-shooting season). Remaining unclued lights bring to…

The 43rd World Bridge Championships held in Lyon has just ended after two intense weeks and hundreds of boards. The…

Hou Yifan, the leading female grandmaster, is beginning to place strain on Judit Polgar’s record as the best woman chess…

White to play. This position is a variation from Hari-krishna-Studer, Biel 2017. Can you spot White’s winning thrust? Answers to…

Clockwise round the grid run six of a kind (one of three words and one three-word pair). Other unclued lights…

J Sheekey is one of Richard Caring’s older, and better, restaurants. Since he has dowsed the suburbs of London in…

I was appalled. She had asked Lord John Somerset to ask me to join her, and I rose rather unsteadily…

I arrived for lunch a bit late and was led to the dining table. Our hostess disappeared back into the…

My friendly neighbourhood Lib Dems have put some campaign literature through my door. In a covering note, they intimate that…

In the rarefied circles of the sporting establishment a decision will soon be made affecting not just the future of…

I guess his mother may have called him Patrick, or even, when he was in trouble, ‘Patrick Joseph’, but in…

In Absolute Friends, one of John le Carré’s lesser works, the central character explains his rebirth as a left-wing firebrand,…