There are many similarities between the way the Left, in all their wisdom and touchy-feely clear-sightedness, react both to the…

It’s a little know fact that when French aristo Baron Pierre de Coubertin averred that ‘the important thing is not…

As I was leaving the sweaty Q&A set at the Docklands Studios in Melbourne, a lefty dweeb in the audience…

Ask anyone from Malcolm Turnbull down to the fedora-wearing Socialist leafleting on the corner of Flinders Street Station and odds…

It was Victor Hugo who wrote that ‘an invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be…

The sorry state of free speech in this country appears to concern a lot of people in this country. The…

After NSW Premier Mike Baird, with his Greens and neo-Marxist allies rammed through a ban on greyhound racing, ‘Kim Il…

It was recently exposed in News Limited newspapers that as many as one in three students in some elite high…

It would have once been uncontroversial to suggest nations have characteristics that not only distinguish them from other countries, but…

 Stockholm For a British boy to be killed by a grenade attack anywhere is appalling, but for it to happen…

′Love Trumps Hate’ has become one of Hillary Clinton’s official campaign slogans. It’s a clunky pun but you get the…

A concerted effort is under way to make sure that, when it comes to the European Arrest Warrant, Brexit does…

 Toftir, Faroe Islands Almost twenty years ago I founded a heavy metal band called Týr. Our songs, with titles such…

When the model and actress Anastasia Lin was crowned Miss World Canada last year, a fairly easy and lucrative career…

 Lido di Dante, Ravenna When the earthquake struck in the dead of night at 3.36 a.m. — the Devil’s Hour…

We’re so used to looking at the abbeys smashed up by Henry VIII — particularly Rievaulx and Byland, in north…

Home Britain rejected a call by Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France who hopes to return to power next…

European unions come and go. Back in 1794, one of the more improbable ones was founded when Corsica joined Britain…

Behind the cover-up Some facts about Burkinis: — The Burkini was invented by Ahedi Zanetti, a Lebanese-born Australian businesswoman, in…

From ‘Mr Churchill’s misfire’, The Spectator, 2 September 1916: There is nothing that democracy so much hates as unfair privilege, and Mr Churchill…

It’s strange that, even now, the Brexit vote is routinely referred to as an expression of anger or frustration —…

Gender fluid Sir: I wonder if the authors of ‘Dr.James Barry’ got their inspiration from the 1999 publication by Isabel…

When David Cameron resigned, the Conservative Party Board pushed back the planned date for the election of a new leader…

I do not get out very much these days, but the glorious weekend weather persuaded me that I should spend…

There are no roads from the Peruvian river port of Iquitos, but the rich take aeroplanes. Those who cannot pay…

What the hell is going on with Ed Balls? Back in the horrible doldrums of the last Labour government, he…

Should we care two hoots whether negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP, pronounced ‘Tee-tip’ by cognoscenti) has…

It may be difficult to believe when you think of Donald Trump, but the age of super-humans is almost upon…

This exhilaratingly lowbrow first novel concentrates on money and lust or, to put it more bluntly, sex and the City.…

The Orwellian past is a foreign country; smells are different there. Pipe smoke and carbolic, side notes of horse dung…

Memoirs of old men, baldly, tend to be tricky. Sir Peter Wright, one of the founding pillars of the British…

John McEntee — ‘the Chancer from Cavan’, as he bills himself — has enjoyed a long career as a gossip…

Ian McEwan’s novels are drawn to enclosed spaces. There is the squash court upon which the surgeon plays a meticulously…

The Penguin History of Europe reaches its seventh volume (out of nine) with Richard J. Evans’s thorough and wide-ranging work…

A short-story renaissance has been promised since 2013. That year Alice Munro won the Nobel, Lydia Davis won the Booker…

In the beginning was Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, pleached and Proustian, released in February 1960. This was followed soon after,…

The Mexican author Juan Pablo Villa-lobos’s first short novel, Down the Rabbit Hole (Fiesta en la madriguera), was published in…

It was the brightest of futures; it was the End of Days. Three hundred and fifty years before Brexit, England…

In the American way, the child psychologist Alison Gopnik’s new book has an attractive sound-bitey title dragging a flat-footed subtitle…

Woody Allen has made a film nearly every year in the four decades since the release of the award-winning Annie…

The last thing we need right now, in these divisive times, is a series that spends all its time crowing…

In the 1980s, supermarkets stocked a fruit juice named ‘Um Bongo’ with the strapline ‘They drink it in the Congo!’.…

Utopia dons some unlikely guises, crops up in some odd places. On the sea wall a couple in their teens…

The bad news for old rock’n’rollers is that there’s not much time left to stay at Heartbreak Hotel — these…

I think I might be turning into Alf Garnett. When I was growing up I saw him as an obnoxious,…

Sir Andrew Davis, chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, described its recently announced 2017 season as ‘a marvellous feast…

We don’t really do operetta in Britain these days — and at this stage in the game, I don’t really…

Definitions in ten clues contain a misprint; corrections spell out a theme word. Unclued lights are four pairs of words…

A new footpath from the village down to the beach opened earlier this year to a great fanfare. It was…

By the time you read this, I will have (hopefully) played my first hand of bridge in five weeks. No…

Make sure you tell everybody about Zimbabwe,’ said the lady at our block of flats in suburban Harare as we…

Americans want a president with the steadiest possible finger on the nuclear button, which is why they worry about the…

White to play. This is from Palucha-Skettos, Bhubaneswar 2016. Here White destroyed the black position with a typical tactical thrust.…

The Soho Hotel is an actors’ hotel. They come for press junkets and interviews that reveal nothing because there is…

Some people carry a terrible burden: they have an indubitable duty to drink wine. Through family, profession and the overarching…

Just about this time of year, 42 years ago, Dunhill’s of London, the famed tobacconist, had a bold idea. Its…

‘Oh no, I can’t bear it,’ said the builder boyfriend when I told him I wanted to look at one…

Bookmaking’s image has changed. Alongside the arrival of the betting exchanges, the evolution of the big names like Hills, Coral,…

One of the most reliable methods of frustrating chess computers is to play 1 d4 but then avoid the well-trodden…

In Competition No. 2963 you were invited to submit a poem about the North or the South or one comparing…

Round the perimeter run the titles of three songs from the musical Guys and Dolls, epitomised by SKY (28) Masterson…

The post The Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator.

Q. We have a heavenly house in Corfu where we go as often as possible. The best thing about it…

Old Quentin Letts was on the wireless the other day asking ‘What’s the point of the London black cab?’ Between…

E .D. Hirsch Jr., the American educationalist and author of Cultural Literacy, has a new book out that may throw…