When Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says that it is ‘foreseeable’ that a state of emergency could last beyond another 12…

The Spectator Australia has always prided itself on being first with the news. However, there is one publishing milestone we…

Our threatened eco-system A fragile, irreplaceable eco-system is threatened and not a single environmentalist has raised their voice in protest.…

Where’s the new political party opposed to Covid abuses of power?

Has China awakened a sleeping giant?

Why are we giving away countless billions to foreigners?

Or how Diversity beats PPE

Victoria’s freedoms are being crushed

Biden plays the race card

Bandaids for the Californian disease

And Mrs Obama ensures a Trump victory

Now that we must all wear face masks, it is hardly surprising that they have started to become a fashion…

My train journey to work is bliss

Is China’s virus strategy paying off?

Greece and Turkey are in a battle for hegemony

The new scandal about to hit the government

Covid has exposed our muddled thinking about food

Is Trump about to pull off his most spectacular trick yet?

Our bodies’ defences work in ways we still don’t understand

It’s not about money Sir: Professor Tombs criticises Alex Massie (Letters, 22 August) for ignoring evidence when the latter claims…

Staying in Britain for the summer has been, in many ways, entirely glorious. We have zigzagged from Shropshire through Derbyshire…

Many commentators have argued that the recent grading controversy indicates just how important public examinations are. Up to a point,…

That an abundance of tanks is no guarantee of a happy and secure nation was evident from the Soviet Union’s…

About Last Night It was suggested that the BBC might ‘decolonise’ the Last Night of the Proms by removing ‘Rule,…

Home Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, made pupils wear face-coverings in school corridors. It didn’t take long for…

The government will pass the test it has set itself: schools in England will return next week. Pupils may well…

I’d always rather liked the Finns, until I came across the conductor Dalia Stasevska. When I asked my mother what…

A takeover battle for BT would bring much-needed excitement to the City — as well as a major political row.…

‘The British Museum stands in solidarity with the British Black community, with the African American community, with the Black community…

It happens a lot lately. Not just in a Twitter DM or an email but in real life. Someone tells…

‘This city is not going to stop burning itself down until they [the protestors] know that this officer has been…

In 1798, Tipu Sultan of Mysore sent an embassy to Mauritius. At home, he had fought the British and seen…

Every so often the past makes a pass at you. An old school report, a train ticket, a curl from…

Presumably because a small part of it takes place in Salford, the epigraph to Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel consists of…

Is Boris Johnson a fan of Harry Perry Robinson? If he isn’t, he really ought to be. Reading this absorbing…

‘I don’t at all hate lies,’ Elena Ferrante explained in Frantumaglia, her manifesto for authorial anonymity. ‘I find them useful…

As Colombia comes out of 50 years of civil war and into a still precarious peace, with some 220,000 dead,…

Toussaint Louverture’s ‘crazy dream’ for Haiti has still to be realised, says Amy Wilentz

When I first arrived in Australia quarter of a century ago one of the many kind invitations I received was…

Things are starting to happen culturally, at least outside of Victoria. Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre is rehearsing a play to…

Tenet is the latest high-concept, time-bending blockbuster from Christopher Nolan and it’s the film that (unofficially) reopens cinemas in the…

Q: ‘How would you define transcendence?’ A: ‘Well, how would you define it?’ I interviewed Van Morrison last year. (I’m…

Fifteen minutes into the first episode of I Hate Suzie, main character Suzie Pickles was doing a photoshoot in her…

On his lockdown rambles, Christopher Howse finds beauty and solace in London’s street furniture

While most of life’s pleasures can be shared, reading is lonely. It’s more than possible for six friends to enjoy…

The virus has broken Edinburgh. The shattered remnants of the festival are visible on the internet. Here’s what happened. The…

There wasn’t going to be a Lucerne Festival this year. The annual month-long squillion-dollar international beano got cancelled, along with…

Tina Faulk There are very few ‘happy ending’ stories in the cruel history of slavery. This may just be one…

There was only a handful of us arriving at Bristol on flight 6114 from Nice. Oscar and I had the…

Crowds, Covid and sport: could it get any crazier? I don’t mind about golf: no idiots yelling ‘Get in the…

Reading the speech Tony Hall gave to the Edinburgh Television Festival, I was struck by his upbeat, confident tone. The…

Q. For professional reasons it is important that I am not fat. However I have put on more than a…

Gstaad The jokes about keeping a mistress are old and I’ve yet to hear a truly funny one (‘The difference…

After driving around the hospital grounds in concentric circles until I was surely down a wormhole, I found the scanning…

I have not played a single hand of bridge for about a month, neither have I kibitzed online. Ergo I…

Pandemic has brought many truths, the most minor of which is: I can’t cook steak. I thought I could. I…

The unclued lights were: 12 CORNI, anagram of Corin (As You Like It); 23 MANDIRA, Miranda (The Tempest); 27 LARDOON,…

In Competition No. 3163 you were invited to submit well-known poems encapsulated in four lines. Now that the internet has…

Kenya I stood under huge skies in the open country of our farm in northern Kenya and, after months of…

Anna Massey had no dramatic training before appearing on stage in 1955 aged 17 in The Reluctant Debutante by William…

Nakamura–Carlsen, August 2020. Carlsen has just advanced 40…g6-g5+, laying a nasty trap. Only one move gives White a fighting chance…

An 11-word quotation (in ODQ) reads clockwise around the perimeter from square 1. Other unclued lights are names of a…

Facing Magnus Carlsen, you have two problems. The first is obvious — he’s the best player in the world. The…