For those who enjoy their schadenfreude neat, there was plenty to savour watching the NSW election results on the ABC.…

If anything happened to disrupt our imports of oil and fuel, such as a blockade of shipping through the South…

The return of the Berejiklian government demonstrates that good governments can win a third term, despite self-inflicted wounds. That will…

It was utter bunkum; but typical self-delusion by those ideological crusaders determined to do whatever it takes ‘to save the…

It is a chilly December evening in London, and on the floor of this hospital the windows are an opaque…

Aussie school children are getting another barrage of third-party climate catastrophism, only  a fortnight since the kids’ climate strike. March…

Our saddest times are when those we love leave us. When there is not even time to say goodbye, the…

The famous American author Mark Twain is rumoured to have once said ‘If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let…

No wonder so many politicians live in mortal terror of being interviewed by Alan Jones. No one prepares more thoroughly,…

The most effective political insult of modern times was delivered by Norman Lamont in 1993, when he declared that John…

To most of the cabinet, it does not matter if Theresa May announces a timetable for her resignation: they can’t…

Management books often repeat the dictum: ‘If there’s one thing worse than making mistakes, it’s not learning from them.’ So…

They cut virgin paths through tropical forests, paddled dugout canoes over West African rapids, sailed along the Yangtze in a…

Servant of the People is a hilarious Ukrainian situation comedy currently running on Netflix. It opens with a young high-school…

Thumbing avidly through Heat magazine recently in a fevered search for the latest on the Cheryl/Liam/Naomi infernal triangle, I was…

 Washington REVERSE FERRET! When he edited the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie used to throw open his office door and bellow this…

In just a few weeks, the government begins its crackdown on porn. From April, all UK-based internet users will be…

The tale of forced Yorkshire rhubarb has the makings of a David Lean film. Frosty Slavic beginnings, wartime devotion, steam…

It is not hard to make the case that vaccination programmes have been one of the greatest contributions to mankind…

Home The House of Commons voted to take Brexit business into its own hands, passing by 329 to 302 an…

I’m famed for my mustard cords. Back in 2013, the press mockingly dubbed my campaign trips around the country in…

Silly signs The Department for Transport ordered councils to remove ‘obsolete and unnecessary’ road signs. Some examples of the art…

The petition calling on the UK to remain in the EU has garnered 8,000 votes from Jacob Rees-Mogg and 700…

Still better than Cameron Sir: I disagree with your editorial (‘Agony prolonged’, 23 March) that Theresa May is the worst…

There is an obvious solution to the Brexit problem. It is based on a recognition that we want out and…

   Washington Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into ‘Russiagate’ was meant to bring down President Donald Trump. That was the plan.…

Sometimes it’s worth addressing what didn’t happen. For one exasperating aspect of appearing on television news is leaving the studio…

Last weekend the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, described the massacre in Christchurch as the result ‘of failing to root…

How big is Brexodus — the flight of business and people from the City of London in parallel with our…

In this careful study of the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity, John Barton, former Oriel and Laing professor of…

The Way We Eat Now begins with a single bunch of grapes. The bunch is nothing special to the modern…

In his first book, published in 1977, Tim Mackintosh-Smith described mentioning the idea of travelling to Yemen while studying Arabic…

‘Why would anyone write a historical study of it?’ asks Gavriel Rosenfeld about the Fourth Reich at the start of…

If western philosophy is no more than ‘footnotes to Plato’, so, arguably, is the myth of its founding hero, Socrates.…

Ordinarily, I love books that answer questions I’ve never asked, but Simon May’s baffling book has blown my mind. The…

Philip Kerr’s first Bernie Gunther novel, March Violets, was published 30 years ago. From the start, the format was a…

Near the start of Fleur Jaeggy’s extraordinary novel Proleterka, the unnamed narrator reflects: ‘Children lose interest in their parents when…

Like someone who has bought a first computer, then reads the manual from front to back but never actually gets…

‘This seems to be in your rough area. I mean, it contains wooden legs and everything…’ my commissioning editor at…

‘I’m a revolutionary Marxist, and if you’re not one by the end of semester I haven’t done my job properly,’…

I think I probably qualify as the oldest fashion editor in the world, because in spite of my advanced age…

As the ravens circle around Broadcasting House in London’s West End, presaging difficult times ahead for BBC Radio, with less…

Bruce Norris is a firefighter among dramatists. He runs towards danger while others sprint in the other direction. His Pulitzer-winning…

All good narrative painting contains an element of allegory, but most artists don’t go looking for it on a Coventry…

To stage Verdi’s Il Trovatore, they say, is easy: you just need the four greatest singers in the world. The…

Which of the Beatles would you most like to have been? Not either of the dead ones, presumably. Nor the…

There was a moment more than 20 years ago when Bankside Power Station was derelict but its transformation into Tate…

Dumbo is an elephant we can’t forget. More than 70 years since Disney’s 1941 film, the big-eared baby is still…

The closing chapters of Homer’s Odyssey were the source for the opera regarded as the crowning achievement of composer Claudio…

New York   This place feels funny, a bit like Beirut, where Christians, Jews, Muslims, Druze and encamped Palestinians live…

I’ve swapped my carer’s tray in Devon for a barrow and spade halfway up a cliff in the south of…

‘This clean sock regime is really annoying,’ said the builder boyfriend, as he rummaged through his newly inaugurated top drawer.…

As jockeys, trainers, punters and media folk gathered at Newbury on Saturday to say farewell to Noel Fehily, the ultimate…

Susanna and I don’t play on the same team very often, but once a year Fiona Hutchison puts together a…

A favoured line of the great Bobby Fischer was to meet both the French Defence (1 e4 e6) and the…

White to play. This position is from Fischer–Myagmarsuren, Sousse Interzonal 1967. How did Fischer conclude his attack in fine style?…

In Competition No. 3091 you were invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies. This is an idea shamelessly pinched from the…

The unclued lights are of a kind and all have to be ignored in the completed grid.   Across 1   …

The unclued lights are the names of FAMOUS STEAM TRAINS including the pairs at 14/15 and 17/30.  First prize Jenny…

On Monday, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge university, Stephen Toope, issued a statement defending the decision of the divinity faculty to…

Alevels, from the perspective of a ‘choice architect’, are a disaster. While pupils are free to pick and mix freely…

Q. I belong to a religious congregation whose minister is politically minded. Every time I attend a service, I am…

Three tribal Tories had gathered for a convivial glass, and also a consolatory one. One quoted Huskisson’s verdict after Goderich’s…

My husband has been doing something useful but criminal for the past two years. He reads the sports pages, mostly…