When it comes to Coalition governments, Michael Corleone of The Godfather doesn’t normally come to mind. Yet they seem to…

This week marks the 50th anniversary of my election to the House of Representatives on 25 October, 1969. What has…

I flew into a tempest. Although still early autumn, wild, windy and wet weather ravaged the UK, causing traffic chaos…

Mauritania in north-west Africa isn’t really a beacon of human rights. Of the 4.5m population, 500,000 are slaves. Regardless, the…

Beware! It is not merely an economic threat to Australia and the world. There will be far more serious consequences…

It’s understandable that our national broadcaster feels confused and besieged. So many of her once loyal friends are turning on…

These are deadly days for Australians trying to eke out a living on the land but spare a thought for…

    The European Union has a habit of working with the establishment figures in countries to topple governments that…

Whatever the federal government is thinking of doing to protect what the Constitution calls the ‘free exercise’ of religion, it…

‘I’m going to make a shitload of money.’ Peter, a farmer, listened intently to the merchant banker boasting to the…

Ever since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister his opponents — both inside and outside his party — have been convinced…

Nothing in Caroline Flint’s CV would have marked her out as someone who would end up marshalling 19 of her…

‘This is a true story…’ Right. Only this time, it really is. There are no wails, whistling winds or taps…

Jonathan Agnew recently described off-the-record interviews as those where you agree that it’s ‘between you and I’. Last month, Jess…

 Stockholm One night last week, explosions took place in three different locations in and around Stockholm. There were no injuries…

Percy and I have seen quite a few movies recently and enjoyed many of them, which is rare. But the…

It was a Saturday afternoon in September, the end of summer, and I was feeling sorry for myself. I’d gone…

It has become perceived wisdom that we are heading for a ‘people vs parliament’ election. But that is a false…

Home The Commons voted by 329 to 299 for a Brexit Withdrawal Bill but then stymied progress by defeating a…

In our house, the biggest source of tension is that I think there is an important difference between deferring a…

Big Ben protests An Extinction Rebellion protestor climbed to the top of the Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, with…

Today’s funerals, featuring shiny black hearses and top hats, lack (we are assured) ‘emotional intelligence’. Colourful coffins featuring pictures of…

Cameron’s fatal error Sir: Jo Johnson’s otherwise informative review of David Cameron’s For the Record (Books, 12 October) suggests Cameron’s…

Last week, an angry Telegraph reader asked me why I had got through a whole column on Brexit without mentioning…

Ulster says No. So went the Unionist slogan against the Anglo-Irish Agreement which paved the way to ending the Troubles…

While never having felt any previous urge to dine in Reading, I now find myself trying to secure a table…

Mostly I stay confident the Prime Minister’s team are playing a weak hand badly, but my confidence does occasionally falter.…

At the New Yorker Festival party in mid-October, my astute colleague hardly needed the caution. But you know how at…

The first time I was ever commissioned by the Daily Mail, the voice on the phone said: ‘You used to…

More than 20 years ago, George Steiner, meditating on 2,000 years of persecution and suffering, posed the ‘taboo’ question that…

In the autumn of 1987, after London had been hit by a fierce storm, Simon Jenkins wandered through Bloomsbury and…

The story of Jamal Khashoggi’s death is well known. A prominent Saudi journalist, he walked into his nation’s consulate in…

In 1971, Tove Jansson paid one of her many visits to London, where 1960s fashion hangovers made the whole city…

‘In olden days, a glimpse of stocking/ Was looked on as something shocking’, carolled the company of Cole Porter’s 1934…

This is a timely book. It addresses the challenges of a fractious and fractured Europe. The first word of the…

Depending on how you count, we are in the midst of the second or third AI hype-bubble since the 1960s,…

Since 1903, when Erskine Childers warned of the rising tide of German militarism that preceded the first world war in…

It is to Nick Lowe’s everlasting credit that in May 1977, a few months after David Bowie released the album…

This eerie, shortish book apparently had an earlier outing this year, when it purported to be a reissue of a…

‘When one writes for children,’ the novelist Jill Paton Walsh has said, ‘there are more people in the room. Writing…

What does it mean to be a successful comic? Richard Herring isn’t sure. He’s been a ‘professional funnyman’ for nearly…

One of Lucian Freud’s firmly fixed views about himself was ‘I’m not at all introspective’. This was, like many opinions…

ENO’s Mask of Orpheus is a triumph. It’s also unintelligible. Even David Pountney, who produced the original ENO staging in…

Athol Fugard likes to dump his characters in settings with no dramatic thrust or tension. A prison yard is a…

It is 50 years since Ronald Blythe published Akenfield, his melancholy portrait of a Suffolk village on the cusp of…

In an uncharacteristic fit of almost-robustness, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan has said she is ‘open-minded’ about scrapping the BBC licence…

The first Terminator film, which came out in 1984, was a high-concept sci-fi serial killer thriller. You can just imagine…

Those who cherish the notion that the current prime minister really is ‘electoral Viagra’ should have paid a visit to…

A serious bout of ill-health forced him to abandon a successful career in politics but, in the intervening 10 years,…

New York   Should art mirror the world as it is, or does an artist fail the public if the…

I’ve come back to the empty house for the second time in the six weeks since my mother died. The…

‘This is your captain speaking, welcome aboard this flight to London Gatwick. As there is a passenger on our flight…

A couple of weeks ago two of the most prestigious events in the bridge nutter’s diary took place on the…

Impelled by his engineer’s mindset, the former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik wrote a short essay to answer a simple question:…

Black to play. From Stepanov–Romanovsky, Lenin-grad 1926. Stepanov resigned two moves earlier, seeing that he would soon lose his queen.…

In Competition No. 3121 you were invited to submit a song entitled ‘50 Ways to Leave the White House’.  …

The unclued lights (two of two words) be paired and are linked by an anagram of the four letters in…

The unclued lights are stations along the Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh train line, the pairs being 8/9 and 29/39.…

In February last year, Spectator Life ran an article by Douglas Murray on the arrival of a new group of…

Whenever I use the security lane at an airport, I enjoy watching people retrieving their bags and metallic items when…

Q. I’ve been having friends to supper for many decades. Although I say it myself, these gatherings have often been…

The other night, I dreamt about Brexit. Awakening to the oppression of an urgent task, it took me a few…

Lewis Carroll, in his Phantasmagoria, and Other Poems (1869), constructed a poem that yielded a double acrostic, with the first…