On too many fronts, the Turnbull government’s embarrassing timidity is constantly on display. It is a timorousness fuelled as much…

I sometimes think that if we did not have Aboriginals in Australia, we would have had to invent them. They…

Ireland beat Australia to marriage equality by five years, and with a Yes victory every bit as resounding as ours.…

According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website, Australia will contribute $43.8 million to the ‘Palestinian Territories’ in…

Popular concerns over immigration, ignored by politicians across the Western world, will at best be expressed at the ballot box,…

There is a modern misconception that a modern economy will become less reliant on energy. A word association test on…

Suddenly Kim Jong-un is a good guy. He sends his sister to the Pyeongchang Olympics to work her icy charms…

In Down Among The Wild Men, the anthropologist, John Greenway, describes the process by which Aboriginal adolescents from the Western…

Britain’s period of surrendering key responsibilities to the European Union is drawing to a close, but the experience serves as…

A Marshall Plan is needed for war-torn South Australia devastated by decades of green warfare and lawfare, welfare, destruction of…

The dismissal of the FBI’s second-in-charge, Andrew McCabe, was not by President Trump, as several Australian outlets who bothered to…

From the outside it all looked haphazard and frenzied. A campaign that was skidding from scandal to crisis on its…

We have become a nation of sad pill-poppers. The British, once Churchill’s ‘lion-hearted nation’, are now among the most depressed…

Antidepressants saved my life, I am sure of that. But I am also certain they made my mental illness much…

   Laikipia, Kenya   Before vets put him down in Kenya this week, I attended the deathbed of Sudan, the…

The Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Knightsbridge is nestled in a maze of mews streets and embassy rows somewhere between Harrods…

Sofie Hagen is a young Danish comic I admire. I didn’t see her most recent show, Dead Baby Frog, but…

When Palestrina wrote his Mass settings and motets, or J.S. Bach his cantatas and passions, they could not have imagined…

If Brexit was going to be as easy as some of its advocates had believed, we would not have had…

Home Britain and the European Union agreed on a transitional period after Brexit on 29 March 2019 until the end…

I went to a dinner for Toby Young, who has had some troubles of late, at this magazine’s gracious HQ,…

Spin doctors The BBC has denied it photoshopped a Newsnight backdrop to make Jeremy Corbyn’s hat look more Russian. The…

Barely a day passes without yet another Russian explanation for the Salisbury nerve agent attack. What’s new? Such disinformation has…

Rocky road Sir: Piers Ackerman is either indulging in a piece of tabloid provocation or he is on the rocky…

For almost as long as I can remember, Eurosceptic Tory MPs have been defined by the media as ‘head-bangers’. As…

Theresa May’s Home Office record is normally off limits at cabinet. But when ministers discussed the government’s strategy for reducing…

There was a growling Russian maniac on the BBC’s Today programme last week, an MP from the United Russia party…

My friend’s ten-year-old daughter has a new hobby. Like many of her school pals, she hopes to become a video…

‘No one wants to send their son to Eton any more,’ I learned from last week’s Spectator Schools supplement. It…

My decision to vote Remain was driven in part by an exercise in which I tried to identify anyone close…

On a night in Paris in 1914, Gertrude Stein was walking with Picasso when the first camouflaged trucks passed by.…

The Indian poet Jeet Thayil’s first novel, Narcopolis, charted a two-decade-long descent into the underworlds of Mumbai and addiction. One…

We all have our favourite period of Parisian history, be it the Revolution, the Belle Époque or the swinging 1960s…

If you associate Lord Salisbury more with a pub than with politics, here is Andrew Gimson to the rescue, with…

Readers should skim past the blurb of The Friendly Ones. The novel is about prejudice, of many different kinds; but…

‘The Victoria Cross,’ gushed a mid-19th-century contributor to the Art Journal, ‘is thoroughly English in every particular. Given alike to…

Donal Ryan is one of the most notable Irish writers to emerge this decade. So far he has produced five…

Saint Paul is unique among those who have changed the course of history — responsible not just for one but…

Publishing loves a brand. Few authors of fiction create characters who reach this semi-divine status, but when they do, even…

With bird books the more personal the better. Joe Shute was once a crime correspondent and is today a Telegraph…

Samantha Harvey is much rated by critics and those readers who have discovered her books, but deserving of a far…

This true-crime narrative ought, by rights, to be broken backed, in two tragic ways. One is that the serial attacker…

Digital art is a crowded field. It’s also now older than I am. Yet despite a 50-year courtship, art galleries…

Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams dates from the late 1940s. He hadn’t quite reached the peaks of sentimental delicacy…

Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, Unsane, is a psychological thriller about a woman who is incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital even…

Rarely has one irate punter so affected a band’s trajectory. Without the anger of the man who went to see…

Andy Warhol would probably have been surprised to learn that his 1964 film ‘Empire’ had given rise to an entire…

Handel’s Rinaldo has not been highly regarded even by his most ardent admirers. I have never understood why — even…

For as long as I can remember, Sunday nights have been the home of the kind of TV drama cunningly…

Grade: B+ Another ex-Long Beach crip replanted in pleasant Orange County via the conduit of very large amounts of record…

As Bob Shennan, the BBC’s director of radio and music admitted this week, there are almost two million podcast-only listeners…

As Australians, we have a need to be recognised ‘overseas’.  International tours by Australian performing arts groups have been an…

Gstaad A couple of columns ago I wrote about an incident that took place at the Eagle Club here in…

During the past three years I have spent quite a bit of time in a rented house in Provence. Volets…

‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!’ I screamed through the window of the…

Colin Simpson, who has died after a long illness at the age of 69, was a star both at the…

Every so often a game is played which is worthy of joining the immortals in the pantheon of chessboard masterpieces.…

Black to play. This position is a variation from today’s game Aronian-Kramnik, Berlin 2018. How can Black briskly conclude his…

In Competition No. 3040 you were invited to submit a poem against poets or poetry.   Plato started it, but…

Unclued lights form three sets of three, each set related in a different way to a theme-word which is hidden…

‘Now is the woodcock near the gin’, said by Fabian in Twelfth Night, suggests the position of BECASSE in relation…

I’m currently in Israel on a press trip organised by Bicom — the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. Bicom…

Which would you least like to see coming towards you? An Uber driverless car, Ant McPartlin in his black Mini…

Q. Recently, during a stay in a luxurious mountain hotel in Italy, and having hurt my knee skiing, I was…

In 2007 Mikhael Gorbachev starred in a Louis Vuitton advert. He was driven past the Berlin Wall with Louis Vuitton…

A 72-year-old Australian called Stelarc, the BBC reported, has an ear growing from one arm. He hopes to connect a…