As Australians quite rightly revel in our multiple successes at the Tokyo Olympics where we are not only ranked (at…

It was very odd that last week, when all the nightclubs and gin palaces of Melbourne were closed, a new…

We’ve wasted nearly two years

Masked pharmocrats calling the shots

ScoMo ducks a loseable stoush over super

Is our lack of reform really ‘gridlock’ or simply the rejection of dud policies?

An old text sheds new light on our lockdown laws

Feel like you’re hallucinating? It’s only ‘active measures’

Covid is tearing the nation apart

Instead, we have destructive incompetence

Fish tanks were probably first conceived in the distant past by the Chinese, but in many respects, aquariums are a…

Dominic Cummings on asteroids, AI and leaving No. 10

Italy’s Covid certificate is dividing the country

Ransomware attacks are a threat to us all

I was held to ransom by hackers

Covid is meeting a wall of immunity

What we got wrong in Afghanistan

When, three years ago, I announced my retirement from writing fiction, the only thing that surprised me was the surprise…

Being a good Samaritan is harder than it seems

Home After the number of people ‘pinged’ (alerted by an NHS Covid-19 app) neared 700,000, the app was adjusted so…

Happy valet Police Scotland dropped what they said was a randomly generated codeword — ‘Bunter’ — for the security operation…

An athlete seeking sanctuary in a foreign embassy after a state–sponsored attempt to spirit her home from the Olympics; a…

Here illegally Sir: Unfortunately, Charlotte Eagar misses the point (‘The alpha migrants’, 31 July). The Channel migrants may be ‘bright…

The outstanding gymnast Simone Biles has pulled out of several Olympic events, saying: ‘I just don’t trust myself as much…

I’ve always been a Spectator reader, so I’m delighted to be writing a diary about the Olympics from Tokyo. My…

Last month an epidemiologist called Professor Michael Baker described the UK government’s decision to free its people from Covid restrictions…

Here’s a patriotic proposal: let’s form a Dad’s Army of lorry drivers, of which the Road Haulage Association reckons there’s…

Long before the official numbers began to rise, back in 2014, it was clear that knife crime was on the…

Since the Holyrood elections in May, the campaign for Scottish independence has been noticeably quiet. But that is about to…

On Monday 2 August, the BBC Today programme offered its ‘Countdown to COP26’. For the rest of the month, Amol…

Most social occasions now seem to kick off with a wasted hour or two. The time is spent discussing Covid:…

Is Lucy Ellmann serious? On the one hand, yes, very. The novel she published before this collection of essays was…

Philip Hensher finds Robert Burton’s perception of the world and the human condition endlessly fascinating

In the future, men enjoying illicit private pleasures with their intelligent sexbots might be surprised to find that even women…

The great Latinist D.R. Shackleton Bailey was once said to have been pinned into a corner at a party and…

Strange, really, that the scheduled output of traditional broadcasters became known as ‘terrestrial’ television, given that TV is an etheric…

There’s no doubt that Quentin Tarantino is a movie director of brilliance, if not genius. But can he write? Well…

It is well established that artists are not always the nicest people. On the surface, the life of the model,…

What does it mean to be a body in this world? It’s the question animating Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals. Our…

The most alarming aspect of living in America is the recurring sensation that no one is in charge. This is…

‘How good you are in explosition!’ The first ever unabridged recording of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is a monumental achievement…

In this Age of Trump, as we cast about for some moment in American history that might help us make…

Here is a rare dud from the usually reliable Deborah Moggach. Her protagonist, Pru, finds herself alone at 69 after…

‘Unemployed at last!’ That wonderful bit of national self-mockery that opens the classic Australian novel Such is Life takes on…

Ian McKellen in his early eighties plays the Dane in his mid-twenties. A production with such a strange innovation should…

The newly renovated Theatre Royal Drury Lane has seen it all and staged it all, says Robert Gore-Langton

The distinction between on and offline life blurred long ago. The greatest spats, sexual self-fashionings and mad soliloquies now unfurl…

We need to talk about Eric. In Jennifer Packer’s portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Eric N. Mack sits…

Big Red Machine release their second album later this month. It’s a fine name for ten tonnes of agricultural apparatus…

I’ve not been allowed anywhere near the TV remote control this week because of some kind of infernal sporting event…

At the end of Birmingham Opera Company’s RhineGold, as the gods stood ready to enter Valhalla, Donner swung a baseball…

Work is our new religion. There are people whose primary job is writing listicles of celebrity gossip, illustrated with gifs…

The voiceover says new ABC series Ms Represented is all about Australian women in politics but really it’s all about…

When Kaylee McKeown won Olympic gold her comment on worldwide television became the headline. Her sister and mum were watching…

White to play. Adhiban–Delgado Ramirez, Sochi 2021. White has more than one good move, but Adhiban found a spectacular way…

As I write this, the Fide World Cup is underway in Sochi, the Black Sea resort in Russia which hosted…

Avery Brundage was known to his enemies as Avery Ice Age — and to quite a few of his friends…

11 Across (three words) is a phrase suggested by the puzzle’s title explaining how to arrive at the other unclued…

I hadn’t noticed how much weight I’d put on during lockdown until I went out for a business lunch a…

Q. I’ve just completed a six-month paid internship for a hedge fund manager. I was mostly in his private office…

The name was Margaret, whose various versions are suggested by THE SPECTATOR (1: Mag), BARN OWL (10/36: Madge), LEAD HAMMER…

In Competition No. 3210, you were invited to provide a poem or a piece of prose containing words from the…

To be a killer bridge player, you need to be aggressive. Many of us are hampered by timidity, especially when…

Although fatigued to the point of catatonia, and sitting there like a 19th-century Fang funeral mask, I am glad to…

Patmos A very long time ago I wrote in these here pages that spending a summer on the Riviera or…

At last proper racing is back. Through the long days of lockdown horses and jockeys have still given their all…

The woman pulled up in her flashy 4×4 which was meandering along the farm track in that way people have…

‘They asked me if I wanted to wash up before we even went in to dinner,’ my husband recalled with…

The Pig at Bridge Place is not a pig in possession of a country house, but I would be for…