Australia is heading further and further down a slippery slope. And the danger of an ugly pile-up at the end…

I have just one week in London, exchanging the harsh Perth winter for the UK’s summer evenings. I am surprised…

Is it just me, or is the gay lobby getting painfully tedious? There’s now a near-universal consensus that we should…

If a diplomat, as Winston Churchill once said, is a person who can tell you to go to hell in…

The new cabinet confirmed at its very first meeting that it is not ‘fit for purpose’. With 23 ministers, it…

Anyone who has observed the relationship between Australia and New Zealand over many years is forced to an inescapable conclusion.…

With the House of Representatives composition now known, though with the Senate still to be finally decided, this note is…

Thanks, but no, thanks. Don’t even bother thinking about complaints that the big end of town should have done more…

Is it just me, or is there something distinctly uncertain about atheist advertising campaigns? I mean they lack nothing in…

We know what people voted against,’ say half-clever ­pundits, ‘but it’s far from clear what they voted for.’ Actually, it’s…

Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. Barely a day passes without some policeman…

THE REAL HATE CRIME SCANDAL For 20 months, I stood accused of a hate crime: homophobically motivated common assault. The…

The other day I was speaking to a Kurdish journalist who was held in Isis captivity for ten months. He…

A declaration of nationality is a profound statement. To say ‘I am British’ suggests that somehow I am composed of…

I’ve just tripped over the damned hedgehog for the second time in as many days. He has retreated into the…

It has been a strange week in Munich; a week of deceptively cool mornings, afternoons hot enough to fry eggs…

Glamour. It’s Marcello Mastroianni drinking negronis on the Via Veneto; it’s Audrey Hepburn, George Clooney, Sinatra on the Vegas Strip…

Knight falls There were calls for Sir Philip Green to be stripped of his knighthood. Who is stripped of such…

What to do about today’s Olympic drug cheats? Since ancient Greeks did not do chemistry, drugs were not a problem.…

From ‘Armour of offence’, The Spectator, 5 August 1916: The soldier must never forget that it is his business to…

Remain calm Sir: I am sorry that the redoubtable Martha Lane Fox is still angry at the exaggerations made by…

Home The Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that four Syrian refugees living in Calais’ jungle camp could come to…

How should a country deal with refugees? This week the British government received an important legal vindication of its approach:…

I was born in 1958 and turned 58 in June, so for the next five months my age coincides with…

Costume drama Sir: Could I remind Michael Buhagiar (23 July) that the great conflict in Jane Austen’s greatest novel is…

The Daily Telegraph revealed on Tuesday that Michael Spencer, the chief executive of Icap, has been blocked for a peerage…

There are reasons why Theresa May might harbour doubts about the Hinkley Point nuclear project — chiefly its unproven French…

May I write a review of a review? I have to get this out of my system, having been unable…

Good old Sir Philip Green. Where would we be without him? So often, those national hate figures let you down.…

Westminster prefers to concentrate on one drama at a time. That is why the old rule of thumb was that…

The unacknowledged subtitle of Channel 4’s new reality series Eden (Mondays) is Die, Hippies! Die! Obviously they’re not going to…

In these times it seems that heroes are acclaimed readily and easily. A single television appearance coupled with a politically…

I once played in something called the Writers’ World Cup. A lot of people in publishing (novelists, journalists, editors, agents)…

Cards on the table. Before I’d published my first novel, or written for newspapers, or won awards for my writing,…

In the first year or so of the Iraq occupation — or ‘big Army goatfuck’, as it is not quite…

Surrealism was, at least initially, as much about writing as painting. A plaque on the Hotel des Grands Hommes in…

Cher Hughes loved the beauty, the white sand beaches and sun-kissed climate of the tropical islands of Bocas del Toro…

Oh, the longueurs of aristocratic Georgian leisure. What on earth did they do all day, with no domestic chores, no…

Born in Michigan, raised in Lagos and educated in London and New York, Teju Cole is about as cosmopolitan as…

In The Circle, Dave Eggers’s satirical dystopia about an insatiable Google-like conglomerate, there’s a scene in which drones hound a…

Hitler, ever seeking to emulate strong German hero types (especially if their Christian name was Frederick), unsurprisingly named his great…

The most significant enhancement to Sydney Harbour since the restoration of Walsh Bay, the Barangaroo development is coming into its…

Art is aspiring; hungry; acutely aware of what it could become, and of what it could lack; longs for safety…

The Carer is a Hungarian-British co-production about a cantankerous old thesp (Brian Cox) and the young Hungarian woman (Coco König)…

In Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, the ‘exterminating angel’ of the title is a mystery illness. A debilitating virus — much…

In 1965 William Eggleston took the first colour photograph that, he felt, really succeeded. The location was outside a supermarket…

Consider it commercially. So powerful is the pull of the Potter franchise that the characters could simply re-enact the plot…

For almost 60 years, whatever the political weather, Russia and Britain have maintained mutually assured respect as far as ballet…

It’s a brave dramatist who would seek to adapt for radio the hit novels of the Italian writer Elena Ferrante.…

One look at Grace when I went to get her in from the field, and I knew she had eaten…

With the Olympics almost upon us our thoughts turn inexorably to the art of cheating. And while we should deplore…

Q. David and Samantha Cameron, their family and two armed policemen have moved to the house opposite us. Do you…

In Competition No. 2959 you were invited to submit a poem on a political theme entitled ‘May day’. There was…

Are we seeing the end of dustcarts? I don’t mean that those noisy, noisome vehicles will cease roaring at the…

I spent last weekend at Port Eliot in Cornwall, the only summer festival I’d pay to attend. Indeed, I ended…

The post Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator.

Piccadilly is ill-served by cafés, unless you consider House of Caviar a cafe. There is a Caffè Nero by St…

Gstaad   What is it with these baldies? I turned on the television last week and watched as the identical…

After the death by boredom of the slow traffic jam, the agricultural-show field was an assault on the senses. The…

Japanese housewives are so convinced of the value of office work that they get angry if their husbands come home…

Martin Hoffman is a hero. Now in his eighties, he can still analyse a hand faster than most people can…

Mark Hall, curator of the Perth Museum, has recently drawn attention to the proliferation of board games in Viking burials.…

White to play. This position is from Olafsson-Tal, Moscow 1971. How did White finish off? Answers to me at The…

In eight clues, cryptic -indications omit reference to parts of answers; these parts must be highlighted, to reveal two words.…

Answers to clues in italics are Clockwise (16), mondial (25), smugly (26), mushroomed (15) and pantable (32), each of which…

Sometimes the labels people give themselves are more than mere braggadocio. Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali if you must) really was…