What a week. The so-called demise of Fairfax one day, the threatened demise of Malcolm Turnbull the next. The luvvies…

The outcome of last weekend’s by-elections was the natural result of the Liberal party sending itself spiralling into turmoil when…

In a few years’ time the only clue that the name Fairfax was ever synonymous with wealth and influence in…

It was the best news Fairfax ever published: the story of its demise. Yet to listen to the wailing Fairfax…

Six years before his death in 2015, Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew gave an insightful interview during which he…

For the past week I’ve been in my native Canada, aka the epicentre of TDS – Trump Derangement Syndrome. In…

Racist’, ‘sexist’ and ‘phobia’, the last one with various prefixes, are the lexical building blocks of leftist discourse. Three little…

Walking around Patricia Piccinini’s Melbourne studio, we could be on a tour at the Natural History Museum. ‘And here we…

The Information for prospective Australians that I had to master before I became a citizen declared ‘Australia is a secular…

If the Liberals go to the next election with Turnbull as leader, they’ll be handing over the government to a…

Most reporting on Jeremy Hunt’s visit to China this week went little further than his slip of the tongue in…

‘It could be argued that getting out of the office to beat up some leftists is a good way to…

Sharing a plate of oysters with a three-year-old: where could this be but France, where children are brought up not…

Warnings by Remainers about the consequences of a ‘no deal’ Brexit are beginning to resemble a game of oneupmanship worthy…

Being a Jew on the Corbyn left is soul- crushing. In the name of the cause, you must excuse racism…

A few months before he died in 2007, Bill Deedes asked if I would come to see him at his…

Twenty years ago, Douai, a monastic boarding school in West Berkshire, shocked parents with an announcement that it was ‘no…

‘There can be no summer in this land without cricket’, wrote Neville Cardus, whose rhapsodic vision of the game lies…

In Britain I never drink cocktails, but on arrival in New York it has become a ritual that my first…

Ever since Theresa May declared that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ she has seemed to be drifting…

The swifts had not arrived by June, nary a one, though a Yorkshire Dales friend reported their return, and there…

Home When families and doctors are in agreement, medical staff will be able to remove tubes supplying food and water…

Ranking railways A director of the Rail Delivery Group claimed that Britain’s railways were the ‘envy of Europe’. Could it…

From ‘The fifth year of war’, 3 August 1918: There are those who think that Germany will try to regain…

Memories of drought Sir: I read your leading article with interest as I well remember the hardship caused by the…

Early in his career — and mine — I got to know Frank Field. Then, as now, he was being…

Britain’s three main political parties are in crisis. That isn’t meant to happen. If only by a process of elimination,…

If Jews would get out of Israel and also stop drinking the blood of gentile children, perhaps the rest of…

‘The return of Ukip’ declared the headline on our cover story last week. The polling boffin Matthew Goodwin to whose…

Promoting physical fitness, the left has developed a bracing set of competitive callisthenics. Participants vie over who can complete a…

Those twice-weekly sales emails from Foxtons that the recent GDPR clean-up has failed to stop have lately been spattered with…

Orphans are everywhere in literature — Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, Oliver Twist, Daniel Deronda, and onwards to the present day. They…

Russia has always attracted a certain breed of foreigner: adventurers, drawn to the country’s vastness and emptiness; chancers, seeking fortunes…

Across the fields from the medieval manor house of Toad Hall, and the accompanying 16th-century timber-frame apothecary’s house which Alan…

Edmundsbury, the fictional, sketchily rendered town in which the action of this novel takes place, is part of a social…

The best royal biography ever written is probably James Pope-Hennessy’s Queen Mary. Published in 1959, only six years after the…

Savi Naipaul Akal’s publishing house is named after the peepal tree, in whose shade Buddha is said to have achieved…

A girl at a window, hidden behind curtains, watches three women in a dimly lit drawing room in the house…

China, wrote Adam Smith, is ‘one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious…

Long ago, I interviewed Edmund White and found that the photographer assigned to the job was the incomparable Jane Bown…

This is Greg Sheridan’s best book because it is his bravest. He tackles an important subject in a challenging way…

There is something of The Wizard of Oz about Marina Amaral’s photographs. She whisks us from black-and-white Kansas to shimmering…

Some conductors conduct from the fingers — think of Gergiev’s convulsive gestures, flickering up and down the keyboard of an…

Edinburgh. Why do comics do it? We invariably lose money. Even if you don’t pay for your venue, the cost…

The thing I most regret having failed ever to ask brave, haunted, wise Sean O’Callaghan when I last saw him…

It was Le Corbusier who famously wrote that ‘A house is a machine for living in’ (‘Une maison est une…

Gandalf, also known as Ian McKellen, has awarded himself another lap of honour by bringing King Lear back to London.…

If proof were needed that radio will survive the onslaught of the new (or rather now not-so-new) digital technologies, albeit…

Dominic Savage had an early start. In Barry Lyndon (1975), Stanley Kubrick’s sprawling take on Thackeray, he played a prepubescent…

Such a lovely title, it’s hard to believe that The Long Forgotten Dream hasn’t been used before. The title belongs…

On board S/Y Puritan   I’m sailing off the charred eastern coast of Athens where so many died last week,…

The cave house next to ours is let out to weekly renters. A green-eyed German with a ponytail came out…

Beko. I always want to sing that song by Peter Gabriel from the movie about the South African freedom fighter…

On a foggy November day in 1965 the young son of a Barbadian police chief was one of six contestants…

It’s that time of year again — summer and its attendant holidays. No bridge for me for a month, unless…

The recent successful revival of the musical Chess, by Sir Tim Rice and the men of Abba, featured some genuine extracts…

Black to play. This position is from the classic game Réti-Alekhine, Baden Baden 1925. What was Black’s next move? It…

In Competition No. 3059 you were invited to supply a poem inspired by the periodic table. The writer and chemist…

Fans of classic 12 will know that where ‘Q’ = ‘the number of’: Q26 x Q1D x (Q34 + [Q36D/5A…

The quotation ‘NEVER (1A), NEVER (35), NEVER (41), NEVER (7), NEVER (32)!’ is from King Lear (V.iii.310). Lear was the…

This summer has seen yet another group of thought criminals being mobbed on social media. Some of them are the…

H.L. Mencken once said that a rich man is anyone who earns more than his wife’s sister’s husband. The anthropologist…

Q. My husband doesn’t wash his hands after spending a penny and he doesn’t wash his hands after ‘spending tuppence’,…

When I was at school, some time before the last ice age, the final day of term was a quasi-holiday.…

My husband, in company with a similarly superannuated medic on the unfamiliar London Underground, was bidden at Baker Street to…