Like some demented looney tunes character, our glorious Race Discrimination Commissioner Dr Tim Soutphommasane has opened a free speech Pandora’s…

Brandis is right, gleeson is wrong Normally, I would not get involved in disputes concerning politicians, as they should be…

The Aboriginal industry rewards its own Two former federal ministers have recently spoken on Aboriginal affairs. One has given a…

Bob Dylan won this year’s Nobel Prize, ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.’ Which…

YHBT. YHL. HAND. This abbreviation stands for ‘YOU HAVE BEEN TROLLED. YOU HAVE LOST. HAVE A NICE DAY’. It’s the…

To hear some of my co-religionists on the matter, you would think that same-sex marriage is the greatest threat to…

The biggest recent shock for the West’s metropolitan elites, and for the pundits that help form their worldview, was the…

Business and Politics don’t mix? They do if you’re a professional lobbyist who is also a Liberal Party factional leader…

Mr Shorten says he’s opposed to the very same gay marriage plebiscite he’d previously demanded. One reason is cost. So…

West Papuans deserve the chance to vote to leave Indonesia

Oh dear. Mark Carney is irritated. His proud independence has been challenged. The Prime Minister had the temerity to admit…

A typical Kentish town, with its grammar school at one end and its secondary school at the other, is a…

Forget killer clowns. Halloween was once a very different affair from the Americanised gorefest it is now. In its-original Irish…

Global greening is the name given to a gradual, but large, increase in green vegetation on the planet over the…

Tokyo is visual chaos everywhere, the antithesis of the Japanese interior. It is a multilevel jumble of overpasses, neon signs,…

The British are notoriously cheap when it comes to wine; the average bottle price is around £6. On one wine,…

Oh dear. Mark Carney is irritated. His proud independence has been challenged. The Prime Minister had the temerity to admit…

The week began badly when I spotted three grey squirrels gathering beechnuts in our arboretum. During our time at our…

In writing an article that argued both for and against the European Union, Boris Johnson was following a solidly classical…

Russia’s war crimes Sir: In his article ‘Vanity Bombing’ (15 October), Simon Jenkins quivers with contempt at MPs digging ‘deep into…

From ‘A Royal contribution’, The Spectator, 7 October 1916: His Majesty has passed through troublous times, in the constitutional controversy, in…

Home Steven Woolfe, the MEP who spent three days in hospital after an altercation at a Ukip meeting, said he…

The Islamic State’s pretence to nationhood was based on the holding of territory. With the battle for Mosul this week,…

Ape escapes A gorilla got out of its enclosure at London Zoo and entered a keepers’ area, prompting an evacuation…

I have been wondering these last few weeks whether it would be cheaper to excavate a basement and buy a…

Even by the accelerated standards of modern politics, this is fast. Three months after the Chancellor was appointed, the Treasury…

Vote Leave was the most successful electoral campaign in British history. Against the opposition of all three political parties, it…

On Tower Hill, by the east wall of Beauchamp Tower where Robert Dudley was imprisoned for a year, a raven…

I wrote last month that a key test of Brexit success will be whether Nissan is still making cars here…

A few columns ago, I told the mortifying story of how I totally died at the Oxford Union. Today I’m…

One of the charms and shortcomings of biography is that it makes perfectly normal situations sound extraordinary. According to Michel…

There’s a glorious scene in Astrid Lindgren’s first Pippi Longstocking book in which her fearless, freckled heroine strides to the…

Shades of The Master and Margarita haunt Rabih Alameddine’s sixth book, in which Jacob, a Yemeni-born poet with a day…

Christopher Priest, now 73, has been quietly turning out oddly mesmerising fiction for nearly half a century but, like the…

To anyone complaining that American politics in 2016 is uncivil, consider this: in 1804, the vice president of the United…

Our collective attention spans may not be as short as is widely cited, but they are pretty short. Take the…

Apple Day, on 21 October, is a newish festival, created in 1990, by the venerable organisation, Common Ground. Intended to…

Steven Runciman, the historian of Byzantium, is a puzzling figure. He was an outrageous snob, once remarking that he would…

I, Daniel Blake is a Ken Loach film about a Newcastle joiner who can’t work but faces a welfare bureaucracy…

The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb may well be one of the 20th century’s great stories — but naturally that doesn’t…

David Hockney: It is a kind of joke, but I really mean it when I say Caravaggio invented Hollywood lighting.…

The post TV appeared first on The Spectator.

When colourful Tasmanian identity David Walsh announced his intention to build an art gallery in Hobart, open to the public…

‘Besides feeble writing, there is a mixture of tragic-comedy and buffoonery in it, which Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio had banished…

Ella Hickson’s new play analyses our relationship with oil using the sketch format. First, there’s a candlelit soap opera set…

‘I went in at seven and came out aged 22,’ said Brian as he looked back on the day in…

As a chat-up line it was at least unusual. On 8 January 1927, a 46-year-old man approached a young woman…

Kenya A woman’s bottom cheered me up recently. The lady was walking ahead of me in a Kenya street and…

On the face of it, there’s something quite appealing about driverless cars. It will be like having a chauffeur-driven chariot…

New York Antonio Cromartie is one of the numerous professional and amateur athletes in America who now refuse to stand…

After the Fawlty Towers incident, I decided it was best to research the origin and extraction of all future B&B…

The polls are in for next month’s big event in the USA and Magnus Carlsen has emerged the clear favourite…

White to play. This position is a variation from Carlsen-Karjakin, Monaco 2011. Although White is a rook up he only…

In 1999 I went to the doctor about the impotence. Don’t worry, he said. I have good news for you.…

In Competition No. 2970 you were invited to supply an extract from an Ig Nobel Prize-winner’s speech that describes the…

‘Welcome, Mr Chancellor, to the Age UK community,’ said the voice. It was a warm, friendly woman’s voice, but bearing…

I felt like an absolute hypocrite the other week. Sally Brock’s team had just beaten Alexander Allfrey’s in the semi-finals…

The unclued lights (one of two words, one of three and-another of four components) are of a kind. Chambers gives…

The unclued lights are famous British OAK trees. First prize Gerry Fairweather, Layer Marney, Essex Runners-up Mrs L. Ashley, Shoreham-by-Sea,…

Perhaps you are slightly concerned about your son. At present he is sitting in the crawlspace beneath your home wearing…

Q. Next month, four of us from university are going up on a wildfowling trip north of Inverness. We are…

A long-standing friend of mine is a lucky fellow. He has spent his career doing exactly what he was born…

‘How can Bovril be suitable for vegetarians?’ asked my husband. ‘Bo- comes from bos, Latin for an ox.’ He was…