It beggars belief that at a time when all Liberal guns should be squarely focussed on the destructive ‘tax and…

Inequality is the human condition, Bill   Whaddaya mean by ‘tackling inequality’, Bill? Don’t you know that inequality is built…

The city of Melbourne has one of the longest surface-temperature records for anywhere in Australia, stretching from 1856 to the…

Amedia fracas broke out this past week over Julia Baird’s reports on the ABC about links between Christian teachings and…

At Australian Labor party conferences in New South Wales and Queensland last weekend, Bill Shorten proclaimed himself the Robin Hood…

Some conservatives appear puzzled at the alliance between the nihilistic Left and Muslim jihadism, between a culture apparently obsessed with…

Boris Johnson’s Australian charm offensive will not unscramble the egg. Nor will seeking to love-up the old Commonwealth after divorcing…

Bill Shorten has ramped up Labor’s efforts to stoke envy among the many by maligning the success of the few,…

When I heard the government’s announcement that petrol and diesel cars are to be banned from 2040, I resorted, as…

 Washington D.C. Even a reality show needs good plot twists, and Donald Trump has delivered them like the master he…

‘We remember it not only for the rain that fell, the mud that weighed down the living and swallowed the…

England won the cricket World Cup for the fourth time. Huzzah! England reached the semi-finals of the European football championship.…

Our family holiday snaps used to be slides. We’d gather in the sitting room while Dad clicked through each one.…

‘Some wine? How about a beer? Shall we settle into a good old pub?’ I make these suggestions to Ukip’s…

I live in the oldest village in England. How come? Well, in a field below the big house, there is…

Last weekend, I got into a conversation with the son of an old friend. He’s a nice middle-class boy, mid-twenties,…

For anyone considering a career in economic forecasting, the Bank of England’s inflation report for August 2007 ought to be…

No reason for subsidies Sir: For believers in free enterprise like me, it was hugely disappointing to read that Sir…

Diana Spencer has been dead for 20 years. I was a journalist on the Evening Standard in those days and…

Home Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appeared to wrest control of plans for Brexit from cabinet rivals, while…

Doctors have analysed how the mucus of a certain type of slug gives it protection against its being levered off…

Does anyone actually enjoy flying any more? I know I don’t. I realised recently, while anxiously repacking my tiny carry-on…

Politics is such a fickle game that it’s perfectly acceptable to believe six impossible things before breakfast without ever having…

‘Studying history at Balliol,’ writes Chris Patten, ‘I knew that the one thing which made me uneasy was a grand…

The question of what kind of border after Brexit will exist between Northern Ireland and the Republic will, I predict,…

Now he is the greatest figure for me, in the world. [Toscanini is] the last proud, noble, unbending representative (with…

Arriving at boarding school with the wrong shoes and a teddy bear in his suitcase, the hero of Elizabeth Day’s…

It is an unexpected pleasure when fiction has a soundtrack to accompany the work of reviewing. H(A)PPY is ‘best enjoyed…

There is many a book that has been cooked up over a liquid lunch, but rarely has one been so…

Remember Douglas Coupland? Remember Tama Janowitz? Remember Lisa St Aubin de Terán? Banana Yoshimoto? Françoise Sagan? The voice of your…

The Reason I Jump, by the autistic Japanese teenager Naoki Higashida, was a surprise bestseller in 2013. Rendered as a…

The Enigma of Kidson is a quintessentially Etonian book: narcissistic, complacent, a bit silly and ultimately beguiling. It is the…

I often feel slightly sorry for the British nature writer. It’s not an attractive emotion — it sounds patronising —…

Klara Goncharova, a Soviet anti-aircraft gunner, wondered at the end of the second world war how anyone could stand to…

The first thing to say about Claudio Magris’s new novel is that it is, in an important sense, unreadable. There…

Why did Henri Matisse not play chess? It’s a question, perhaps, that few have ever pondered. Yet the great artist…

As Europe remembers Passchendaele, India and Pakistan recall Partition, just 70 years ago, when Britain so hastily abandoned its Indian…

All this week I have been trying, with considerable success, to avoid being bludgeoned by TV programmes telling me in…

Sir James MacMillan’s European Requiem, performed at the Proms on Sunday, isn’t about Brexit. The composer had to make this…

Conor McPherson’s new play is set in dust-bowl Minnesota in 1934. We’re in a fly-blown boarding house owned by skint,…

She’s a local girl who made good — really good. Simone Young was born, educated and trained in Sydney. She…

Tall, handsome boys with long legs and beautifully arched feet do not grow on trees (if only). Every ballet director…

Maudie is a biopic of the folk artist Maud Lewis (1903–70) who is, apparently, beloved in Canada, and while Sally…

Randy Newman is already struggling to keep up with himself. His dazzling new album, Dark Matter, was written before the…

In Competition No. 3009 you were invited to submit a poem about a domestic object.   I set this challenge…

Q. I’m shortly to host a very large family gathering. Everyone will be related to the same ancestor, so we…

SOIL (9) — cryptically indicated by ISLAND IN THE SUN (1A), the title of a SONG (40) recorded by HARRY…

‘Remember what the fellow said — it’s not a bally bit of use every prospect pleasing if man is vile,’…

One unclued light, defined by the title, is a word that can be divided into three words; each of these…

Tate St Ives is a pale 1980s block, with a fat rounded porte cochère and sea-stained walls. It is the…

I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super…

Five and the Red One are a German covers band. It’s probably the most uninspiring name for a rock band…

‘This situation is Rorke’s Drift,’ said the builder boyfriend, after our proposed renovations were objected to at the parish council’s…

The weather forecast last Saturday promised 100 per cent likelihood of rain. I like that formulation: it doesn’t leave much…

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) has just published a report looking at the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged 16-year-olds…

Khalid Abdullah, John Gosden and Frankie Dettori — owner, trainer and jockey — already figured among the great names of…

Thank heaven I am on holiday! For the past week I have been up until 4 a.m., glued to the…

The great Mikhail Botvinnik excoriated chess played at fast time limits. Botvinnik believed that classical chess at time limits of,…

Black to play. This is a position from Kramnik–Carlsen, Leuven Blitz 2017. How did the world champion win even more…