‘I have a record of standing up to those who will seek to threaten Australia’s interests, whether they’re outside this…

Wokely awards Covid has denied Australia many essential freedoms but it hasn’t been able to stop the 2021 NSW Wokely…

The unbearable lightness of lying Ever since French President Emmanuel Macron told a credulous Australian media that he doesn’t think,…

Tories all at sea on boats On hearing France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, on why so many would-be migrants cross…

The moral case for fiscal rectitude

And why Taiwan must be defended

Antisemitism definition is rejected by the hard Left

My response to Gerard Henderson

It’s a new schlock horror movie. Or is it?

The bizarre plot to install a fascist state

We need to make new friends

Nigel Kennedy on government, Grealish and ganja

It’s no longer just clean eaters who are the health bores

I’m avoiding the village pub. Since Clarkson’s Farm I constantly get asked: ‘Are farm economics really as bad as that?’…

The many challenges facing Germany’s new Chancellor

The Pentagon’s overreaction to China’s new weapon tests

The NHS is on life support

For many, the first Baileys of the year heralds the start of the festive season; to others, it’s a drink…

Home In a nervous response to the entry into Britain of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 — B.1.1.529 — the…

A teacher wanting to teach Latin has enquired whether it is worth doing because the subject has ‘such a bad…

Thirsty work Sixty-one pub-goers on a night out in the Tan Hill Inn, 1,500 feet up in the Pennines in…

The last time I wrote for The Spectator’s diary slot, over the summer, theatres were tentatively beginning to turn their…

Last week, the government published its blueprint for how it intends to remodel the army. According to the plan, it…

The Waitrose test Sir: Like Rod Liddle, I live in the north-east of England — a little further north and…

No sooner had an inch or two of snow fallen on our upland areas last week than the climate-change Morlocks…

Much is now being made of the evils of empire. As a child of empire I bridle. I acknowledge the…

Comparing Saturday’s Downing Street press conference to Groundhog Day would insult one of my favourite films. The hilarious, multifarious strategies…

‘So you think it’s all over? Ho ho ho!’ That’s the message from Satan’s dark laboratory (twinned with Wuhan’s) where…

As this paper has argued since the time of the Tiananmen Square massacres, this country should offer Hong Kong people…

Up until a few days ago, ministers could see how the government might regain its footing in the polls after…

I’m not sure how many readers know the name of Anthony Smith, who died on Sunday aged 83, but a…

At one time, Penelope Lively was routinely shortchanged by critics. Her protagonists are often middle-class professionals — historians, archeologists, scriptwriters…

Readers of this magazine will have enjoyed Joan Collins’s diaries, and her Past Imperfect was one of the funniest showbiz…

If one of the purposes of art is to help us see the world around us, then Sebastião Salgado’s photographs…

One of the best episodes in Wole Soyinka’s third novel (his first since 1973) takes place not in Nigeria but…

For all its faults and foibles, its busts and bailouts, modern market capitalism demonstrates a remarkably bullish resilience. We don’t…

Janine di Giovanni’s book begins in a Paris apartment during the first lockdown. She’s at a friend’s home, which she…

On a Monday evening in May 1966, Paul McCartney and John Lennon visited a nightclub called Dolly’s in Jermyn Street.…

Through her diaries and notebooks we finally catch a glimpse of the real Patricia Highsmith, says Christopher Priest

Nitram is the Martin Bryant film which sent shivers down everyone’s spine at the mere prospect. Justin Kurzel’s film about…

The Barcelona-born choreographer Joan Clevillé has form for off-beat storytelling with a streak of sincerity. Before becoming artistic director of…

We’ve been living through a nostalgia for the 1990s that has lasted longer than the decade itself. That was back…

There are, perhaps, two types of exhibition visitor. Those who read the texts on the walls and those who don’t.…

My late friend Alexander Nekrassov loathed the Beatles, which I used to think was a wantonly contrary position akin to…

Hand of God is the latest film from Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian filmmaker who won an Oscar with The Great…

That strain again… it’s the morning after the concert and one tune is still there, playing in the head upon…

Somewhere in the wilds of England a stately home is collapsing. Rising floodwaters threaten the foundations. Storms break over the…

When I were a lad — back when you could buy the entire back catalogue of the Fall for thruppence…

Jimmy Chin is part Bear Grylls, part David Attenborough: he both climbs snow, ice and rock and films other mountaineers doing it too, writes Theo Zenou

I have reached an age where I have started to forget where I have put things, but so far they…

In a recent piece in the Australian newspaper paper Terry McCrann (the doyen of economics writers — he of the…

The 2020 European Championships were an early casualty of lockdown but hopefully 2022 will rectify the count! It’s going to…

In Competition No. 3227, you were invited to provide verses to help children remember the sequence of the last eight…

Alireza Firouzja produced a momentous performance for France at the European Team Championships, held in Slovenia last month. The 18-year-old,…

The streetlighting engineer walked up and down outside my house trying to work out who was right: me, or my…

As a defender of free speech, I sometimes feel like a man falling through a collapsing building. Just when you…

Every year Vernon celebrates the gathering in and pressing of his olive harvest by inviting friends to a ceremony at…

New York   It’s party time in the Bagel, and it’s about time, too. Good restaurants and elegant nightclubs are…

Black to play. Plat-Esipenko, European Team Championship, 2021. The 19-year-old Russian playing Black found a way to force mate in…

‘There once was a curate of Kew, / Who kept a young cat in a pew,’ began my husband when…

Fairly early in the pandemic it was widely accepted in scientific circles that the likelihood of outdoor transmission of Covid…

A group of us had gathered together to raise a glass, tell stories, to laugh and to mourn. It was…

Q. We have moved into a terraced house in a seaside town. Our joy is confined, however, by the fact…

The unclued lights are TV detectives and their PATCH: 10/8, 13/5D, 15/39, 26/41, 36/33. First prize Emma Corke, Abinger Hammer,…

The unclued lights, all nouns or verb forms (one is a hyphened plural), include a common feature different in all…