The Millennial generation, born between 1980 and 1996, is the smartest, best-educated, most tech-savvy generation that has ever walked this…

The monstrous rape and murder of Eurydice Dixon has cast a pall over Melbourne and it is only right and…

The great moment arrives: my audience with The Queen. Foreign ambassadors are received by Her Majesty with elaborate ceremony, which…

For sheer grotesquerie, a recent push for the feminisation of the Australian Army would be hard to beat. Former General…

Sometimes African rulers get so corrupt that Western aid donors go on strike. Take what Trump would call the shit-hole…

Every now and again the clouds part, a shaft of light breaks through and something up ahead is illuminated. In…

In his 1977 book The Age of Uncertainty, the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith depicted the great leaders of history…

The controversial University of Melbourne dance performance, Where We Stand, is an insight into the kind of divided society we…

Calls for a Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump reminded me that if anyone should be a Nobel Laureate, it…

When an historic Melbourne church went up in flames three years ago, the actress Rachel Griffiths, who’d made her First…

Britain seems to be following America down a dangerous path. There’s your politician David Lammy accusing Oxford and Cambridge of…

Dear 2016 WriteNow mentees, Thanks so much for your open letter to me. It seems only good manners for me…

Sexual intercourse, Philip Larkin famously wrote, began in 1963. And listening to contemporary commentators, you’d think that it came to…

 Washington, DC When the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu visited London in 1978, the British government did some serious sucking up.…

Was there ever a more fatuous contribution to a political debate than Lord Hague following up the case of 12-year-old…

Here’s a rum thing: you can tell the quality of a piece of land with your eyes closed. Your ears…

When my American friends invited us to stay with them in New Jersey, my 13-year-old daughter was thrilled. She’d never…

The photographs of children in cages at US migration centres, apparently separated from the parents with whom they illegally entered…

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said that spending on NHS England would increase by £20 billion a year by…

At Chequers last week to interview the Prime Minister, I hear some sad news of Churchill’s mouse. The story goes…

Well oiled The government last week ordered a review into the medical use of cannabis. Some cannabis oil available on…

Peace with his enemy Kim Jong-un on the one hand, conflict with his European allies on the other: what sense…

Song of myself Sir: As a disabled writer, I thoroughly despise the idea of being the beneficiary of a publisher’s…

Seen from almost any point of view, the government’s decision to increase spending on the NHS is disgusting. It is…

The cabinet’s trip to Chequers next month will be a tense affair. Things always are when Brexit is the only…

Flies, millions of them, vast swarms of them, spawned in the filthy Volga river: mutant flies, probably. Gathering in clouds…

Next month the National Health Service turns 70. The institution is greatly loved, and not for nothing. The fear of…

‘So, Professor Shin, tell us what you really think about cryptocurrencies.’ I’m guessing that’s the brief the Bank for International…

In the gap between what we feel ourselves to be and what we imagine we might in different circumstances become,…

Fine wine rarely makes it into the public consciousness, but one event in 1976 has proved of perennial interest: the…

I wonder what your idea of a good novel is. Does it embody the attributes of solid plotting, characterisation and…

We’re in Virginia, in the 1850s. A girl called Emily is tormenting her dog, Champion, and her father’s teenage slave,…

In 2013 Tessa Fontaine joined up with the World of Wonders, a circus sideshow that travels around the United States…

The distinguished historian Konrad Jarausch’s new book is a German narrative, told through the stories of ordinary people who lived…

Girl with Dove is a memoir by Sally Bayley, a writer who teaches at Oxford University, of growing up in…

If social media manipulation has influenced elections, and dark money has influenced our elected representatives, then we are already on…

In 1988, James Joyce’s grandson Stephen destroyed all letters he had from, to or about his aunt Lucia Joyce, the…

‘I like your shirt today,’ Sir Ray Davies says to the waiter who brings his glass of water to the…

In the Moderna Museet in Stockholm there is a sculpture by Katharina Fritsch, which references Chekhov’s famous story ‘Lady with…

There were 1,500 punters in the audience when Eagles of Death Metal played their fatal gig at the Bataclan theatre…

Grade: A+ While the young bands plunder the 1980s for every last gobbet of tinny synth and hi-hat, the singer-songwriters…

There was one of those moments late on Sunday night when a voice is so arresting (either through tone, timbre,…

Some disasters could not occur in this age of instant communication. The first world war is a case in point:…

On a sward of AstroTurf somewhere off Silicon Roundabout, Mountain Media is hosting its summer party and, well, it’s the…

Polly Stenham starts her overhaul of Strindberg’s Miss Julie with the title. She gives the ‘Miss’ a miss and calls…

Hereditary is the horror film that has been described as a ‘ride of pure terror’ and likened to The Exorcist…

A young Korean, 22 years old, won the Dublin International Piano Competition last month. Nothing unusual about that. Koreans and…

Older readers will perhaps recall the once popular Sunday evening TV programme Scrapheap Challenge, in which oily, boilersuited blokes competed…

The other morning, the Director of MoMA from New York, Glenn D Lowry was on ABC Breakfast. He was knowledgable…

New York I write this on my last day in the Bagel, and it sure is a scorcher, heat and…

Homesick for England, family and friends, I flew back, and the next day went for a long walk with my…

Every day in every way we are paying for more and more. I realise this increasingly. Things we took for…

On the famed Whitsbury gallops, as corn buntings and stonechats fluttered from the fence posts, a dozen of Marcus Tregoning’s…

Ostend has been host to hundreds of bridge players representing their various countries in the European Teams Championships. The ten-day…

Fabiano Caruana has won the elite Altibox tournament ahead of world champion Magnus Carlsen. This result might appear to give…

White to play. This position is a variation from So-Carlsen, Norway Chess 2018. The world champion suffered a reverse in…

In Competition No. 3053, an assignment prompted by Anthony Horowitz’s reflections on creating female characters for his latest Bond novel,…

2/11/12 is a four-word quotation in Chambers. Remaining unclued lights (all appropriate to the language the quotation is in) are…

The unclued lights are anagrams of the names of Scottish towns. Dalry (12), Dundee (14)), Brechin (27), Kelso (1D),  Peterhead…

An academic paper by a group of child psychologists caused a stir earlier this week. ‘Helicopter parenting is bad for…

An Iranian friend of mine recently brought me some gaz from Isfahan. Commonly known as Persian nougat, gaz is perhaps…

Q. Being professionals in trade, we find ourselves increasingly being asked by friends, who could well afford to use our…

It is enough to make a man turn to drink. On a distinctly non-abstemious day, I was sitting in one…

‘They should say, irritation, not iteration,’ exclaimed my husband as a voice on the wireless spoke about men’s fashion and…