Prime Minister Scott Morrison may be bruised by Malcolm Turnbull’s bile-laden farewell present, the Wentworth by-election.  But this atypical Turnbull-loving,…

Sharman Stone is not exactly a household name, not even in her own house. In two decades as a federal…

The Spectator Australia Investigative Journalism Unit prides itself in being ahead of other publishers in providing sneak previews of major…

A week or so ago my wife thought she might be losing her mind when she heard the late Freddie…

The future in doubt No election result is a certainty in advance but all the evidence suggests that the federal…

Travelling with The Gillian Like any writer waiting on the tarmac I was trying to think of ways to monetise…

‘Surely you mean sex,’ I told the Vice-Chancellor and the other Deans. It was 30 years ago and I had…

Is it a bridge too far leading to the destruction of the profit-based entrepreneurial capitalism that has brought us our…

So here’s a big picture question for all of you readers who see yourselves as generally being right-of-centre voters. What…

Whoever is eventually appointed to run the ABC, it’s Ultimo to a brick there’ll be no change in the corporation’s…

Gazing over the grand central gallery in London’s Natural History Museum – over the thousands of punters that visit daily…

Whatever anyone’s views on the enterprise, there was one question always begging to be asked of the European Union: ‘What…

Shortly before his death, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that capitalism crushed the integrity of artists and intellectuals. Assessed…

How to explain Theresa May’s resilience? As Prime Minister, she has survived mishaps and calamities that would have finished off…

It says something about the level of political discourse in America that Donald Trump decided to trumpet sanctions on Iran…

You probably haven’t heard of the loan charge. I hadn’t until a couple of months ago, when I told listeners…

Autumn’s wild bounty is a cause for celebration across the Continent. In France and Germany, people rush into the woods,…

J. A. Baker, an arthritic and short-sighted birdwatcher from Chelmsford, compared the British wilderness to ‘the goaded bull at bay,…

Since the Budget, economists have pointed out that Britain is turning into a health service with a government attached. The…

Home Austerity was ‘finally coming to an end’, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in the Budget. He…

Upon discovering that Sinéad O’Connor has converted to Islam, I was about as shocked as a Yuletide shopper hearing the…

On the wagon A ‘caravan’ of several thousand Central American migrants was reported to be travelling through Mexico towards the…

Political vitriol Sir: Vitriol and incivility seem to be everywhere in politics just now. In the last issue (27 October)…

At the Brexit-related cabinet last week — as revealed by James Forsyth in these pages — David Lidington made an…

There’s a spectre haunting the Tories — the spectre of 1997. Tories fear that history could be about to repeat…

I almost got killed this week. I went for a very early morning walk in a New Hampshire forest, in…

When the Fawn saw the selfies Boy had taken in the aftermath of his college football club’s initiation ceremony, first…

In celebration of its 110th birthday, I downloaded a Mills & Boon — The Greek Tycoon’s Blackmailed Mistress — and…

How much did Philip Hammond’s giveaway Budget help dying town centres? Not enough, say campaigners, but let’s give the Chancellor…

There is an African bird called the ox-pecker with which Germaine Greer, conversant as she is with the natural world,…

Who could possibly take exception to the Stoics? One of the more passive arms of Hellenistic philosophy, Stoicism required its…

This passionate series of engagements with the life of St Francis will stay in my mind for a very long…

The reader of Edward Carey’s Little must have a tender heart and a strong stomach. You will weep, you will…

Jonathan Coe writes compelling, humane and funny novels, but you sometimes suspect he wants to write more audacious ones. He…

America has for years been struggling with a shortage of the drugs it uses to execute people, yet it was…

This is a sentence. As is this — not an exceptionally beautiful one, but a sentence all the same, just…

A genre of memoir currently in vogue involves entwining the author’s personal story with the cultural history of a given…

‘What!’, railed Voltaire in his Dictionnaire Philosophique of 1764. ‘Is it in our 18th century that vampires still exist?’ Hadn’t…

In a living room in Vineland, New Jersey, in the 1870s, a botanist and entomologist named Mary Treat studied the…

Who says that the ‘great man’ theory of history is dead? Following hard on the heels of Andrew Roberts’s magnificent…

As travel writer, nature writer, memory retriever and, I would add, prose-poet of mesmerising lyricism, Horatio Clare is a celebrant…

The sixth and final season of House of Cards has begun without Kevin Spacey, who played the murderous Democratic American…

In Britain today, Islam in its original essence is not to be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but on…

You may have noticed that BBC iPlayer (for radio programmes) has been replaced this week with the new BBC Sounds…

In the year since it opened, the Bridge has given us the following: a harmless Karl Marx comedy by Richard…

How do you solve a problem like Lucia? Murder, madness, abuse, possibly even incest, all set to a soundtrack of…

The Little Drummer Girl (BBC1, Sunday) is the new John le Carré adaptation from the production company that brought us…

Mike Leigh’s Peterloo is one of those films where you keep waiting for it to get good, and waiting and…

Australians have a particular affection for portraits as evidenced by the popular Archibald and Moran portrait prizes and Anh Do’s…

New York I now know it by heart. Brooklyn Heights, that is. It takes 35 minutes by cab from where…

I apologised, was gladly granted an indulgence, and on Sunday I packed a small bag and reached into a drawer…

‘This isn’t so bad,’ said my friend, as we knelt at my old mare’s side as she lay on the…

Laikipia   My two Jersey bulls Halcyon and Hosanna were grazing happily on the lawn in front of the house…

For most bridge players, defence is the hardest part of the game. Not only do you need to visualise declarer’s…

This year’s Isle of Man Masters, sponsored by Chess.com, could claim to be the strongest ever open chess competition. The…

Black to play. This is from Cornette-Jumabayev, Isle of Man 2018. Black’s next move led to an overwhelming material advantage.…

In Competition No. 3072 you were invited to supply a short verse biography of a well-known figure from history.  …

The unclued lights, one of two words, and the others when paired are of a kind. One individual unclued light…

The unclued Across lights are US state capitals and the unclued Down ones are the states. The title refers to…

Last week I spoke at an event at Nottingham University to commemorate the 60th anniversary of The Rise of the…

Leader in the clubhouse for top rugby try by an Englishman in 2018: Oliver Gildart. Oliver who? Oliver Gildart, only…

Q. Previously a long-term and content single man, earlier in the year I began a relationship with a wonderful girl,…

The Pig at Combe is a restaurant in a country house hotel in a valley in Devon. I actually went…

Radio 3 tries to distract listeners from music by posing little quizzes and hearing quirky details of history from a…