The Liberal party should stand for business, but it doesn’t. It should stand for jobs, but it doesn’t. It should…

One day about 20 years ago, I was walking down Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, giving a word of encouragement here…

I sat down with my father at a supposedly authentic Roman trattoria, anticipating a gluttonous, gluten-rich payload. Two Irish women…

Commentators here in America called President Trump’s (sweet Jesus, does that sound good) inauguration speech ‘dark’, proving again their own…

Like many women watching Donald Trump’s swearing in as the 45th President of the United States of America, I held…

Most people are bemused when I predict that Malcolm Turnbull won’t be prime minister by the end of the year.…

The inauguration is over and we now have the most unlikely of US presidents. A complete outsider to politics and…

Centrelink – as everyone in Australia knows – shat the bed last month, leaving the government (and particularly Christian Porter)…

‘Why doesn’t the Left do humour?’ I asked a left-wing friend. ‘Why is it only conservatives who know how to…

It’s not just a headwind; there’s a gale coming. The ‘global headwinds’ blamed by the Turnbull government for last week’s…

There are plans in place to tax horses out of British life. Proposed adjustments in business rates for non–residential properties…

For weeks now, we have been reading about a crisis in A&E — a symptom, we’re told, of a funding…

It looks like the people might do it again. After the British electorate misled themselves so badly and American voters…

‘The Reformation was a process of both renewal and division among Christians in Europe,’ said the Archbishops of Canterbury and…

Can we do without cash? Since 2015, digital payments in the UK have outnumbered those in cash, and we are…

‘Did you really deserve the Nobel prize?’ I ask Amartya Sen. ‘Why do you think you won?’ When you’re sitting…

On Wednesday afternoon I went to the British embassy in Washington for ‘a tea and champagne reception’ to mark the…

Every Christmas, I ask my loved ones for at least two pairs of corduroy trousers. Off with a sigh tramps…

That the US should have elected as president someone like Donald Trump came as a shock. But the US is…

In his inaugural speech last week, the new President Trump said, among much else, the ‘American carnage’ of poverty, ignorance…

Nuclear near-misses It was revealed that last June an unarmed Trident missile test-fired off Florida from a British submarine headed…

Did you know that if you use the f-word while talking to a BT representative, they hang up on you?…

Real Invasion Day Sir: Australians will be celebrating Australia Day as people living in freedom in a beautiful and truly…

Home The Supreme Court ruled by eight to three that, without an act of Parliament, the government could not effectually…

President Trump dislikes multilateral trade deals, preferring nation-to-nation ones

Parliament is the cockpit of the nation, but MPs have been on autopilot rather a lot in the past 40-odd…

Perversity is a much undervalued British trait, much more redolent of our real psyche than queuing, drinking tea or being…

The English tradition of dissenting judgments in important civil cases is a good one. They are often better than the…

The Prime Minister’s heralded ‘industrial strategy’ was robbed of headlines by the story of the misguided Trident missile. But it…

Because we’re all so obsessed with what it was that made the Nazis tick, we tend to overlook the bigger…

‘Old radicals become quietist’ a character in Valley of the Weed tells Plant, the appropriately-named private detective investigating the disappearance…

Anyone looking for a groundbreaking ethnography of the global political elite —the elusive social grouping that western electorates are currently…

Empires in the Sun might conjure up romantic visions for some, but this book’s essence is distilled in its subtitle,…

Can American publishers be dissuaded from foisting absurd, bombastic subtitles on their books as if readers are all Trumpers avid…

Back in 1978, a young and already successful Steven Spielberg told a bunch of would-be moviemakers at the American Film…

According to the author of this beautifully illustrated, hugely engaging book, if we were ever to choose a fellow mammal…

If you read the first volume of John Romer’s A History of Egypt, which traces events along the Nile from…

Being against empathy sounds like being against flowers or sparrows. Surely empathy is a good thing? Isn’t one of the…

Like many debut novels, The Nix, by the American author Nathan Hill, is about somebody writing their first book. Samuel…

In backgammon, a blot is a single checker, sitting alone and unprotected. This is a sly title for this sly…

In a Kashmiri apple orchard, a young fugitive from the Indian army’s cruel oppressions spots a snake that has ‘mistaken…

Writing to her sister Cassandra about Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, Jane Austen declared, in a parody of Walter…

Seventy years after the Nazi Holocaust, against the background of a rich and varied literature, Laurence Rees has achieved the…

Any impressively long wall is bound to cause us to recall the midfield dynamo and philosopher John Trewick. In 1978…

Michael Andrews once noted the title of an American song on a scrap of paper: ‘Up is a Nice Place…

Danny Boyle introduced T2 Trainspotting at the screening I attended and said that, throughout filming, he’d seen the cast looking…

It used to be said that Bruckner composed the same symphony nine times, whereas, thanks to the comparative frequency of…

Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden has not received a professional staging in the UK for 60 years. Think about that for…

How does a town like Hungerford, tucked into the Berkshire hills, with its sleepy canal running through it and high…

The mid-life crisis novel, I think it’s fair to say, is traditionally a male form. But in Louise Doughty’s Apple…

David Spicer’s farce Raising Martha opens with a skeleton being disinterred on a frog farm by animal-rights activists. They hope…

Countless indignities have been visited upon the Hallelujah Chorus. Currently it is being used in a suggestive television commercial for…

You can always tell a beginner, or a poor player, at the bridge table — they’re the ones who start…

The new book by Thomas Engqvist, Réti: Move by Move (Everyman Chess), about the hypermodern leader Richard Réti, is so significant…

White to play. This is from Réti-Spielmann, Opatija 1912. How did Réti conclude his kingside attack? Answers to me at…

In Competition No. 2982 you were invited to recast John Masefield’s ‘Sea Fever’ in light of the news that the…

Six words (one with American spelling) read clockwise in sequence round the perimeter. Each of seventeen clues comprises a definition…

Bill Shankly said: ‘Some people think football is a matter of life and death … ( I can assure them…

Q. I recently made an arrangement with a flaky friend from university to go to my gym together. Half an…

I know an immensely grand aristocratic lady, impeccably mannered, with a regal grace and presence, who cannot be trusted near…

 Gstaad The snows came tumbling down just as the camel-drivers headed back to the Gulf. In fact, they never saw…

I keep finding myself singing ‘Nellie the elephant’ who, packing her trunk and saying goodbye to the circus, went off…

‘If life is a race, I feel that I’m not even at the starting line,’ I said to the doctor…

‘This carnage stops here,’ declared the headline in the Daily Telegraph, quoting President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech. My husband tried…

The problem holding up my house move turns out to be a wiggle. Have you ever had a wiggle? It…

I feel a bit sorry for Piers Morgan. On Tuesday, Ewan McGregor was due to appear on the sofa with…

I was at home enjoying an online episode of Tales of the Texas Rangers when my daughter interrupted me, wanting…