The suicide bombing at Manchester Arena should remind us that in the coming discussions about the perpetrators and what motivated…

Shorten looks Left What was Malcolm to do? Wait for the end of days to have any deficit reduction measures…

‘I will call this a KKK meeting’, he announced, triumphantly. Perhaps seeing my bewilderment, my garrulous Moroccan host pointed to…

A British General of the Raj, told that suttee was an Indian custom, replied: ‘We have a custom too. When…

In his joint press conference with Malcolm Turnbull in New York this month, Donald Trump said that Australia has ‘better…

The cool phrases among the proponents of green electricity are ‘distributed networks’ and ‘micro networks’ which, we are told, will…

At the end of law school you undertake ‘practical legal training’ to develop the essential skills of advocacy our adversarial…

Last week, I was in Tel Aviv, to receive an honorary doctorate. The official party entered to the strains of…

As a wine bore, holidays abroad are a battle with the family to cram in as many vineyard visits as…

The meeting place of the two worlds could not have been more sharply defined. In Manchester Arena, thousands of young…

J.L. Carr’s classic novel How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup (1975) contains a character named Arthur Fangfoss. Mr…

When the pictures of the dead came in, it was hard to take, even from a distance. There was Georgina…

A hundred years after the Russian revolution, Russia has a tsar and a court. Proximity to Putin is the key…

 Washington Day 1: The New York Times reveals that President Trump offered FBI director James Comey a 25 per cent…

On the Today programme a month ago, Education Secretary Justine Greening was asked whether she could name any ‘respected figure…

Until last week, it was thought that the jihadi threat was subsiding and the security services were increasingly able to…

Double whammy Sir: David Flint complains about the way the media treats right-wing leaders (‘Worth losing the base?’, 20 May)…

The chances of my 20-year-old student son being at an Ariana Grande concert on a Monday night were, my head…

Home  Twenty-two people were killed and 59 wounded by a man who blew himself up, with a bomb containing metal…

‘Fred Goodwin off the hook again,’ declared the Scottish Daily Record. That neatly summed up one strand of sentiment behind…

Sometimes, on Sundays, I visit Richard, a friend who’s 95 and lives alone. The idea originally was that I’d be…

Had Theresa May not on Monday summarily abandoned her manifesto threat to raid the savings of those who end up…

Elections matter. They are fundamental to our way of life. So, while it is appropriate that the campaigns stopped on…

I am trying to remember if there was ever a worse Conservative election campaign than this current dog’s breakfast —…

In most parts of the world, we have now supped so full of terrorist horrors that the death of 22…

There is a curious twist in the montage on the cover of Rodney Tiffen’s Disposable Leaders; a detailed treatise on…

‘A shudder in the loins engenders there/ The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead’ intoned W.B.…

The bestselling humourist and New Yorker essayist David Sedaris is renowned for an almost hypnotic deadpan drollery and maybe especially…

This is one of the most remarkable, hilarious, jaw-droppingly candid and affecting memoirs I have read for some time —…

I once spent an evening, back in the mid-1980s, with William Colby, the legendary spy and director of the CIA.…

In the welter of Syrian bloodshed, why should we remember the death of a single man? Because he was the…

As well as being a leading architectural historian Mary Miers is an editor at Country Life. For her latest book…

All animals, Scott Carney tells us, seek comfort. But human beings are a bit different. We don’t need to spend…

I once asked Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, what she did to relax. Nailing me to the wall…

In 2015 a pair of linen drawers belonging to Queen Victoria sold at auction for over £12,000. In old age…

The symptoms of the Spanish flu could be ghastly. Perhaps Laura Spinney should have chosen her title with more care…

Somewhere around the middle of the 17th century our modern concept of the museum began to take shape. Until then…

I should have written about this play earlier; it is on now at the Sydney Theatre Company Wharf 1. Black…

Oh, Pirates of the Caribbean, I have given you every chance down the years. Every chance. I am always hopeful.…

Size, of course, matters a great deal in art; so does scale — which is a different matter. The art…

The concert began with a flourish and a honk. Well, of course it did. Telemann wrote his last Ouverture-Suite in…

‘Hell is better than what I personally witnessed,’ says Ben Ferencz, who was one of the American troops sent in…

Birds have been giving me a lot of grief of late. There’s Tappy — the blue tit who has built…

How about some queercore garage punk? PWR BTTM — the name means something empowering to do with buggery — are…

Harpsichordists are supposed to make love, not war: Sir Thomas Beecham famously compared the sound they make to ‘two skeletons…

Anyone who thinks they have experienced absolute boredom, or even doubts that such a state can exist, should go to…

The Olivier describes Salomé by Yaël Farber as a ‘new’ play. Not quite. It premièred in Washington a couple of…

Hokusai wanted to paint everything, says Laura Freeman, and at 70 he was only just beginning

The last days of May see all the ongoing tournaments coming to an end: both TGR’s and Young Chelsea’s Super…

In 1972, in collaboration with George Botterill, two-times British champion, I published a revolutionary book on 1 … g6 which…

Black to play. This position is from Arnason-Keene, London 1981. This position also arose from a Modern Defence. How did…

In Competition No. 2999 you were invited to supply a poem which takes as its first line W.S. Gilbert’s ‘A policeman’s…

The unclued lights, (two of two words), are of a kind. Chambers does not give the solution at 12 Across.…

Solution to 2308: Landmark This puzzle was Doc’s 600th to be published in this series. The unclued lights are two-word…

Q. Re getting away from bores at drinks parties (Dear Mary, 20 May). I take issue with the idea that…

Pollen Street Social lives in a Georgian house on Pollen Street, Mayfair, a narrow curve between Hanover Street and Maddox…

New York   Although both guilt and innocence fascinate me, I’m not so sure that there is such a thing…

‘Jeremy, I want you to sit here next to me — unless you’re frightened of me?’ We were briefly introduced…

Susie Dent has been trying to make us love Americanisms on Radio 4. Now Miss Dent knows far more about…

After spending the day unblocking the gutters and drains in the pouring rain, he wasn’t in the mood for a…

Not a bad week for Roger Federer then: first pootling along being cool and rich in a morning suit at…

My father worked as a fire warden during the Blitz, trying to contain the damage done by the Luftwaffe, and…

Most racehorse trainers, those at least who didn’t have a legacy from Aunt Agatha to lubricate their way into the…