Issues controversially raised in this magazine often pop up, usually several weeks or months later, in mainstream political debate. And…

The left-wing Trudeau government is collapsing by the day

What really went on at the Cronulla riots

Go woke, get walked all over

Just before the state election...

Hold the front page: men are different to women

Labor’s Misinformation/Disinformation Bill is a disgrace

Pesutto should go west

No, I don’t feel welcomed to my country

How long can Starmer last?

Don’t let activist judges govern

There’s a grumble, often repeated among country folk, that ‘hunting people got hunting banned’. What they mean (I think) is…

This week in New York Volodymyr Zelensky will present Joe Biden with a ‘Victory Plan’ for Ukraine. But how to…

As the four candidates prepare to make their pitch at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, we quizzed them about…

There were many tributes paid to the Jersey aid worker Simon Boas when he died of throat cancer in July,…

In recent years, the Conservative party conference has become something of an irrelevance. Often it is little more than a…

The American general David Petraeus famously asked of the invasion of Iraq: ‘Tell me how this ends.’ That’s the question…

Béziers, France The École Mairan in Béziers in southern France is a happy neighbourhood elementary school housed in a superb…

Earlier this month, the fortunate folk of Frankfurt were entertained by the 11th annual tram-drivers competition, with entries from 26…

What the heckler No party conference would be complete without a heckler or two, but where did the term come…

An ancient Greek, counting up the value of the gifts that Sir Keir Starmer had received over his spotless political…

Craic down Sir: If Ireland had been investing in infrastructure as Ross Clark writes (‘Bog down’, 21 September), Dublin would…

‘Yous!’ a train cleaner in rubber gloves says as we arrive at Liverpool Lime Street. ‘What are yous doing here?’…

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, in his speech to the Labour party conference in Liverpool, said that ‘if…

Are the Conservatives in a fit state to choose a new leader? The party that gathers in Birmingham next week…

Sir Keir Starmer offered a sausage to fortune when he let Lord Alli bankroll half the cabinet. One’s heart does…

As a peer who hates publicity, Lord Alli might have been expected to dodge the Labour conference – given the…

There is worryingly little time left to make the appropriate preparations for Bridget Phillipson’s official birthday, on 19 December. As…

Old tortoise that I am, my head usually yanks back into my shell when people start talking about artificial intelligence.…

Occasionally I am told that I go too hard on the BBC. It is an understandable gripe which I sometimes…

Next month’s Budget tax raids on capital have provoked a festival of creative doom-mongering on the fringes of Labour’s conference…

For many readers, my absence from these pages may have gone unnoticed. Those few who’ve detected my disappearance might have…

Rooney’s fourth novel is another case of compare and contrast, with various pairings of anxious characters struggling through their twenties and thirties in picturesque Dublin

When Chloe Dalton adopts an abandoned new-born leveret, she soon finds her domestic routine radically altered

Writing from opposite sides, Leo Tolstoy and William Howard Russell exposed the horror of conditions in a quagmire war which seemed to have no meaning

With titillating newspaper coverage making John Christie’s trial a hot ticket, everyone seemed to want to peep behind the curtains of the house of horror – or even break in

When Gillian Anderson appealed to women to send her their sexual fantasies, she guaranteed strict anonymity – prompting a ‘torrent of unbridled passion from across the world’

The final volume of N.A.M. Rodger’s magisterial history documents the gradual decline of Britain’s naval power as the empire disintegrated

Knausgaard’s unsettling novel continues to explore previous themes in the series, including the strange phenomenon of the black metal music scene in socially balanced Norway

When the Allies arrived in the city in the wake of the German retreat, they were shocked by the child prostitutes, shady commerce and downright miseria

Far from being a puritanical wasteland, revolutionary Britain saw the foundation of the Oxford Circle, a group of philosophers and scientists who bridged the political divide of the times

Since today’s computers can process information beyond human capabilities, we are on a precipice never faced before, says Yuval Noah Harari, in another sweeping narrative

So now it is spring and that carnival season with its promise of Melbourne Cups and AFL grand finals hits…

Doctor Who fans may remember that after the show’s triumphant return in the early 2000s, we found out that showrunner…

If you wish to know how to become a master negotiator, a formidable body of books will now offer to…

Ballet companies have become dismally timid about exploring their 20th-century heritage: everything nowadays must be either box-fresh new or a…

Grade: B+ Anton Bruckner wrote 11 symphonies – Numbers One to Nine plus a student exercise and the formidable rejected…

The fate of the pop musician – at least the pop musician below the top tier of stardom – has…

Megalopolis, which draws parallels between the fall of the Roman empire and modern-day America, is a film by Francis Ford…

‘At the record company meeting/ On their hands – at last! – a dead star!’ Back when Morrissey was more…

George Orwell took a dim view of competitive sport; he found the idea that ‘running, jumping and kicking a ball…

It’s a critic’s job to pick holes in the dafter aspects of opera productions, but in truth audiences are usually…

Waiting for Godot is a church service for suicidal unbelievers. Those who attend the rite on a regular basis find…

The recent sci-fi movie Paradise Hills delivered one gem for this viewer; the choristers’ white ruffs setting off each young…

Speccie reader Raymond has asked me to explain the meaning of the compound noun ‘common sense.’ It was Aristotle who…

In electing this government, we seem to have picked the worst of both worlds: higher taxation combined with austerity in…

For only the second time in my life, I went to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last weekend. At least,…

The English language has immense resources, but the odd weakness. What, for instance, is the translation for ‘Auld lang syne’?…

Now that I’m about to turn 70, I’m wondering: shall I grow old gracefully, or disgracefully? Everyone I know, young…

Iona, Angola East of the gulps of cormorants along the Skeleton Coast by the Ilha da Baia dos Tigres, Atlantic…

The TV talent show star was due to arrive at 5 p.m., and would be checking into our house long…