As Robert Gates, former defense secretary in the Obama administration, once put it, Biden has ‘been wrong on nearly every…

Trying to be original about the disaster in Afghanistan is very difficult. It truly was appalling. First, what a tragedy…

The soft underbelly of Australian multiculturalism At the height of the troubles of the Whitlam government its Resources Minister Rex…

Those who voted down Christensen may well come to regret it

Just how scared should we really be?

The EU’s green tariffs are aimed at the Asia/Pacific

It’s a code red warning on climate change

Why are we censoring scientific opinions?

Send the bill to Beijing for the Wuhan flu

A cabal of dictators is running the country

How the West lost Afghanistan

What happens to a family when a parent disappears?

The West’s war in Afghanistan was always doomed

Don’t blame climate change for the British weather

Hidden below St George’s Wharf in Vauxhall, down the road from a now defunct gay sauna, is Floatworks, a wellness…

China’s Covid policy can’t last

How corporations rebrand poverty

Why I’ve gone back to city life

Central Asian geopolitics have been transformed

The younger Taliban are ambitious – and more brutal than ever

Zero balance Sir: James Kirkup (‘In defence of net zero’, 14 August) highlights the falling cost of solar and wind…

At the start of this year, Britain looked as if it would be the first major country to vaccinate its…

   Kabul I’ve been to the front line in Iraq, Syria and Libya and witnessed all kinds of crazy, unlikely…

Home Parliament was recalled after the rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, returned from…

Oxfam is arguing that if all billionaires forked out 99 per cent of their profits made during the Covid pandemic,…

Student takeover Where did the Taliban come from? — The word ‘Taliban’ means simply ‘students’ in Pashtun. They were originally…

Q. Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable? The President: No, it is not. Q. Why? The President: Because…

Give or take a few leader-writing shifts and editing projects, I’ve been working from home for the past 30 years,…

I have the feeling that Joe Biden will have to wait a while before he receives his Nobel Peace Prize,…

When was the only time America’s left-liberal media gave President Trump any real credit? The answer is 7 April 2017,…

One of the most interesting aspects of President Biden’s speech on the American withdrawal from Afghanistan is that it shows…

It’s fashionable to talk about periods. Books on the subject, with glossy red and pink covers, are bestsellers. They have…

If this is a cautious and circumspect novel, it’s because it involves a cautious and circumspect job: that of interpreter.…

In Traitor King, Andrew Lownie shows how the Duke of Windsor — the former Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936…

Sports history, writes Wray Vamplew, is sometimes ‘sentimental, reactionary and built on the implicit assumption that the sporting past was…

In 1928, a modest young lecturer from Wilwaukee, Mildred Harnack, née Fish, arrived in Berlin to begin her PhD in…

The Sins of G.K. Chesterton demands our attention because, as Richard Ingrams notes in his introduction, the literature on this…

The word ‘hoax’ did not catch on till the early 19th century. Before that one spoke of a hum, a…

On watching transplant surgery, I can give prosaic but essential advice: have a good breakfast. Each operation can last 12…

Diplomatic negotiations are rarely fully described by their participants in books, for two reasons. They are usually secret until much…

Like a basking shark, Val McDermid once remarked, a crime series needs to keep moving or die. The same could…

Why did W.G. Sebald risk his reputation by telling such strange, repeated lies, wonders Lucasta Miller

Entertainment in a public place shrivels as the lockdowns continue. The Australian Ballet has cancelled its Melbourne season, Anna Karenina…

The interview podcast is a genre immoderately drawn to gimmicks, as the logical space of possible formats is gradually exhausted.…

There are many examples of beautiful old buildings being knocked down in favour of undistinguished new ones. But not everything can be preserved in aspic, says Martin Gayford

Glyndebourne is nothing if not honest. ‘In response to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions our 2021 performances of Tristan und Isolde…

When the apocalypse comes, I want it to be scripted by a 1970s screenwriter. That’s my conclusion after watching the…

The new music economy relies on cross-promotion and artists reaching out to different scenes. And the rise of streaming means…

What use does a fallen and corrupted world have for a man of integrity? This was not the question I…

The National Theatre has given Sophocles’s Philoctetes a makeover and a new title, Paradise. This must be ironic because the…

One recent golden morning, as I struggled to corral my customarily disordered senses into working order, I was suddenly hit…

‘LGAs’. Since when did this ugly piece of bureaucratic jargon become part of everyday English? Because the bureaucrats keep rattling…

White to play and draw. The conclusion of an endgame study composed by J. Hašek (1951). Black is preparing a…

‘Exchange chess’ (also known as bughouse) is the chess equivalent of a three-legged race. It is played in teams of…

The unclued lights, two of two words and the others as four pairs, are of a kind.   Across 6…

Taking a day off racing to enjoy Joe Root’s regal 180 not out against India on the third day of…

 Gstaad It seems to be open season on the royals, starting with Prince Andrew and the charges against him by…

My two grandsons are staying with us here in Provence for a week. Roman soldier Catriona flew from Marseille to…

If it’s true that the virus finds your weak spot, it has lodged itself like an evil monkey in my…

Live bridge is back. It kicked off two weekends ago with Eastbourne’s Swiss Pairs. I went with my friend Ollie…

In Competition No. 3212 you were invited to provide a spiel that a well-known character from the field of fact…

The unclued lights are the eleven England footballers who LINED UP at the kick-off of the Euro FINAL on 11…

George Orwell would not have been surprised by the brouhaha surrounding Kate Clanchy. Two years ago, Clanchy published Some Kids…

Browns is a famous fashion boutique in deepest Mayfair. It occupies a curved cream townhouse on Brook Street, which seems…

Q. We have two very longstanding and generous-hearted (female) friends. Both have always been overweight, but since Covid they have…

‘Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green…

‘What do they mean, “Guess”?’ asked my husband, staring suspiciously at a page of the Daily Mail that had been…