Scott Morrison has famously declared that he has no time for fighting the culture wars and that ‘free speech never…

Smiling Prince of Victoria Even in these authoritarian times, life can still be unpredictable. I was in Melbourne recently and,…

Pitchforks and pyres as a miserable ghost fans the flames

It’s time to recognise the destruction caused by the politicisation of the virus

Why do current events read like a bad movie?

China plays Davos like a fiddle

The Left, aided by the media, has embarked upon a sinister crusade

Good news! BHP takes on the greenies

Rather than preserving our history, museums are wiping it out

Here comes that sinking feeling

The question of legitimacy clouds the Biden and Harris administration

Fear of inflation is stalking the Treasury

The chilling rise of ‘IRA TikTok’

The ethics of Covid jabs for children

Even before the first census was made in 1801, the plan was regarded with fear, hatred and ridicule. And this…

For the past few weeks there’s been a 7 p.m. curfew in Barbados as part of what the government calls…

Is now the time to invest in commercial property?

How Boris and Carrie can bring Dilyn to heel

The French journalist who could unseat President Macron

Home First-dose coronavirus vaccinations totalled more than 20 million. A study suggested that in the over-eighties, a single dose of…

French lessons France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in jail, with two of them suspended, for…

The key to the Union Sir: ‘Love-bombing’ the Scottish electorate with supplemental spending in devolved areas (‘The break-up’, 27 February)…

Modern historians, excoriating the past evils of e.g. slavery and imperialism are taking the understanding of history back to its…

The campaign for a Scottish parliament was rooted in the notion of a ‘democratic deficit’. Scotland kept voting Labour but…

Santa Monica is a soothing place to be locked down. I moved here from New York for four months in…

In 2000, this magazine dipped its toe in murky Irish water. Stephen Glover wrote three articles, one provocatively entitled ‘The…

For most London-based politicians, there’s a threat that’s worse than Covid. You’ll begin to notice it as we ease out…

Why should business pay tax at all? That’s a provocative but forlorn question to ask in Budget week. Business pays…

‘We’re idiots, babe, it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.’ I listened to The Food Programme on Radio 4…

Barely a year has passed since Rishi Sunak’s first Budget. Its centrepiece was a £30 billion stimulus designed to calm…

Roy Greenslade held a number of prominent positions in Fleet Street over the course of a long career. But he…

Chips Channon was conceited, snobbish, disloyal, voyeuristic and wrongheaded – all qualities most helpful to a great diarist, says Craig Brown

In her 2017 travelogue Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, the writer and poet Kapka Kassabova meets Emel,…

The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is…

Churchill was wrong: Russia is neither a riddle nor an enigma. Russians themselves concoct endless stories to glorify their country’s…

In a career stretching back to the mid-1980s, Robert Edric has so far managed a grand total of 28 novels,…

Thomas Hennell is one of that generation of painters born in 1903 whose collective achievements are such an adornment of…

Footling around on the internet recently, I stumbled on a clip of a young woman singing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ to…

It has been described as Britain’s Dreyfus Affair — the wrongful imprisonment in 1903 of a half-Indian solicitor George Edalji…

A few weeks ago that great Canadian actor Christopher Plummer died. Everyone knows him as Captain Von Trapp opposite Julie…

Saint Zenobius was a Florentine nobleman who was converted to Christianity and baptised as an adult, ultimately becoming the first…

Raya and the Last Dragon has everything you might want nowadays from a major Disney film — feisty kick-ass heroine,…

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a musical fantasy set in a Nordic town near the Arctic circle. Johan is a magician…

Last Saturday on Radio 2 Claudia Winkleman was inaugurated as the host of what was formerly Graham Norton’s mid-morning spot.…

I don’t say this lightly, but after 20 years of opera-going, Luigi Rossi’s Il Palazzo incantato might just be the…

Here’s a worried question I want to plant in your head: when is TV drama going to start depicting the…

Quite late in life Walter Sickert paid his first visit to Peckham Rye. He was excited, apparently, because he had…

The thing to remember about Chet Baker, an old acquaintance says of the errant jazz musician in Deep In A…

A short history of lo-fi, by Robert Barry

If you asked a roomful of Poms to list Winston Churchill’s greatest achievements, few would put ‘introducing the minimum wage’…

The expression ‘unconscious bias’ is back in the headlines. First came the good news that Oxford’s Somerville college had rescinded…

Gstaad That’s all we needed in a great year: copyright has expired on The Great Gatsby. Some Fitzgerald wannabe has…

Rugby has enough problems — from baffling rule changes to concussion — without the referees muddying the pitch even more.…

Q. Recently an old acquaintance, notorious for never penning a ‘thank you’ note, emailed me telling me he was being…

The Stein’s at Home steak menu box (£65) says ‘Love from Cornwall’: it is not for people who live in…

‘Blame Kingsley Amis,’ said my husband, with the carelessness of one defying a man out of earshot. The blame, such…

‘We’re sorry your experience with us has not been a good one,’ said the press officer at Surrey Police. ‘You…

This is a great time to be a young bridge player. When I took up the game in my twenties,…

Is working from home the future of a productive society, or a fleeting aberration? Nobody knows yet, but a significant…

White to play. Garcia Ramos–Maurizzi, -Barcelona 2021. Black has just played Kg8-h7, to attack White’s queen by unpinning the knight…

‘I WANT TO BE ALONE’ (1A) and ‘COME UP AND SEE ME SOMETIME’ (49/27) were supposedly said by Greta GARBO…

Clockwise round the grid from 3 run seven dramatis personae; unclued lights give anagrams of two more. The play’s title…

In Competition No. 3188, a challenge designed to make us all feel better about the looming prospect of another enforced…

According to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, the easing of lock-down will be accompanied by a rise in crime…

I was supine on the slab and a nurse was rigging me up via wires and tubes to machines and…

With the Cheltenham Festival close, the quest for serious punting money intensifies. I had one potential contributor identified at Kempton…