This week, the face of Melbourne literally changed. From last Thursday, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews decreed that all Melburnians must…

The Spectator Australia book club has saved our members hundreds of dollars by recommending books that you should not buy…

A week ago on this page, courtesy of The Spectator Australia Neil Brown Centre for Shamelessly Cynical and Opportunistic Corporate…

Takin’ it to the streets Although public protests have exploded in the last few months in some Western countries, there…

History will be scathing about government responses to Covid-19

The Palace Letters prove it never was time for a republic

The enemies of Israel come in three distinct flavours

This year is the third attempt at overturning US capitalism

Xi’s long march through the UN

Was there slavery in Australia?

Go to the people

I felt a genuine pang when British Airways announced that it was retiring its fleet of Boeing 747s, the largest…

Covid has changed the dating game

Cartoonists are facing ever-tougher competition

Why should I have to wear a mask to give blood?

Britain has a critical role to play in taming China

How Putin plans to make the West destroy itself

The country is collapsing

Not since the befuddled twilight of George III has a monarch been confined to Windsor Castle for such a duration.…

Left-behind boys Sir: Christopher Snowdon’s perceptive and informative article (‘The lost boys’, 18 July) reflects perfectly my own experiences in…

Anyone who imagined that the departure of Britain would make for more harmonious EU summits in future will have been…

Should the PM move parliament to York? There is, of course, historical precedent for such a move, as he very…

Home A coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, tested on 1,077 people, was found to induce antibodies and…

I’ve been a regular runner for 40 years, pounding my way across Hampstead Heath to Kenwood House and back. This…

Worth a shot? How worried should we be about people refusing to have a Covid-19 vaccine if one is developed?…

In January, the director-general of the BBC, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, announced that the corporation intended to shift away from…

The price of gold has been rising since the earliest virus reports from China in December. Adherents regard it as…

I think Anne Applebaum is a friend of mine. I certainly hope so, since I have always admired her writing,…

When Boris Johnson met with his cabinet in person for the first time in four months on Tuesday, his aim…

In the States, the ‘open letter’ is enjoying quite the formal renaissance. Curiously, recent examples of this newly popular epistolary…

In 1846 Vienna, as across much of the world, a relatively new disease called puerperal (or ‘childbed’) fever had reached…

Before reading this book, the only thing I knew about Action Park was that it had lent its name to…

Melancholy pervades this novel: a sense of glasses considerably more than half empty, with the levels sinking fast. This is…

A book about breaking confidences, not to mention friendships, rather begs the same in return. Reading Anne Applebaum’s brief memoir…

Wendy Williams is an enthusiast, and enthusiasm is infectious. Lepidoptery is for her a new fascination, and it shows. On…

Are all children of famous parents told they must have a book in them? Since Allegra Huston’s wonderful memoir Love…

Short story writers often find it irksome to be asked when the novel is coming out, as though their work…

Sharks may inspire fear and loathing, but we are the crueller predators, says Philip Hoare

This is a strange but valuable book. The author is a private equity magnate, whose fascination for Richard Burdon Haldane…

One of the most intriguing expressions to come out of the pandemic so far is ‘deep cleaning’. We read that…

A French painting purchased in Melbourne in 1953 has been repatriated selling for $5.26m earlier this month in Paris. For…

There’s a scene in the French espionage series The Bureau — about the DGSE, France’s equivalent of the CIA or…

The BBC announces Merchant of Venice as if it were a Hollywood blockbuster. ‘In the melting pot of Venice, trade…

There was only so long anyone could put up with the live musical performances of the early days of lockdown:…

I always want to know more about Louis Theroux, which is odd, since I’ve seen so much of him already.…

Two films about young women this week, one at the cinema, if you dare, and one to stream, if you…

Model villages deliver a cheerful jolt to unexamined notions about our own place – and size – in the world, says Richard Bratby

Travelling around Latin America three years ago, Stephen Chambers was attracted by pharmacy signs with pictograms advertising treatments to illiterate…

Noosa Main Beach is a prime promenade for the fashion-conscious, except at 7am when it belongs to the athleisure and…

‘Had I not become a composer, I would have wanted to be a chess player, but a high-level one, someone…

White to play. Stefano Tatai–Spyridon Skembris, Budva Zonal 1981. Morricone’s teacher found a delightful conclusion to this attack. What was…

Ten of the eleven unclued lights are of a kind and consist of singleton of two words, three pairs and…

14 Down, TAPSALTEERIE, yields TAP 10, 15 and 35, three anagrams of SALTE (16, 32 and 36) and ERIE and…

When I first began racing, few jump jockeys reckoned their careers would last beyond the ages of 32 or 33.…

In one respect, there has been a reassertion of normality, though this is nothing to do with the virus. Although…

The cancel culture wants to obliterate people who do, or more often say, the wrong thing (for example, that there…

The public inquiry into the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has already started. Not the official one, which won’t…

Gunnar Hallberg moved to England from Sweden 25 years ago to play professional bridge, and made such a success of…

Phone calls aside, the only human contact I had on my ten-day Somme battlefield tour was with the lady who…

‘I need an ambulance!’ yelled the builder boyfriend into his mobile phone as the cyclist lay bleeding from a head…

Q. Our daughter is going ahead with her wedding despite the restriction on guest numbers. Although it is a relief…

The enforced boredom of lockdown has been replaced by a feeling of loss. My nephew by marriage, Hansie Schoenburg, died…

In the past 30 years, I have driven about 8,000 miles in France in right-hand-drive cars. And I would be…

In Competition No. 3158 you were invited to supply an extract describing a well-known fictional detective who finds themselves catapulted…