Free speech is under constant assault in this country, and this week was no exception, with Home Affairs Minister Tony…

Coffee, anyone?

How our health bureaucrats have done enormous damage

But risks significant harm to their strategic partnership as an Indo-Pacific counterweight to China

Immigration: the problem is the culture, not the race

A left-wing student radical is let loose on the global stage

Octogenarian boomers are taking it to the streets

None so blind

New Zealand democracy is in tatters

Not the first time, a Labor leader is reliant on bloodthirsty foreign sources

Amid the hullabaloo attending the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Buchan on 26 August – the walks and…

Why are you enjoying a bank holiday this month, as opposed to a ‘general’ or ‘national’ holiday? It’s because the…

Jason, 45, has been divorced twice. He’d always struggled with relationships. In despair, he consulted ChatGPT. At first, it was…

I know it can be difficult to have sympathy for anybody who owns a holiday let, but for me and…

It is 43˚C in Erbil, which a friend here describes as ‘cool’. Unlike my first visit in 2015, when Isis…

‘A friend of mine who’s slightly overweight, to put it mildly, went to a drug store in London,’ Donald Trump…

On Volodymyr Zelensky’s last visit to the White House, he brought a gift: a championship belt from one of Ukraine’s…

Though you wouldn’t know from the smiles around the table at the White House this week, a trap has been…

I manage a small, not-for-profit care home in Norfolk. We have tea rounds, hymn singing, hand-holding and staff who know…

‘Proscription’ appears to be the current word of the month. But what does it mean? The Latin scribo means ‘I…

Few British traditions can claim as long a history as racing. The first races thought to have taken place in…

I am entombed, like Edgar Allan Poe’s prematurely buried man, listening through headphones to a contemporary Russian fugue for organ…

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, joined President Volodymyr Zelensky and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Finland, the…

Suit cases Volodymyr Zelensky again failed to wear a suit and tie to a meeting at the White House, in…

Fighting dirty Sir: John Power is very interesting (‘Dark matter’, 16 August) when outlining the ‘dark arts’ being proposed by…

Almost a decade ago the Irish academic Liam Kennedy published a tremendous book with the title Unhappy the Land: the…

I don’t quite see the point of flying Union flags in Tower Hamlets, or complaining about it when the council…

A currently fashionable conservatism is militantly against Ukraine and, by more cautious implication, pro-Russia. We who disagree are, I quote…

Nigel Farage is adept at riding the currents of British politics. When he named Reform after the Canadian party in…

On reflection, a tradition of shelving many desirable goods within ready reach is extraordinary – especially because the premises in…

News from the High Pay Centre – the revolutionary guard of left-wing thinktanks – that average FTSE100 chief executive pay…

At an improvised jazz performance a man interrupts a trumpet solo asking: ‘Is this honest?’ The incident goes viral, prompting much comic argument about abstractions

The homosexual poet from Alexandria avoided publication in his lifetime, despite being a ruthless self-promoter with a very high opinion of his own work

Hall’s protagonist in this extraordinary novel is Britain’s only named wind, a ferocious, mischievous beast that has been hitting Cumbria’s Eden Vale from time immemorial

Somewhat late in the day, Rosanna McLaughlin condemns the way art is now obliged to communicate clear and approvable messages, resulting in timid, defensive, rule-bound works

Kevin Passmore explains why the construction of the Maginot Line, France’s vast defensive network of the interwar years, proved such a failure

Andrew Lownie’s minutely detailed account of the Duke of York’s disgrace and downfall achieves the near impossible

Byrne imagines the twentysomething Jane Austen, on holiday in Sidmouth, falling for the lawyer Samuel Rose – a perfect foil, being a cross between Mr Darcy and Mr Knightley

The high-flying journalist Michael Finnerty takes a break in midlife to learn the art of cheesemaking in Borough Market – and finds himself fleeing a knife-wielding terrorist

The small coastal town of Palamos left little impression on Capote while writing In Cold Blood there, so tracing his steps becomes a pointless exercise, as Leila Guerriero soon discovers

The novelist’s main targets were her hapless editors at Macmillan and her former lover Derek Stanford – recipients of many vituperative early letters

Remember Gus the Theatre Cat in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats? He says that he has acted…

Edinburgh International Festival was established to champion the civilising power of European high culture in a spirit of postwar healing.…

At some point during the past decade and a half, it was decided that the 1990s were a golden age.…

The village of Brigadoon rises from the Scotch mists once every 100 years, and revivals of Lerner and Loewe’s musical…

I once spent a delightful weekend in Madrid with the co-producer of Alien. His name was David Giler (now dead,…

Plus: am I the only person who finds M.J. Lenderman’s voice whiny?

Good Night, Oscar is a biographical play about Oscar Levant, a famous pianist who was also a noted wit and…

I do not, if I can help it, catch a train to anywhere on a Sunday. Yet there I was…

August is always a crap month for exhibitions in London. The collectors are elsewhere, the dealers are presumably hot on…

One Sunday morning in 1952, the pilot of a light aircraft flying low over the Pilbara looked down and saw…

Our esteemed editor asks about the word ‘irits’. Is it, he asks, British or American or authentically Aussie. The good…

Jack Gervaise-Brazier is a restless romantic. He was brought up on Guernsey, which filled him with a love of islands,…

Reading Careless People, an exposé of life within Facebook written by a Kiwi, it occurred to me that one potential…

Q. My twins’ birthday is coming up, but we will be in the country. Their godparents are usually punctilious, but…

When this century began we were complaining (or I was) of the ubiquity of absolutely to signal agreement. The interjection…

The woman pushing a wheelchair was causing such a rumpus in the supermarket that whichever aisle I was in I…

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The Feast of the Assumption began for me just after midnight with a WhatsApp message from my…

Comp. 3413 was prompted by J.G. Ballard’s story ‘The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race’…

The double-edged sword of eating with the seasons is the glut. A blunt, un-pretty word, which is a joy in…

Last week I took a day trip to Margate. Not to enjoy a swim in the sea, but in the…