After a decade of muddle-headed thinking by the so-called Recognition movement, their confusion best summed up by Speccie columnist Gary…

First impressions are telling. When I first visited Taipei 25 years ago, the roads were crowded with bicycles. A decade…

The Human Rights Commission’s selective agenda does not include the protection of fundamental human rights like freedom of speech. For…

Let me tell you about a couple of patients who illustrate how feminism can contribute to both domestic violence and…

Sooner or later some deranged Islamic fundamentalist is going to kill a lot of Australians for the greater glory of…

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr said ‘I would not give a fig for simplicity before complexity, but for simplicity after complexity…

Three weeks ago, Parliament voted decisively to reject a bill that would have decriminalised abortion. Members of the New South…

Guilty. It’s not just the political class wrecking Australia’s economic future. Beside them in the dock are the overpaid corporate…

At war Australia, along with all of the West, is at war. The enemy is Islamic terrorism. What should we…

When Theresa May decided to go for an early election, she transformed the nature of her premiership. Up to that…

The Cornish nationalist party Mebyon Kernow (‘sons of Cornwall’) is not contesting any seats in the general election. Its leader…

‘The news that Harry Perkins was to become prime minister went down very badly in the Athenaeum.’ Thus begins my…

Does anyone still care about handwriting? Although it was for centuries the medium and motor of daily life, handwriting has…

 Washington DC The panhandlers outside the White House hold signs saying: ‘Trump is President — saving to leave the country.’…

The dragon hung motionless above the surface of the earth, belly picked out in the colours of fire and a…

‘There’s a chance we’ll meet up with Richie McCaw in Christchurch,’ proffered the PR on our New Zealand press trip.…

In such gorgeous weather the best part of Scotland to visit is not (as so many seem to think) the…

From ‘News of the week’, The Spectator, 2 June 1917: There has been a lull on the Western front. It…

On the eve of the US presidential election, experts at Princeton university decided that Donald Trump had a 1 per…

Ignoring the hadith Sir: Douglas Murray and Jenny McCartney (‘The known wolf’ and ‘A war on joy’, 27 May) are…

Home The Conservatives grew restive when polls, for what they were worth, indicated a closing gap between their support and…

The science of ‘disaster recovery planning’, together with the related art of ‘crisis PR’, is a core discipline of 21st-century…

Enough of all these vital, apocalyptic, existential elections. They don’t half wear you out. The Scottish referendum was vital and…

‘Why not think about Gender Studies?’ asked an advertorial aimed at prospective students in the newspaper I was reading. Actually,…

My wife will not let our 11-year-old daughter take the dog for a walk around the large field adjoining our…

At Mass on Sunday, we were issued with a letter from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, entitled ‘The General Election 2017’.…

A hoicked-up small boy sits astride a yoked-up heavy horse, while three sun-stained men smile at posterity. Hairy hooves press…

‘Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that, mate,’ the Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios remarked to his opponent…

The group of kidnapped women were terrified. They had been brought back to the camp as booty and were being…

In his biography of Gaudí, published in 2001, Gijs van Hensbergen opined that ‘we should never try to finish the…

I like Bella Pollen for her open-mindedness, self-deprecation and verve. Given her early success as a fashion designer — top…

Arundhati Roy has published only one previous novel, but that one, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize.…

Beyond the patricide and even the incest, the horror of the Oedipus myth lies in its insistence that our fates…

In The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Sue Townsend’s hapless teenage diarist, reeling from the news that Argentina has just…

Some 30 summers ago we were staying at a famously beautiful villa outside Turin; our hostess was — indeed is…

In 1978, Adam Nicolson received three Hebridean islands as a 21st birthday present from his father, Nigel. The Shiants, each…

Pop’s counterfactuals tend to be built on questioning mortality: what if Jimi Hendrix had lived? Or Buddy Holly? Rarely does…

The ancient Greeks had a word for it —katabasis, descending into the depths, to the underworld itself, in search of…

Georg Büchner, a justly neglected German playwright, died at the age of 23 leaving a half-finished script about a mad…

At the age of 30, Jun Chen arrived in Australia post Tianamen Square. He settled in Brisbane where his first…

A Covent Garden barfly was scanning her programme during the first interval: ‘Oh yes, the one about the gynaecologist.’ She…

Bump to bump they stand: Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, both pregnant, both apple-cheeked and glowing as expectant mothers should…

One evening a few weeks ago I was on my way to the opening of an exhibition at the Venice…

In such times as these, enough to try a man’s soul, a dose of John Finnemore is advisable. His brand…

On the face of it, the two new big drama series of the week don’t have a great deal in…

I used to love the National Army Museum in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, which was crammed with the memorabilia of…

In Competition No. 3000 you were invited to provide an answer, in verse or prose, to a famous literary question…

Two unclued lights form the title by which a 38 32 is commonly known. This title’s first word defines one…

Corrections of misprints in clues give TANGLED UP IN BLUE, the title of a song by Bob Dylan. Answers to…

Q. I am a member of a well-known country house opera society, and I organise annual trips to performances for…

It was a typical bank holiday. Usual English weather: glorious, until you leave home without a brolly. Then fickleness supervenes…

I feel like an obituary writer, what with Nick Scott, Roger Moore, Alistair Horne — all great buddies — and…

My latest bed partner is a seven-year-old lad. That first night we slept together in my double bed, I hardly…

When Dickens wanted to buy a house in 1837, he wrote to Richard Bentley, who had started the magazine in…

‘You’re probably excited about your new service and keen to start using it as soon as you can,’ said the…

A leading article appeared in Nature last week in defence of intelligence research. It lamented the fact that it is…

The guests at my brother-in-law Rick’s 70th birthday lunch party were distinguished, silver-haired, well heeled. Long before Rick rescued the…

A few years ago, someone asked me how to fix social care costs for the elderly. One eventual idea of…

It’s the funniest bridge story I’ve heard in ages. At the recent Lady Milne championship (the women’s Home Internationals), one…

To the best of my knowledge, Michael Basman is the first officially titled chess master to ever stand in a UK…

Black to play. This position is from Mecking-Basman, Hastings 1966. How did Black make the most of his active knights?…