Beijing’s birthday bash this week provides an unwelcome flashback to the dark days of the Cold War.  The depressing spectacle…

No institutions play a bigger collective part in the socio-economic future-proofing of a country than its universities. That’s where its…

It may seem strange that a columnist should write about his own column and, in particular about a feature as…

‘Power grows out of the barrel of a gun,’ said Mao Zedong and there were plenty in evidence in Tiananmen…

At the May federal election, Labor’s primary vote in the lower house was just 33.3 per cent – its worst…

CEOs have wealth that far exceeds that of the average shareholder in their company, which they have every right to…

There are difficult decisions to be made when writing the posthumous biography of a close friend who was as famous…

If the UK Supreme Court’s decision on the prorogation or ending of the current session of Parliament were handed in…

Today nearly all real public discussion has become impossible. Which is why nearly all public thinking has become impossible. Which…

When I was an English literature undergraduate, we were all very careful to avoid what used to be called the…

So what to make of the extreme language, veering from the histrionic to the hysterical, dominating political discourse? The words…

Church attendances may be falling, but there’s a new religion in town: recycling. Its followers are devout and full of…

Who wants to be a billionaire? Not, apparently, Alexander Lebedev, the self-described ‘Russian ex-oligarch’ who has tried billionaredom and found…

Charlotte Edwardes reports that Boris put his hand on her leg during lunch 20 years ago. Full disclosure, I put…

Over the past three years, as we have torturously debated our departure from the European Union, we have heard a…

‘The smallest public railway in the world.’ So proclaims a faded poster at New Romney Station, the midpoint of the…

The party conference season has showcased two very different visions of Britain. Jeremy Corbyn speaks of the country as one…

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, presented the EU with a proposed withdrawal agreement. It entailed Northern Ireland remaining for…

On a book tour to promote Outgrowing God, travelling from London’s Festival Hall to Birmingham and then Manchester, I have…

Who speaks what The Chancellor, Sajid Javid, included a little Punjabi in his speech to the Tory conference. How many…

Judges of experience Sir: In the midst of the furore about the Supreme Court judgment, many people are now questioning…

 Manchester It could be caused by desperation, but this Tory conference is very jolly. At last there is something to…

‘It is definitely less than 50 per cent,’ says one Downing Street source when asked about the chances of a…

I was on my way to the pub the other evening, about seven o’clock, rain lashing down on my head,…

‘Hands up which other university parents are bloody glad to have got rid of their lumpen, food-gobbling, space-invading kids…’ When…

Private secretary: ‘The Bank of England governorship, Prime Minister… opposition MPs have been saying it’s a political stitch-up and calling…

Travelling the Indus valley late in the third millennium BC you would have been awed by two Bronze Age megacities,…

Kafka wrote a novella, The Metamorphosis, about a man who finds himself transformed into a beetle. Now Ian McEwan has…

Shelley famously and optimistically proclaimed that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Adorno famously and pessimistically declared that…

Jessie Burton is famous for her million-copy bestselling debut novel The Miniaturist, which she followed with The Muse. Now she’s…

When I had a cough last week, my son Joe,  who has autism, shouted at me and covered his ears.…

From his base in London, Martin Gayford has spent much of his career as an art critic travelling. He has…

In Annie Ernaux’s The Years — her extraordinary act of collective autobiography —the ‘I’ disappears. Her memoir becomes the memoir…

The Dominican friar Henry Suso was once carving Jesus’s name in his chest with a knife when he noticed a…

Having a saint in the family is dreadful, They’re often absent, either literally or emotionally, and because they’re always thinking…

If we still bemoan a world of mass tourism, the mid 19th century, Orlando Figes reminds us, is where it…

Michael Palin in North Korea, a two-part documentary in which the Python is given a tightly choreographed tour of that…

The subtitle of Simon Reid-Henry’s substantial work indicates its thesis: ‘The remaking of the West since the Cold War, 1971–2017.’…

Two years after Philip Pullman published La Belle Sauvage, the prequel to His Dark Materials trilogy, we have its long-awaited…

Any Swede old enough to remember knows where they were when their prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated. On 28…

Sixteen years into a stop-go production saga, I got a call from the director of The Song of Names with…

How did it come to this? When did the constitutional right of the US Senate to ‘advise and consent’ on…

Occasionally, we encounter an image that seems so ludicrously out of kilter with the modern world that we can only…

‘Laws bow down before the desire to rule…’ Centuries before ‘proroguing’ had entered British breakfast-table vocabulary there was Handel’s Agrippina,…

This Changeling Self, Radio 4’s lead drama this week, clearly ought to have gone out in August. It’s set —…

It’s possibly not a great sign of a Britain at ease with itself that the historical character most likely to…

Judy is in cinemas this week and so is Joker and if you have to choose between the two, then…

Caryl Churchill is back at the Royal Court with a weird collection of sketches. The first is set on a…

While Sir Joshua Reynolds, on his plinth, was looking the other way, a little girl last Saturday morning was trying…

Every year is a year of anniversaries, not least 2020 with the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s voyage along the…

New York It’s Indian summertime and the living is easy. There hasn’t been a cloud above the Bagel for two…

Mindfulness at our all-inclusive Turkish beach resort began at 11 o’clock. Our mindfulness teacher was a tiny, smiley, flexible-looking woman…

When I was growing up, my Italian grandfather was my favourite person. He taught me to play a mean game…

Kenya   ‘In the past months the people of Uganda have been following with sorrow the alarming economic crisis befalling…

The world bridge championships are finally over — and I don’t remember another where the England players gave us such…

‘Visky,’ said the man driving the taxi.   ‘Risky?’   ‘Visky.’   ‘Ah… whisky! Or vodka.’ I grinned as I…

Black to play. Here is my own tragedy, from Yuffa-McShane, Khanty-Mansiysk 2019. Needing a win, I tried 81 … Kg7-f7…

In Competition No. 3118, which was inspired by Joan Didion’s wonderful essay of that title, you were invited to submit…

The unclued lights (one of two words), individually or as two pairs, are of a kind. Elsewhere, ignore one accent.…

The unclued lights are regular contributors to the pages of The Spectator week by week. 5/35, 8/10, 12/28, 13, 21A/33 and…

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference where Boris’s attempt to ram home the message that he’s the only…

The ITV set for the channel’s thunderingly good coverage of the Rugby World Cup is more Japanese than anything in…

Q. For many years I employed around 60 people with whom I worked in an open-plan office. I moved on from…

If you review restaurants professionally you would not think Britain wanted to leave the EU. You would think she wanted…

On my way to a party in Ealing I saw a shop called Pan Rings. A mental image popped up…