Within a few months it will be glaringly apparent to the Coalition that they could and should have fought the…

Changing a place name may be annoying, but it is also not inconsequential; in Australia, it is a subtle attempt…

Political parties are nothing without values

Voters and governments both

Albanese Labor’s final term

Why does anyone still listen to the US media?

Net zero insanity

Death of the male writer?

Australia’s lonely and insane crusade

Blame the political class

Confusion abounded this week when the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Ukraine could use western missiles to hit…

When heading to China on a business trip, I was somewhat bemused to be warned about the banquets I would…

Is Pride flopping? This parti-coloured celebration of all things LGBTQIA+ started half a century ago as an afternoon’s little march…

April’s Supreme Court judgment ought to have been the final nail in the coffin for transgender ideology. The belief that…

As a parable that sums up the dysfunction of the modern state and the over-regulation of industry, this has it…

I’ve always loved English swimming pools. I can’t help it – I am a pool-fancier. The lumpy feel of the…

A recent American study, called ‘They Don’t Read Very Well’, analyses the reading comprehension abilities of English literature students at…

Charleston, South Carolina H.L. Mencken, long a hero of mine, wrote: ‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know…

One of the quietly profound pleasures of travel is renting cars in ‘unusual’ locations. I’ve done it in Azerbaijan, Colombia,…

Hard reset Sir: Once again we must debate Brexit (‘Starmer vs the workers’, 24 May). The ‘reset’ agreement does give…

I have seen the future of food. And some of you won’t like it. On a research trip to the…

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, announced that ‘more pensioners’ would qualify for winter fuel payments, but did not…

Meet Nick. He is 30 years old, has a good job and lives in London. He keeps himself to himself.…

It is 60 years since William F. Buckley said that he would ‘rather be governed by the first 2,000 people…

Yes, it was right of the police to announce quickly that they did not think terrorism was the motive in…

‘All Labour prime ministers go gaga for the Queen,’ sighed Cherie Blair, played by Helen McCrory, in the 2006 film…

By spooky coincidence, on Saturday night I watched an old episode of Slow Horses in which a passenger died mysteriously…

It was at about this time, five years ago, that the workers at my (then) local farm shop began wearing…

Exciting news. To ‘showcase the vibrant diversity of both marine life and the LGBTQ+ community’, the visionary Bristol Aquarium has…

Artificial intelligence has overturned many of the old rules, and the one about ‘seeing is believing’ was perhaps the first…

In an astonishing multi-volume novel where the unthinkable becomes entirely credible, Tara Selter, an antiquarian bookseller, finds herself trapped in one remorselessly recurring November day

Prone to paranoia and tantrums, the critic and collector made many enemies, but his firsthand knowledge of Léger, Picasso and Braque also won the admiration of art historians

In its bid to become a global superpower, the US vastly increased its number of overseas bases in the 1960s, giving it unparalleled knowledge of Earth’s most extreme habitats

‘Everything else that has happened couldn’t have happened were it not for that’, says Dyer, in a funny, moving account of growing up in postwar England

Buoyed by visions of immortality, Parisian hacks were ready to ‘explode’ in revolutionary fervour, but those who didn’t perish in the Terror would often struggle to make a living

Sheltering from a flood in a labyrinthine ‘nothing place’, Lina opens a secret door to neighbouring rooms – where she finds three revered historical figures whose life stories she shares

Powering a rising world population up to a decent standard of living is something only nuclear reactors can do – and it’s mad to think otherwise, argues Tim Gregory

The Black Death combined with the Hundred Years’ War left the Continent a desolate world, full of terror and foreboding

Frances Wilson’s mesmerising biography of one of the past century’s most singular writers is especially enlightening on the ‘domestic savagery’ often required of a great artist

Sometimes you’re just too clapped out to attend the most sparkling bit of theatre and so it was for your…

Grade: A+ The kids with their synths and hip producers, dragging the 1980s back: I wish they would stop. It…

The Royal Collection Trust has had a rummage in the attic and produced a fascinating show. Displayed in the palatial…

The Salt Path is an adaptation of the best-selling book by Raynor Winn. It tells the true story of how…

‘Here time becomes space,’ says Gurnemanz in Act One of Parsifal, and true enough, the end of the new Glyndebourne…

Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius began by saying that ‘getting into her mind isn’t easy’ – something you’d never…

I was 11 years old when I saw the mushroom cloud go up but this wasn’t Hiroshima or Nagasaki in…

At any one time eighty per cent of the art owned by Britain’s many museums and public art galleries will…

No one who went to see Bruce Springsteen’s Broadway residency a few years back came away disappointed because they knew…

They call America the Land of the Free; it’s right there in the New York Times small print. But the…

Speccie reader Alan writes to say he was having a conversation about Liberal party factions, and (strangely enough!) two expressions…

Q. How can you leave a party early – e.g. at midnight rather than 4 a.m. – without everyone thinking…

I once heard of a couple who were teachers in their mid-fifties. Having pooled the proceeds from selling both their…

I’ve just returned from a walking holiday in Northumberland with Caroline and my mother-in-law. I say ‘walking’ but that makes…

With surprise, I heard from a Jewish friend that a Hebrew term for a heretic is epikoros, apparently derived from…

We were talking about Italy: where and when to sojourn. I confessed to so many gaps. It is years since…

‘Nothing will surely ever taste so hateful as nursery tapioca,’ wrote Elizabeth David. She’s not alone in her hatred of…

‘Our boys went to Lebanon and trained Hezbollah!’ shouted the drunk Irish lad in the fish and chip shop as…

When I left university, I prepared for a short spell of poverty while I sent off amusing and opinionated articles…