As Neil Brown points out this week, the Victorian government has now embarked on the insanity of ‘our very own…

Scott Morrison’s secret appointment of himself as the minister for five departments was certainly bizarre. However, it was clearly lawful,…

The defection of a number of Australian Anglicans from their Church might not seem of more than local importance but…

New Zealanders let down by the political party system

There is simply no legitimate defense for Covid authoritarianism and over-reach

Coming soon from Labor: a carbon tax

All Australians will no longer be equal

Those studying vaccines and fertility are constantly thwarted

Climate change dogma always ignores the good news

Extremist thinking exposed

The Voice is just one part of a radical trifecta

Butter was not a major part of my childhood. In fact, I don’t remember it ever being in our fridge.…

Why I donated my kidney

Cow attacks are no laughing matter

Ukrainian schools are starting to re-open, but will they be safe?

The dangers and distortion of yoga

I moved to Bangkok ten years ago in order to be in a place where nothing happens, where no one…

Rishi Sunak on the fear messaging — and the questions that weren’t asked

When will the West start to deal with Africa on its own terms?

In just over a week, Britain will have a new prime minister. No one can say that the 160,000 or…

Medical problems come and go in the media, and at the moment the flavour of the month appears to be…

Finnish lines Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said she had taken a test for illegal drugs after being filmed at…

Overhaul the GMC Sir: Max Pemberton’s cogent criticism of the GMC (‘Unfit for purpose’, 20 August). is one of the…

Home Inflation would reach 18.6 per cent by January and the energy price cap £5,816 in April, according to a…

She’ll never do it. She’d have to be mad. Why take the risk? That’s what everyone said when I announced…

Liz Truss says she intends to review the Bank of England’s mandate, which has been fixed as a 2 per…

Could I be the model communist shill? Consider these facts: I was born and raised in China. I speak and…

Whenever a terrorist attack occurs, like the recent attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie, our society falls into the usual platitudes.…

Taking a short break from persecuting Roman Catholic faith schools for ideological reasons, Ofsted has stuck the boot into the…

Liz Truss has always been more popular with Tory party members than with Tory politicians. The moment of greatest peril…

Sometimes the struggle for a single small strongpoint can tip the whole balance of a greater battle. One thinks of…

‘I don’t trust fiction,’ the famous author told me, both of us several glasses to the good. ‘It contains too…

Facing up to the prospect of one’s own mortality is always jarring; but when you’ve spent your life trying, and…

There can be no clearer illustration of the central role that great cathedrals continue to play in a nation’s life…

During my gap year in 1981, I worked on the 24th floor of Birmingham’s Alpha Tower for the Regional Manpower…

‘Our generation owes an apology to the shades of Harold Wilson,’ the polling guru Peter Kellner once told me. Had…

Grief leads us down some strange roads. Few, though, can be as peculiar as those charted by Paul Stanbridge in…

Who would have thought that someone would write a novel about Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor and infamous experimenter on…

It sounds disingenuous, not to say dis-respectful, but as a writer of 40 books, give or take, I never read…

Million-selling rock bands are rarely happy families. They are an uneasy combination of a creative alliance and a business partnership,…

There’s a moment near the end of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue ‘My Last Duchess’ when it becomes clear that the…

Shelley, walking as a boy through his ‘starlight wood’, looking for ghosts and filled with ‘hopes of high talk with…

The Shetland Islands and the Faroes may seem to be somewhere out there in distant waters, marginal and in the…

Frances Wilson describes a group of self-obsessed intellectuals united by mutual loathing in a small university town in the 1790s

The combinations and permutations of different forms of artistic activity are always weird. Stacks of people will want to see…

With the major companies largely on their summer breaks, the Edinburgh International Festival struggles to programme a high standard of…

Who doesn’t love Eurovision? All that razzmatazz. The ghastly frocks and gloopy pop songs, the false bonhomie and bare-faced bias…

Southwark Playhouse has a reputation for small musicals with big ambitions. Tasting Notes is set in a wine bar run…

At 4.38 a.m., one morning in October 2013, the radio presenter Paul Gambaccini was understandably asleep when the doorbell rang.…

One learns the strangest things at festivals. That, for instance, this summer has been a bit of a blackcurrant disaster…

Beast is, the blurb tells us, a ‘pulse-pounding thriller about a father and his daughters who find themselves hunted by…

Winslow Homer may be too all-American for British tastes but a forthcoming retrospective could change all that, says Laura Gascoigne

Do we need complicated bidding systems to reach the best contracts? The Portland Club (men only) operates a no conventions…

White to play. Gormally–Claridge-Hansen, British Championships 2022 Black’s last move, Ra8-a7,was a fatal mistake. Which move won the game for…

Gstaad As the great Yogi Berra explained: ‘It’s déjà vu all over again.’ The great one also contributed the following…

‘If you think about it, Frankie Dettori is to blame,’ said the builder boyfriend, because when things are really bad…

Finally rain. None for months, then a violent tropical storm lasting two days. It marked the end of high summer…

Kenya After two years of no rain, all colour has drained from the landscape on the farm so that by…

‘Quicksand!’ yelled my husband, flailing his arms wildly. Since he was sitting in his armchair, his dramatic representation of a…

Cakeism is offering the voters everything they desire, knowing you will never give it to them because you live in…

Q. How can I find out, without making things awkward, whether one of my close male friends fancies one of…

The unclued entries comprise two authors and a work of fiction, attributed by one author to the other. Each author…

For the past few days I’ve been frantically watering my lawn in anticipation of the London hosepipe ban. True, there…

British tennis fans famously only acknowledge the sport exists for a couple of weeks in the middle of summer in…

The unclued lights (including the pairs at 2/14 and 12/36) are names of organ stops which Brewer calls ‘music in…

In Competition No. 3263, you were invited to submit a short story, written in the style of a cosy mystery…

Hats off to Harry Grieve, who took clear first place at the Chessable British Championships which concluded in Torquay last…

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is one of those documents, like the ‘Bringing them Home’ report that everybody has…

When radicals want to upend society they often cloak their intentions under kind-sounding words. So, if the plan is to…