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A warm muggy November evening in Canberra is threatening rain. At the National Library of Australia, a stone’s throw from…

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During this year’s federal election campaign, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a piece by academic lawyer Ben Saul entitled ‘Human…

The reason so many know-alls have had to scrape the lashings of egg from their faces is that once again,…

The denial of a people’s heritage has a long and ignoble history. Dictators, from Biblical times to the most recent,…

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On the green edge of Zurich, where this neat and tidy city melts into neat and tidy countryside, an icon…

On the morning after the European Union referendum, Britain looked like a country in crisis. The Prime Minister had resigned,…

The first Sunday of Advent is 27 November this year. For those of us who prefer Advent services to Christmas…

Let’s try a thought experiment, shall we? If a senior adviser to my old boss, Boris Johnson, had celebrated John…

The result in France in the first round of the Les Républicains party’s primary elections marks the political death of…

 Brooklyn Shall I have my sister’s skin peeled off for display after she dies? Specifically, the tattooed bits — the…

You will, by now, be familiar with the argument: that Donald Trump’s triumph in the American presidential election represents a…

A ticket to paradise comes very cheap in Gambia — as long as you’re headed in the right direction. Thomas…

I wish I could say that some of my best friends are working-class, but it’s not true. I do have…

In the eyes of the bien-pensants, the election of Donald Trump and the vote on Brexit have brought democracy to…

Bucks for Bucks Buckingham Palace is to be renovated at a cost of £369m, funded through an increase in the…

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 25 November 1916: We admit that before the war we should have placed, and…

From the moment she arrived in 10 Downing Street, Theresa May has been commendably clear about her economic priorities for…

Latham returns Sir: Wow; he’s back! And still giving it to the a…holes. A great column. Fantastic!Miles Hedge Kings Plains…

Home In his Autumn Statement, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, against an expectation of increased borrowing and slower…

 Washington DC Washington has been, for the past two weeks, indescribably depressed. When I walked into the deli down the…

Theresa May likes to give a kitten-heeled kicking to conference audiences, even when they are police officers or her own…

Many years ago, when I was a mere slip of a features journalist, I spent a weekend learning how to…

Authors’ book tours are often fun but rarely easy. For me the long train journeys are a delight, but on…

Now that post-Marxian vacuous liberalism is over, it is surely about time that we revived the vigorous writings of Thomas…

It is not self-evidently ridiculous that Nigel Farage should be the next British ambassador to the United States. The wishes…

John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley’s The Secret Cold War is the third and – at least for the time being…

Volcanic fallings out within bands are an ever-recurring motif in the history of rock music. There’s an obvious reason for…

Suitably for a year so full of cataclysms and disturbing portents, 2016 is the quincentenary of the death of Hieronymus…

While I’ve read plenty of books worse than Television: A Biography, I can’t immediately think of any that were more…

In the cult Steve Martin film The Man With Two Brains, a doctor falls in love with a surgically removed…

Armed with their tiny Leicas and Nikons, most of the great postwar ‘street’ photographers liked to be unobtrusive; they wanted…

A century ago, Sir Hubert Parry set Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ to music. The lyric had been written 100 years earlier and…

New books by Raymond Blanc and Pierre Koffmann retell the truth that British food came back from the brink. If…

A horse walks into a bar.… David Grossman takes the opening line of an old joke for his title, which…

In July 1915 the poet Edward Thomas enlisted as a soldier with the Artists’ Rifles, even though, at the age…

In his Forward Prize-winning collection of 2014, A Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, Kei Miller’s hero describes…

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Local writers have been repurposing Kenneth Clark’s 1958 differentiation of the nude from naked in discussing the current exhibition at…

The post The Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator.

When I first started playing bridge, in the late Nineties, the Young Chelsea marathon was a continuous 24-hour tournament and…

White to play. This is from Karjakin-Carlsen, World Championship, New York (Game 7) 2016. This position will be dead equal…

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Last week I went for an interview with the Irish Guards. My father and his father were both in this…

Zelman Meats — catchphrase ‘great meat’ — is sustenance for a hard Brexit — a harder Brexit, if you will.…

Do you remember Liberace? Yes, of course you do. Who could forget him? The Wisconsin-born son of a poor Italian…

Six months ago I bought a garden chair on eBay. When I went to the address to pick it up,…

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A few weeks after switching my iPhone to the EE network, I noticed a funny thing. It hadn’t rung. I…

The World Anti-Doping Agency has just called on Russia to confront its wrongdoing and generally shape up. Well, good luck…

Last week, my 13-year-old daughter Sasha and her friend Tess were taken by her god-father, Sean, to see Catfish and…

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