When the first pictures emerged of Afghan women celebrating the demise of the Taliban by scornfully tearing off their blue…

Shorten must be stopped For once, Malcolm Turnbull’s current travails are not all his own fault. The Prime Minister could…

‘Muslims will not blow anyone up here,’ the proprietor of my Siracusa local assures me, ‘we have our own people…

By any measure, the trajectory of Sheikh Imam Tawhidi to public prominence has been remarkable. From relative obscurity in South…

Whatever else may be said about her, Pauline Hanson’s action in wearing a burqa into the Senate, despite the sobbing…

Equality of opportunity, not of outcomes; it’s the classic free enterprise backbone of Liberal philosophy. So attacking Bill Shorten’s politics-of-envy…

The announcement of a $650 million solar power plant near the South Australian town of Port Augusta brought forth the…

It all started when a contact at the ABC forwarded me a memo which had been circulated to all ABC…

Earlier in the year, Janet Albrechtsen wrote in the Australian that ‘the cult of taking offence was running rife on…

No one wants to be on the wrong side of history. But without hindsight, it can be difficult to work…

In a few weeks, a new intake of students will arrive, all fresh-faced and excited, at universities around the country.…

It is not fashionable to feel sympathy for the men and women who lived and served in the British colonies…

As a child in Glasgow, I learned that sticks and stones might break my bones but words didn’t really hurt.…

‘I have a slight bone to pick with you,’ I tell Ian Livingstone as he makes me a cup of…

The rentrée politique in France next month promises to be the most exciting in decades as the dynamic superstar president…

There have been times since the break-up when I’ve felt so low I’ve opened a bottle of Shiraz and spent…

When towns are on the up, there is a brief period when they inhabit what I would call the Goldilocks…

George Tomlinson, the post-war education secretary, declared that politicians should leave exams to the teachers because ‘the minister knows nowt…

In defence of General Lee Sir: In your leader ‘America’s identity crisis’ (19 August) you state that ‘When General Lee…

It has been a summer of tears, both of joy and sorrow. The latter first: how could stones not weep…

Home Big Ben ceased sounding for a planned period of four years, thanks to a decision by the Speaker and…

Ever since I was a child, I’d always yearned to see a green woodpecker. With its scarlet cap and lime-green…

I wonder how Mohammad Khan is getting on in his legal action against Virgin Atlantic. Mo — a Muslim, the…

Removing all trade and tariff barriers as part of a hard Brexit would generate ‘a £135 billion annual boost to…

So much for Donald J. Trump, ‘America first’ isolationist. Gone is the man who, as a civilian, repeatedly endorsed a…

During a press interview in Bombay about his latest book, the author-narrator of Friend of My Youth feels ‘a surge…

It’s an irony of our secular age that the more we fear death, the more enticing we find it. The…

‘Rightly is they called pigs,’ says a farmworker in Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow as he watches porkers grunt and squelch.…

Is this the best book I’ve ever read on the subject of masculinity? Maybe it is, I thought, the first…

These three timely works of creative nonfiction explore the question of race: chronicling histories of colonialism and migration; examining the…

‘I have nothing to doe but work and read my Eyes out,’ complained Anne Vernon in 1734, writing from her…

A CIA agent, a naive young filmmaker, a dilettante heir and a lost Mayan temple form the basis of Ned…

Most victims of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake — which convinced Voltaire there could be no God — perished not in…

This year’s Lucerne Festival is given its identity by having as its theme ‘Identity’. Since the word doesn’t mean anything,…

Schoenberg began Gurrelieder in 1900, but he didn’t hear it until 1913. By then, he’d moved on, and he ostentatiously…

Grade: D+ Well, this is truly awful. Perhaps the worst album by a major band since Mardi Gras by Creedence…

Yet another sign that we are living in very strange times: a pair of celebrities, their names made by TV,…

Shakespeare’s plays have frequently been the source of operas. Almost as frequently the operas have been only modest successes. Notable…

Last year, Gary Hume made a painting of himself paddling. At a casual glance, or even a longer look, it…

Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky is a heist caper that, to be fair, does what it says on the can. There…

Most new Netflix series are greeted not merely with acclaim, but with a level of gratitude that the returning Christ…

In Competition No. 3012 you were invited to change a letter in the title of a well-known play and submit…

Q. I am in my seventies and my husband is in his nineties. The other night we had two couples…

I was puzzled by the caption to a picture in the Times Literary Supplement. The picture showed a model of…

Indian Ocean coast Like most men I wonder if I have been much good as a father, but one thing…

There was a time when France was the dominant power in world chess. When Howard Staunton commenced his remarkable series…

White to play. This position is a variation from Vachier-Lagrave–Nepomniachtchi, St Louis 2017. How can White make a decisive material…

Each of twenty-one clues comprises a definition part and a hidden consecutive jumble of the answer including one extra letter.…

The key word is DENTIFRICE (38), which can be divided into DENT defining 11, 21, 33; IF 13, 20, 27;…

I once witnessed a rarer spectacle than Halley’s Comet. I heard Ted Heath tell a funny story. It related to…

When the Germans smuggled arguably the world’s most evil man into Russia 100 years ago, they did not imagine the…

My mother has various chronic illnesses and finds it almost impossible to remain both immobile and awake during the day.…

Darcy is high-maintenance, so I decided to leave her in the posh livery yard, with its luxuriant shavings beds and…

The amount of nonsense being talked about the new GCSEs in English and maths, whereby exams have been graded 9-1…

In its hasty dismissal of James Damore, Google showed a worrying disregard for one of the most important freedoms within…

The ‘Lightner double’ is perfectly named: a bolt out of the blue which strikes fear into your heart. There you…