It would probably be wrong to predict that the Turnbull government’s decision to build an airport at Badgerys Creek will…

The ABC of ESPN I confess to being something of a sports addict. I like playing and watching competitive sports,…

It might be thought that Germany would still feel a bit… er… sensitive in its dealing with Jews. Indeed, the…

If the voters obey the elites and elect Emmanuel Macron, the Fifth Republic may well be doomed, which could have…

Our exclusive interview with Alexander Zakatov, Head of the Chancellery of the Russian Imperial House

The latest lunatic government intervention into Australian energy markets conjures up the old lady who swallowed a fly. In 2001,…

Conventional wisdom holds that an elected government’s first budget should be its bravest. Albeit with a micro-majority, Malcolm Turnbull is…

Malcolm Turnbull almost lost an election because he had no health policy. Bill Shorten and Labor’s blatant, fabricated ‘Mediscare’, claiming…

The Liberals’ broad church? In NSW it’s getting thinner on a diet of expulsions and desertions. Remove the nave, the…

Within a couple of miles of England’s deepest point is its highest. Towering a kilometre above the hidden depths of…

What is ‘far-right’? With the progress of Marine Le Pen to France’s presidential run-off, the term has been liberally used…

There’s a graveyard inside Henry Marsh’s head, though you’d never guess it to look at him. There he sits in…

 New York As the malevolence and incoherence of the Trump administration continue to amaze, Democrats are taking heart from the…

It’s not the free movement of people I spend my nights fretting about; it’s the free movement of pests. It’s…

The French election, of unprecedented interest, hazard and potential for violence, has been largely about who is to blame. Blame…

Twenty years ago, Conservatism all but died in Scotland. Tony Blair’s landslide victory made Scotland, at least in terms of…

Spend, spend, spend London mayor Sadiq Khan ended support for the Garden Bridge, probably killing it off. How are other…

The Prosperity UK conference over a week ago kicked off with a dinner at Hatfield House that brought together Leavers…

If elections were decided on voter enthusiasm rather than on plain numbers, Marine Le Pen would win this weekend’s battle…

Attacking Sophie Sir: Your contributor, Michael Danby (Sophie’s bad choices, The Spectator, 15 April 2017) has used your pages to…

Home Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, told Theresa May after dinner with her on 26 April, ‘I’m…

Will executive pay pop up in Theresa May’s manifesto? An objective of her snap election is to secure a larger…

The crapness of Corbyn’s Labour is a phenomenon. It fascinates me. Frankly, it does my head in. For there is…

Whenever I want to travel back in time to my 1970s childhood, all I need is a glass of Lucozade.…

General elections are meant to produce a government and an opposition — ideally, a decent version of both. It is…

I awoke the other morning to hear Diane Abbott’s brains leaking out of her ears and all over the carpet…

Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s main Brexit negotiator, tweeted on Monday: ‘Any #Brexit deal requires a strong & stable understanding…

In 2012, sugar became more dangerous than gunpowder. According to the historian Yuval Noah Harari, of the 56 million people…

On 27 May 1939, the German liner St Louis docked in Havana with 937 passengers on board: all but a…

She was a foundling in her own family, shunted to adoptive parents for two years, then to the edge of…

A few years after Walt Whitman brought out the first edition of Leaves of Grass (it didn’t do well), he…

The history of modern medicine is a roll call of brilliant minds making breakthrough discoveries. We rarely hear about the…

In his mid-forties Will Ashon realised he was adrift and confused, confronted by the situation Dante described in the Divine…

Set discreetly into a wall in Smithfield, amid the bustle and bars of this rapidly gentrifying part of London, is…

It’s reassuring that of Ed Docx’s three admirably eclectic, though sometimes uneven, previous novels, Let Go My Hand most resembles…

In an early chapter of All Grown Up, the narrator Andrea says to her therapist: ‘Why is being single the…

What will we do when there are no longer caches of letters to piece together and decipher; only vague memories…

Some opera-lovers prefer concert performances to full stagings. I don’t. It’s that whole Gesamtkunstwerk thing: opera needs to be seen…

Left-wing groupie Paul Mason has written a costume drama about the suppression of the Paris commune in 1871. We meet…

Inheriting abilities from one’s parents is one of the happy accidents of birth. A remarkable example of inheritance of exceptional…

A tragic flaw is one thing — every hero should have one — but Mayerling’s Rudolf, a syphilitic drug addict…

It was 50 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. The result was a popular masterpiece. Thirty…

Two 16-year-old schoolgirls from a sink estate in Bradford find fun and happiness by shacking up with a middle-aged married…

Many of the mediums from which art is made have been around for a long time. People have been painting…

Bashing the BBC often becomes a popular blood sport in times of political instability, and especially if the left is…

Like most documentaries, Britain’s Nuclear Bomb: The Inside Story (BBC4, Wednesday) began by boasting about all the exclusives it would…

The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s ‘Belief and Beyond Belief’ season is drawing to a close, without making it in any degree…

In Competition No. 2996 you were invited to submit an acrostic sonnet in which the first letters of each line…

This puzzle is a landmark for D(0)C: his first crossword appeared in The Spectator in the issue dated July 4th…

The unclued lights are trios of Cluedo © rooms at 1A, 14A and 40, weapons at 6, 13 and 14,…

Q. I have a very good cleaner who comes once a week. She is far more efficient than anyone I’ve…

Over the long weekend I read a couple of bildungs-romans; one a revisit after many years, the other a recent…

I’m sitting in my office and the place is still. The rest of the house is dark. Everyone’s out and…

‘Emmanuel Macron est le plus grand con du monde,’ said the elderly gent taking the vacant seat on my right…

Ralph Bathurst was accused shortly after his death in 1704 of being ‘suspected of Hypocrisy and of mean Complyance’. I…

A gentleman on Twitter ‘writes’ to say I’m boring him with my house move. ‘Snooze-fest’, says this chap, and he…

Dear George Osborne, I thought it worth passing along some advice about your new job. I’ve never edited a news-paper,…

I rang a company’s call centre the other day, and the experience was exemplary: helpful, knowledgeable, charming. The firm was…

Laikipia, Kenya On my way home to the ranch, I stopped for a beer with my neighbour Martin. It was…

Janet likes to tease me that whenever it’s my turn to write this column, it ought to be renamed The…

The Catalan opening looks as if it should be relatively harmless, combining as it does the Queen’s Gambit with the…

White to play. This position is from So–Kramnik, Gashimov Memorial 2017. So retreated with 1 Ne3 and eventually won. How could…