On 1 January last year the words of the national anthem were changed, purportedly to make them more inclusive. Instead…

The Covid lockdown has confined me to the house for long periods. My wife is downstairs working on a new…

Xi’s Omicron Olympics

From zero-Covid to zero-Djokovic

The West’s Covid strategy is crumbling

Stop patronising Aboriginal Australians

An outburst of truth-telling in Israel might be contagious

Chicken Little doctors at the AMA go off-piste

President Joe Biden’s presidency is not going well

Be careful what you wish for. Climate activists — including investment managers of other people’s money such as union-dominated superannuation…

Except Liberal MP Jason Falinski

In defence of hard cash

Is Richard Tice’s party a threat to the Tories?

What Norman Mailer’s ‘cancellation’ reveals

Germany’s curious alliance with Russia

I’ve been keeping a journal for nearly 60 years. There are piles of the damn things in archives and covered…

The BBC must ask itself if Nadine Dorries has a point

Even ministers doubt whether he can recover

The Red Wall is crumbling

Catherine Chicken is sickly. She has swollen up like a barrage balloon with an evil face and dinosaur feet. She…

Why was Politics For All shut down?

Home Sue Gray, Second Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, having been asked by Boris Johnson to look into accusations…

After my Unapologetic Diaries were published recently, I was apparently accused of offending several people. At a lavish Christmas lunch…

Covid-19 is in decline in Britain, with Omicron cases now falling as fast as they rose. The booster programme —…

Whatever the result of Sue Gray’s report on ‘gatherings’ in Downing Street, there is a political lesson to be learned:…

Stumped again Were England always so hopeless playing Australia at cricket? Since the first match in 1877 there have been…

Beyond the party Sir: Rod Liddle is spot-on in arguing that the attitudes revealed by ‘partygate’ extend to senior civil…

In May 2020, in the wake of the Barnard Castle story, Emily Maitlis delivered her famous Newsnight address to the…

Are you ready for ‘Operation Red Meat’? If not, then you should brace yourself. For it looks set to be…

What Keir Starmer should have said, but didn’t, was that he had indeed drunk some beer in a frowsy Labour…

I do not know anyone in the Sackler family. I wouldn’t even have heard of them were it not for…

We can’t blame American progressives for yearning to relive the civil rights movement. Those were heady days. Opposition to segregation…

‘Tell me we’re winning the media battle!’ I imagine Unilever boss Alan Jope barking at his team on Tuesday, following…

Never, never kill the dog. It’s rule one in the crime writer’s manual. Cats are bad enough, as I can…

‘The two most fascinating subjects in the universe are sex and the 18th century,’ declared the novelist Brigid Brophy when…

When Zorrie Underwood, the titular character in Laird Hunt’s deeply touching novel about an Indiana farm woman, is pregnant, a…

Madeleine Slade, born in 1892, was a typical upper-class Victorian daughter of empire: a childhood riding around her grand-father’s estate…

The extent of Walt Disney’s grasp of the natural world remains unclear. After the Austrian author Felix Salten sold the…

The rules of sex can kill. In 1844 an angry mob shot Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, for his…

Fedor Zan was 18, working on the river closing sluices, when, on a winter afternoon in 1942, he saw his…

Any student of Chinese will sympathise with the 17th-century Jesuit priest Fr Emeric Langlois de Chavagnac when he wrote: ‘One…

What is ‘immigrant food’? In America, the answer can be just about anything — from burritos to bibimbap to burgers.…

The Swiss writer Peter Stamm’s inscrutable, alienated outsiders make bizarre choices to escape stifling mundanity. Their discontent suggests malaise, something…

Edmund White’s new novel opens, somewhat improbably, in 2050. This imagined future, however, springs few surprises on the reader and…

Elaine Showalter celebrates the grit and wisdom of Elizabeth Hardwick

Any attempt to fictionalise the Gucci story runs into the same difficulties as Ridley Scott’s handsome and absorbing film, House…

Where do you see paintings by Ruskin Spear (1911–90)? In the salerooms mostly, because his work in public collections is…

Nabucco, said Giuseppe Verdi, ‘was born under a lucky star’. It was both his last throw of the dice and…

Any artist who has habitually written or performed in character — from David Bowie to Lady Gaga — eventually arrives…

It has taken me a while to watch Yellowjacketsbecause I found the premise so offputting: in 1996 a plane carrying…

Producers are getting jittery again. Large-scale shows look risky when a single infection can postpone an entire show. Hence Poirot…

After Artemis Fowl and Murder on the Orient Express you may have had concerns about Kenneth Branagh ever helming a…

Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain

I live by the sea and like walking along the coastline including scrambling over the rock ledges in Noosa National…

A letter writer to the Australian has pointed out that Anthony Albanese appears to have coined a brand-new oxymoron to…

Almost everyone has a set of ‘carding’ agreements with their partners to convey information when defending. But I’m always amazed…

White to play. Gelfand–Karjakin, Tal Memorial Blitz 2008. Gelfand’s pawn is pinned, and moving the king runs into more checks.…

Lardy cake has a branding problem. We don’t mind puddings or cakes which explicitly announce their richness or decadence —…

Gstaad According to a little bird, Boris has gone from brilliant to bawd, and according to me this village has…

Six unclued lights (all real words) are the names of 35/26 minus one letter. The missing letters match those that…

There is nothing like visiting a stud early in the foaling season. As amiable mums-to-be saunter up to the paddock…

‘Can I ask you why you don’t want a smart phone?’ said the chirpy manager, as I stood blinking in…

Sharon told me once that the best sex she’d ever had was with Tom in the town public conveniences, bathed…

‘Nurse! The tenaculum!’ exclaimed my husband in the manner of James Robertson Justice playing the surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt. I’m…

Thirteen years ago we shared an office building with a large international bank. A common lift connected both businesses to…

Here’s a challenge which appeared in a German chess magazine in 1848: place eight white queens on an empty chessboard…

The bleak midwinter. Actually, since I wallowed in curmudgeonly complaints about dreich days, everything has improved. Clear blue skies, pleasing…

In Competition No. 3232, you were invited to retell a news story from the past year in sonnet form. An…

The NATIVITY (89) of the ACTOR (37) HUMPHREY BOGART (47/13), the singers ANNIE LENNOX (112/12) and IAN BOSTRIDGE (4/61), the…

Q. A long-standing artist friend, whose work now commands high prices, has sent me out of the blue a present…

I got Covid a couple of weeks ago. Second time for me, which was annoying because I’d told Caroline that…