Six weeks after the federal election, the resumption of parliament has forced Labor to accept the unpalatable truth that it…

You do not need me to recommend good books. But I will do it all the same, or at least…

The hybrid Boris Johnson How is it that the likeable Boris Johnson has become such a hate-figure? The British Left…

What? ABCTV, without sneering, covered Trump at the Osaka G20 last week and with Kim Jong-un the other day. So…

Examples of how universities have been captured by politically correct groupthink and cultural left ideology abound. Bettina Arndt being denied…

Scott Morrison’s election win saved Australia from many perils: from much higher and even more wasteful government spending; much higher…

In Greenwashed: the strange triumph of eco-Toryism, (The Spectator Australia, 15 June), Ross Clark describes how Conservative party leadership contenders…

Two problems with Scott Morrison’s proposed Religious Discrimination Bill. First, what does it mean for those who make a stand…

Now that Adani’s Carmichael mine in remote central Queensland is, after nine tempestuous years, under way since at last getting…

Hooray for Pallywood, or rather Gazallywood, that wonderful melange of misleading footage, falsehoods, fakeries and frauds that makes up so…

The other day I checked my points balance. I felt ashamed by how high it was, and wondered what I…

‘I’m going to stick ruthlessly to script,’ says Boris Johnson. ‘This is not the stage of the campaign when you…

Every prime minister is a sociologist. Theresa May drew a distinction between citizens of somewhere and ‘citizens of nowhere’, a…

As I get older I find the idea of wanting to be in a couple more and more bizarre. I’m…

When so much of the Brexit debate has consisted of slogans and unexamined assertions (‘cliff edges’, ‘crashing out’ and the…

I was recently treated to a small taste of the real China. It was in the incongruous setting of a…

Northern Italians often speak of Sicily as a Saracenic darkness — the place where Europe ends. The Arabic influence remains…

Is there any invention as ancient and as fundamental as soap? Traced to Babylonian civilisation around 2,800 bc (handy for…

When the tanks were rolling into Tiananmen Square and the Cold War hadn’t yet formally come to an end, it…

Home Boris Johnson, the bookies’ favourite for the leadership of the Conservative party, would, if he became prime minister, ‘show…

It has been a spring of party madness in London and New York. I was lucky enough to have several…

Model hobbies Asked what he did to relax, Boris Johnson claimed that he liked to make model buses. Some others…

Rufus Norris, the National Theatre’s artistic director, has revealed that all those tedious ancient plays will from now on be…

Support for stop and search Sir: Mary Wakefield is rightly exasperated by fatuous comments over police use of stop and…

The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, is offering to meet Jeremy Corbyn about the Times story last week which reported…

The phrase ‘existential crisis’ is thrown around too easily. But it is hard to find a better description of the…

I was asked on to the BBC Today programme — my old manor — last week to talk about the…

‘Life pours back in.’ A score of us, listening to Charlie Burrell at the Knepp estate ten days ago, will…

I have plenty of shamefaced company in having rashly predicted, as pundits are warned never to do, that Donald Trump…

How surprising to read one former Tesco chief, 82-year-old Lord MacLaurin, badmouthing another, Sir Terry Leahy. The surprise is because…

I was flicking through an old copy of The Spectator the other day, one of the issues containing contributors’ ‘Christmas…

Andrew Ridker’s The Altruists (Viking, £20) is a Jewish family saga of academic parents and grown-up offspring. From this rather…

Red Dog is an ambitious hybrid of a book. It was published in South Africa to wide acclaim in 2014…

Cedric Morris is often referred to as an artist-plantsman, and while as a breeder of plants, most particularly of irises,…

It’s an increasingly common lament that computers have ruined everything, and a longing for the days before Google and Twitter,…

In Nicole Flattery’s Show Them a Good Time (Bloomsbury, £14.99), her female protagonists grapple with abusive relationships, degree courses, difficult…

France was to blame. Yes, France was most definitely to blame. He was never like this at home. So thinks…

I was shocked some years ago to discover, as I scratched bites on my ankles on holiday on Maui, that…

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of the most beloved American novels of all time. Famously, Lee never…

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan has achieved that rare feat, in her second novel Starling Days, of writing a convincing novel about…

The art-history books will tell you that sometime around 1912, Picasso invented collage, or, actually, perhaps it was Braque. What…

Another turn around the block for David McVicar’s handsome 1830s Figaro at the Royal Opera — the sixth since the…

My plan to cut the BBC out of my life entirely is working well. Apart from the occasional forgivable lapse…

Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) was a member of the Nabis (the Prophets), a problematically loose agglomeration of painters, inspired by Gauguin…

Grade: B– The first Springsteen song I ever heard was ‘Born To Run’, back when I was 14. I clocked…

There’s been a Dimbleby on air since before I was born but last Friday saw the end of that era…

Midsommar is the latest horror film from Ari Aster, who made Hereditary, which starred Toni Collette and was a sensation.…

Present Laughter introduces us to a chic, louche and highly successful theatrical globetrotter, Garry Essendine, whose riotous social life is…

It’s a barely forgivable cliche to call them ‘the odd couple’; but Margaret Olley (1923-2011) and Ben Quilty (b. 1973)…

Hold the presses, this is a world exclusive. A Boris ex I sat next to last week gave me the…

As they say: it all happened so quickly that it wasn’t until afterwards. One minute I was bawling at my…

Either the osteopath is a psychopath or he is the second coming. I see no other possibility. I turned up…

When Hayley Turner was made, she wasn’t just given a competitive spirit, a sensitive pair of hands and excellent balance.…

I know I’m not the strongest declarer in the world (or even at the table) but I didn’t realise my…

This year Tigran Petrosian would have celebrated his 90th birthday. The Armenian grandmaster and world champion was noted for the…

White to play. This is from Reti-Bogolyubov, New York 1924. How did Reti conclude his attack with a fine blow? Answers…

In Competition No. 3105 you were ­invited to submit a fragment of commentary on the Women’s World Cup delivered by…

1A (hyphened) suggests a word which, with changes to its 7D 33, becomes the four other words (including a name)…

On 15th June 1919 John ALCOCK (34) and Arthur BROWN (37) completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight when they crash-landed…

I’ve contributed a chapter to an education book published this week by the Institute of Economic Affairs. I was asked…

I was talking to a large Silicon Valley video-conferencing firm the other day. ‘Just for interest,’ I asked, ‘what would…

Q. Friends and I keep in touch and share our more memorable experiences on Facebook. One friend is an elderly…

We were in a club, discussing Norman Stone, recently departed, over a meal that he would have enjoyed. Norman divided…

Two rules of grammar are certain: never split an infinitive and never end a sentence with a preposition. As for…