‘Juvenile and clueless’ is how the Australian’s esteemed Editor-at-Large Paul Kelly deems the suggestion by Liberals and conservatives (including many…

The political world has been consumed by two big issues, one here and one in the US, and I have…

Last century, when Mao ruled China, shop assistants repeated daily, ‘We don’t have any more’ (Meiyou). I heard the phrase…

For the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who watched Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969, there are…

Expect the US Supreme Court, still captured by political activists, to downgrade men’s rights within the decade, with honorary ‘feminist’…

This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about.– Rudyard Kipling, ‘Letters from the East’,…

Recently, Erik Jensen, founding editor of the Saturday Paper and convener of the Horne Prize for essays, had been so…

Picture a scene. A cowed audience is gathered to listen to a wise man.  He tells them that he has…

You won’t find it in the headlines about the Hayne Royal Commission’s 1,000-page interim report that slammed the greed, ‘profit…

Your 13-year-old daughter tells a teacher that’s she’s uncomfortable with her body. She prefers trousers to skirts, football to ballet.…

How can we help transgender children? This is a question greatly exercising politicians and many are confused about what to…

The new political buzzword is ‘Neglexit’: the state of being in which, because the government is so wrapped up in…

Jeremy Corbyn is promising to forge closer ties with his French counterpart Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the hard-left La…

‘Now Greece can finally turn the page in a crisis that has lasted too long. The worst is over.’ With…

The RSPB regularly gets calls from people who have seen ‘a funny bird’. ‘It’s got a red head and it’s…

In Thomas Mann’s astonishing novel The Magic Mountain the indolent young Hans Castorp visits his brave, terminally ill soldier cousin…

Over the next few weeks, we can expect breathless reporting about the Brexit deal and its dynamics: the state of…

Home Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, played a well-nourished Banquo’s Ghost at the Conservative party conference, where Theresa May,…

A weekend news report says Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s childhood has been scrutinised by colleagues ‘for clues to understanding this…

From ‘News of the week’, 5 October 1918: The Western Front is now aflame from the sea to Verdun. This…

At the Labour party conference, Jeremy Corbyn said that he would do whatever his party members told him to. This,…

What would Smith say? Sir: Adam Smith’s writings were so definitive that it is said one can find the kernel…

There are, one must admit, things to be said against Boris Johnson, but his leading critics do not understand that…

Jeremy Corbyn used to be a punchline at the Conservative party conference. Tories believed that his election as Labour leader…

There are no necessary truths any more. Everything is contingent. And those contingencies are the consequence not of what happens…

I’m on a no-alcohol, no-caffeine, no-sugar, vegan diet. It’s less fun than it sounds. Occasionally I cheat, but mostly I…

One morning a long time ago, when the Spectator offices were still in Bloomsbury, I hopped my bike up onto…

‘Let me say it, loud and clear: the Conservative party is, and always will be, the party of business,’ declared…

Churchill must be the most written-about figure in public life since Napoleon Bonaparte (a subject, incidentally, to which Andrew Roberts…

William Boyd’s 15th novel begins well enough. In 1894 Edinburgh, a 24-year-old piano tuner is promoted to the Paris branch…

Never judge a book by its cover. To look at, this is a coffee-table book with shiny pages which make…

It is not as surprising at it sounds that two of the greatest collectors of modern art should have been…

Many wars have outsized and enduring effects on the societies that fight them, but for Americans the Vietnam war has…

Nominative determinism is the term for that pleasing accord you occasionally find between name and profession: the immigration minister named…

Sarah Moss’s concise, claustrophobic sixth novel concerns the perils of family life. The narrator Silvie is a frustrated 17-year-old on…

Those who study culture — or think about public policy in relation to it — often wrestle with the classic…

Most religions bind their adherents into a community of believers. Hinduism segregates them into castes. And people excluded from the…

Coming 12 years after his acclaimed debut, Londonstani, Gautam Malkani’s second novel Distortion features a vivid argot, complicating and defamiliarising…

There are only two British television wine presenters taxi drivers have heard of, Jilly Goolden and Oz Clarke. Who can…

Spy stories, whether the stuff of fictional thrillers or, as in the case of Sergei Skripal, the real deal —…

In the autumn of 1897, after two years in jail on a charge of ‘gross indecency’, Oscar Wilde absconded to…

Sometimes Andrea Mantegna was just showing off. For the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, he painted a false ceiling above the…

The drop-curtain resembles a granite slab on which the genius’s name has been carved for all time. The festival of…

It’s a radical thought I know, but I sometimes wonder what it would be like if a new TV thriller…

Yes, Oscar Wilde never wrote it. No, Strauss didn’t intend it. In fact, the composer famously demanded the Dance of…

This version of A Star Is Born, starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, is the fourth iteration (Janet Gaynor and…

The most inspiring voice on radio this week belongs to Hetty Werkendam, or rather to her 15-year-old self as she…

William Forsythe has been called a lot of things in his four decades as a dancemaker: wilful provocateur, ‘pretentious as…

When Soft Cell first appeared on Top of the Pops in summer 1981, miming along to their version of Gloria…

There is a lot of dance news about at the moment. The Australian Ballet’s new version of Spartacus, to the…

To London for much too brief a visit: a marriage, lunch with Commodore Tim Hoare, and a look-see for a…

Once the house move was completed, Catriona’s oldest and best Scottish friends, two of them, came to stay for a…

Two and a half hours after my tech guy began trying to uninstall Norton, he had purple smoke coming out…

Laikipia, Kenya   The Turkana cowhands are on Facebook and they spend a lot of time on their cell phones,…

I’ve just arrived in Orlando, where the 15th World Bridge Series is taking place. I’m here for the second event…

World champion Magnus Carlsen is not competing in the Batumi Olympiad (of which more next week). Doubtless he is conserving…

White to play. This position is from Giron-Altaya, Batumi Olympiad 2018. Can you spot White’s classic winning combination? Answers to…

In Competition No. 3068 you were invited to provide a sonnet in reverse, using as your model Rupert Brooke’s ‘Sonnet…

Eight headwords in Chambers consist of the same word. Unclued lights (including two trios and one doing double duty) give…

On 15 September, Costa Rica, bordered by PANAMA (31) and NICARAGUA (5), and whose capital is SAN JOSÉ (40/10), celebrated…

My oldest friend Sean Langan came to lunch last Sunday and, rather disappointingly, he seemed more interested in playing with…

For a nation which gave us a brilliant TV show called Band of Brothers, the Americans find it hard to…

Q. I recently gave a jolly dinner for eight friends (some old, some rather famous), all home cooking, ending with…

Cora Pearl is the new, and second, restaurant from the people who made Kitty Fisher’s in Shepherd Market, Mayfair. Kitty…

My husband is enjoying Do No Harm, the arresting memoir of the brain surgeon Henry Marsh who was on Desert…