Conservative and mainstream Australians can only sit idly by and watch the ‘Trump revolution’ with a mixture of envy and…

Whenever I can justify flying business class to the UK I go with Malaysian. I do this mainly because three…

For me, at least, one of the less edifying sights of recent times was watching Australia’s Prime Minister and his…

Sanitising a hate-filled political campaign like the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign is difficult. It obviously has repugnant historical parallels…

Should Australia become a republic, it will greatly damage, and possibly destroy, the independence of the States, making nation-wide experiments…

Conservative thought must be in a bad way indeed when Speccie contributor James Allan advocates that Australian Conservatives must help…

Australia’s 17th census, conducted in 2016, was the first since the exercise began in 1911 to offer respondents the option…

The Prime Minister’s recent puritanical edicts regarding relationships between ministers and their staff do not have roots in conservative Christianity,…

Now here’s some news to gladden the heart of everyone who takes the recent Royal Commission’s line in deploring the…

We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the Australian public in one of its periodical fits of morality. —…

‘The government which stopped the boats can’t slow the planes’, concluded Michael McLaren, the Macquarie Media Network’s rising young star.…

This is the Time’s Up Oscars, the first one where the #MeToo movement is a major player, and no one…

I have not trusted a celebrity activist since 2014, when I read the headline ‘Angelina Jolie and William Hague tackle…

Familiar, depressing images emerge from Ghouta in Syria: rows of tiny white shrouds, children killed in relentless airstrikes, makeshift hospitals,…

In September last year, official figures showed a startling rise in the number of young British men turning up at…

 Ravenna Amid relentless propaganda about Italy being in the grip of fascism, Italians go to the polls on Sunday. It…

‘Don’t sit down too long my duck, you might be doing nothing,’ reads the inscription memorialising Barbara Joan Austin (4…

There’s an unwritten law governing Boris Johnson in Westminster: every-thing he says or does is a gaffe, or can be…

Home Crisis loomed over Brexit negotiations as Theresa May, the Prime Minister, travelled to the north-east to explain ‘this Government’s…

Of all the villages of London, it seems to me, most of the time, that I live in the happiest:…

From ‘A moral test’, 2 March 1918: The nation, in spite of all the silly talk about our war aims…

Ageing rockers The Rolling Stones announced their first live shows for five years. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards (both 74), Charlie…

Sterner stuff Sir: I refer to Mark Higgie’s article in The Spectator Australia last week. I served with DFAT for…

Jeremy Corbyn wants Britain to ‘stay in a customs union’, according to the BBC. The phrase does not make sense.…

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Every time Conservative Leavers speak up demanding a clean break…

A few years ago, in these pages, Matthew Parris defined Ukip as a party of extremists. Perhaps one of his…

Few readerships of any intelligent national magazine will be more alive to the perils and downsides of 21st–century cyber-life than…

Last week, the New York Times ran a very un-New-York-Times-y article, ‘Resentment Grows Over Who Gets Health Care Aid’. It…

A mixed bag of annual results from the big banks. RBS, still 73 per cent owned by the taxpayer, recorded…

I saw a biopic about Morecambe and Wise recently. The actors impersonating the comedians were not a patch on the…

Powerful memoirs by such eloquent doctors as Oliver Sacks, Atul Gawande, Henry Marsh, Gabriel Weston and Paul Kalanithi have whipped…

That there’s a direct correlation between sex and spying is probably Ian Fleming’s fault. Hard to think of Bond without…

  At a press conference in October 1981, Ronald Reagan quoted Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) in support of what is known…

A parliament of owls. A gaggle of geese. A convocation of eagles. But what is the generic term for the…

This remorselessly slow-moving, hazily allegorical drama about ageing and xenophobia is Jim Crace’s 12th book, and the first to appear…

Alastair Campbell is a man of many parts.   Journalist, spin doctor extraordinaire, diarist and now novelist. For this, his third…

A frail old woman sits alone on a chair on a darkened stage. There are flowers in her hair. She…

Leonard Rosoman is not a well-known artist these days. Many of us will, however, be subliminally familiar with his mural…

Most of the history I know and remember comes from my inspirational prep school teacher Mr Bradshaw. History was taught…

It feels like a long time since the launch of Home Front on Radio 4 back in June 2014, retracing…

I’m unlucky with Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. Twice in the past year I’ve bolted for the exit as soon the pianist…

Films about the Winter Olympics don’t grow on conifers. Twenty-five years ago there was Cool Runnings about the Jamaican bobsleigh…

Frozen starts with a shrink having a panic attack. She hyperventilates into her hand-bag and then gets drunk on an…

Almost a festival of Prosper Mérimée: at the Opera House we have performances of Carmen which is based on his…

Gstaad They have busy eyes and the set of their mouths is that of a hungry carnivore. Their hands are…

Poperinghe, Bailleul, Wytschaete, Gheluvelt, Ploegsteert, Messines, Zonnebeke, Passchendaele. The other week I grandiosely claimed that I have been reading about…

‘Good afternoon, my name is Bradley, and how may I be of help to you today?’ After you’ve spent ten…

You can tell by the tone of the jokes how most occupations are regarded and we’ve all heard the traditional…

No February blues for me. The past couple of weeks have been the most exciting and interesting (bridge-wise) I could…

This year’s tournament at Bunratty in Ireland was the celebratory 25th in the series and I was invited to deliver the…

White to play. This position is from Tiviakov-Jones, Bunratty Play-off. White’s next led to a decisive material gain. What did…

In Competition No. 3037 you were invited to take a song by Abba or the Beatles and rewrite the lyrics…

Clues are given according to alphabetical order of their answers. Each of thirty-two clues comprises a definition part and a…

The puzzle’s NUMERICAL DESIGNATION (3 41) is preceded by 7A and followed by 7D 12 33 37 to form the…

For parents of primary school children, the first Thursday in March has got to be the worst day of the…

Every now and then I try to invent a new scientific unit. I’ll never come up with anything as good…

Q. For some time I have been spoiled by paying a small rent for a central flat belonging to absentee…

‘What seas what shore what grey rocks what water lapping the bow’. So evocative, which seems strange: one would have…

I had long associated the phrase trahison des clercs with the writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft, though I can’t put my finger…