There is only one way for Australians to show their contempt for the stifling political correctness and bullying left-wing activism…

The tentacles of The Spectator Australia Investigative Journalism Unit extend far beyond its heavily fortified premises in Canberra. For example,…

Memo to Republicans: Australia is not a colony The fundamental difference between Australia as a ‘colony’ and every other colony…

The critically acclaimed Darkest Hour brings the number of films about Winston Churchill released in the last decade to six,…

Ever willing to challenge nanny staters, just before Christmas I travelled to Bangkok to advise regional consumer organisations on coordinating…

G. K. Chesterton wrote in The Everlasting Man that Christianity has died many times but always somehow – miraculously –…

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa – how much longer does the breast-beating have to go on? The Royal…

If, like me, you are a small government, strong borders and national defence, lots of free speech and as little…

The Sydney Morning Herald recently announced that the NSW Education Minister, Rob Stokes, is considering opening up the selective schools…

Drive-by media’s bias against Trump The reporting of the 2016 presidential election can hardly be celebrated as the media’s finest…

Has an albatross ever wielded so much influence? The bewildered chick who regurgitated a plastic bag in front of Sir…

Last year, more than 15,000 communists gathered in the Russian seaside town of Sochi for a week-long commemoration of the…

Last week, Peregbakumo Oyawerikumo, aka ‘The Master’, was finally caught and shot by the Nigerian army. Oyawerikumo and his Egbesu…

With my friend Maurice, I have long frequented the Ironmonger Row baths behind Moorfields Eye Hospital. As married men, we…

Last Sunday night a capacity crowd of mainly young people packed into the Emmanuel Centre in London. Those who couldn’t…

The furore over the parole granted to John Worboys, the rapist taxi driver, misses the point entirely — that the…

Holy smoke! The sleepy old Church of England is a greedy, money-grubbing property tycoon. This month, it emerged that since…

When we arrived, we discovered that our villa had a padel court. Few of us had seen one before and…

For Jeremy Corbyn and his allies, there has been no far-left takeover of the Labour party or its governing National…

Home Carillion, the construction and service-provider with 20,000 employees and many contracts for the public sector, went into liquidation with…

My friend John Humphrys has managed to get on to the front pages again. We first met in the 1980s…

From ‘The Bolshevik negotiations with Germany’, 19 January 1918: We think that the fact is fairly emerging from the negotiations…

Big losers Construction company Carillion collapsed with debts of £1.5 billion. How does that compare with other UK corporate failures?Overend…

Advertisements encouraging men and women to join the army emphasise that their religious beliefs, sexual orientation and emotional needs will…

Dark ages revisited? Sir: The latest, frenzied, hysterical and vitriolic attack on President Trump by the media, over his “alleged”…

The BBC programme The Coronation, on Sunday evening, was extremely interesting, principally, of course, because of the Queen’s appearance on…

Tuition fees have all but killed the Liberal Democrats. The breach of their manifesto pledge to abolish the charges, compounded…

‘I just want to say one word to you, just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.’ That iconic punch line…

I hope you are enjoying the BBC drama series Hard Sun. It is described as pre-apocalyptic science fiction, set in…

It must be about 25 years since the Rat first made an appearance in The Spectator. He started out as…

Carillion is a disaster on all fronts, but my sympathies go first to the fallen contracting giant’s sub–contractors. Upwards of…

‘Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are.’ The best known adage in food literature,…

Eton turns out prime ministers of various stripes and patches, but it also forges fine explorers. It seems to prepare…

‘People live in the space between the realities of their lives and the hopes they have for them,’ muses the…

I thought I knew the history of the years 1914 to 1945: the first world war and the terrible casualties…

There are few more seductive figures for biographers than Mary Shelley. The daughter of the radical philosopher and novelist William…

This book is a thoroughly researched account of the parts played by women in the service of the Royal Navy…

The title of Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go Went Gone, and the autumnal tone of its beginning — a classics professor retires,…

2017 was of course the year of Ferrari, as one of the most recognised luxury brands on the planet celebrated…

I once knew a great conductor who claimed that he never boarded a plane to a new orchestra without a…

Has a more beautiful machine in all of mankind’s fretful material endeavours ever been made than a ’60 Ferrari 250…

On paper and on air, there’s nothing to suggest that the Radio 4 series Across the Red Line will have…

A pattern emerges. A hot American playwright, dripping with prestigious awards, is honoured in London with a transfer of their…

It’s a terrible thing for a TV critic to admit but I just don’t know what to make of Britannia,…

Spoiler alert: the final image of John Fulljames’s production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses at the Roundhouse is haunting.…

Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which dramatizes the Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, doesn’t exactly push at…

The link between music and painting is not a direct one. The aural and visual impacts of the two art…

I spent the better part of two sunny days indoors writing about authenticity for a Greek magazine, a strange subject…

In France, or in Provence at least, polite rule number one is to say hello. You must offer a distinct…

A vet has accused me of a ‘hate crime’ for making a joke about vets. On the basis that everything…

I have never been one for system betting but one little piece of guidance returns to my mind at the…

The first home tournament of 2018 was last week’s four-day European Open Trials. Ten selected pairs played 216 boards at…

‘Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,’ wrote Alexander Pope about Atticus. Those lines more or less describe the…

White to play. This position is from O. Howell-Pickersgill, Hastings 2017/18. White now terminated proceedings abruptly. What was the key move?…

In Competition No. 3031 you were invited to provide a review by a restaurant critic that is tediously loaded with…

Two unclued lights are terms for the same style. One, consisting of two words, forms a cryptic indication of each…

A beastly business The quote is 1A/92/18D from the poem ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’. The theme was the names…

Readers may recall that the Young family welcomed a new addition to the household about two years ago: a Hungarian…

Recently the NHS postponed a large number of non-urgent operations to cope with what is known as the ‘annual winter…

Q. I will be 80 in March and all my friends will expect to be asked to the celebration. My…

We were pondering the relationship between military history and wine vintages. It is extraordinary to think that the French managed…

In Polite Conversation, Jonathan Swift presents dialogues made up of clichés, banalities and catchphrases. When Miss Notable makes a remark…