The position of two celestial bodies when their longitude differs by 180 degrees, especially in a configuration in which Earth…

When team players need to break the vow of silence

Does anyone care?

How the Canberra class are destroying prosperity

The energy regulator now admits it got its modelling all wrong

Democracies must not tolerate intolerance

The US has ignored economic statecraft

Covid’s dark comedy rolls on

We’ve become a dumbed-down world

Anglosphere empire v. 51 states

The hospice movement is one of the great achievements of post-war Britain. Inspired by the doctor Cicely Saunders, who in…

My name is Hamit Coskun and I’ve just been convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence. My ‘crime’? Burning…

Everyone thinks they know what the Blob is. A great wobbly blancmange of Sir Humphreys and (these days) Lady Tamaras:…

In the 2004 film Mean Girls Ms Norbury (Tina Fey) cries to her High School students: ‘Girls! You’ve got to…

The Cambridge bike bandit emerged. I watched the rough, smiling face of the old man who came slowly from his…

It’s funny the ways we lie to ourselves. The little lies. The white ones. We say we’re exhausted when we…

Some sorts of books and dramas have very strict rules. We like a lot of things to be absolutely predictable.…

I felt a mixture of annoyance and relief when I bought my first non-disposable Elf Bar last weekend, ahead of…

Lionel is right Sir: Gareth Roberts’s piece (‘End of the rainbow’, 31 May) gave me pause to reflect. It’s not…

It is embarrassing to compare Thames Water’s efforts even to the Greeks, let alone the Romans. Most Greek cities got…

Britain without blasphemy laws is a surprisingly recent development. Blasphemy was abolished as a common law offence in England and…

Under control UK air space is to be reorganised – the first wholesale change since the 1950s – to improve…

Home The government said that the armed forces had to move to ‘warfighting readiness’ and accepted the 62 recommendations of…

On 30 April, the solicitors Mishcon de Reya asked me to join a panel commemorating the 25th anniversary of the…

Five years ago, the man who is now Lord Hermer gave an interview to the Times. The then QC was…

A wearisome aspect of modern political polarisation is feeling forced to take sides. Until recently, I felt I could contemplate…

The trouble with history is that it is topiary. History is what’s left after the unwanted foliage has been clipped…

In the great game of musical chairs that is British politics, it’s impossible to foresee which contestant will be left…

You may have noticed that for some while the BBC News people have stopped referring to Reform UK as ‘far…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any article about Jane Austen must begin with a mangled, platitudinous variation on…

NatWest has returned to full private-sector ownership 17 years after the £46 billion bailout that took it into state hands…

Great news for admirers of entertaining and refreshingly honest thinking and writing about our world: a bonus volume by the…

Can the mysterious disappearance of a hiker on the Appalachian Trail be linked to a Department of Defense training facility in backwoods Maine?

Lamorna Ash devotes much space to interviewing gay Christians seared by homophobia, but neglects scripture’s underlying message about the link between sex and loving commitment

Peter Stothard’s portrait of an ambitious young Lothario running wild and refusing to knuckle down is certainly not the Horace we know from Latin lessons

Norfolk life looks quietly bleak in these carefully worked short stories of broken homes, precarious employment, dwindling expectations and torpor

Something is seriously amiss when such a courageous and independent-minded professor as Matt Goodwin feels he no longer belongs in the system

When her daughter, a student in Milan, is left traumatised after being mugged, Lucia is reminded of her own violent introduction to adulthood at a similar ‘brittle age’

Iain MacGregor’s impeccably researched account of the first use of nuclear weapons in war is a timely reminder of the horrors they unleash on the world

In 1972,Vasili Mitrokhin oversaw the transfer of thousands of documents in the KGB archives and secretly noted the atrocities they revealed - though Stalin’s file was mysteriously empty

It wasn’t just Dickens’s stage performances and publishing ventures that fascinated Twain, but the witty, journalistic style, which he mimicked to great effect in early travel books

Characterising native tribes as ‘naked, painted, shivering, hideous savages’ proved no less calamitous for their survival as Argentina’s efforts to exterminate them, says Matthew Carr

One of the greatest documentary filmmakers who ever lived died last week at the age of 97. He is the…

‘Remember, Roy, white flowers are the only chic ones.’ So Cecil Beaton remarked to Roy Strong, possibly as a mild…

In last week’s Spectator, Richard Morris lamented museum collections languishing in storage, pleading to ‘get these works out’. There’s an…

Falling Into Place is a love story written by Aylin Tezel, directed by Aylin Tezel, and starring Aylin Tezel. That’s…

Every few years the shade of Edward Burra is treated to a Major Retrospective. The pattern is long established: Edward…

It is not uncommon for (predominantly male) music critics to invert the ‘great man/great woman’ dictum in order to suggest…

Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is one of those operas that under-promises on paper but over-delivers on stage. It’s hard…

You had a narrow escape this week. I was about to urge you to watch Sirens, the latest iteration of…

George Bernard Shaw’s provocative play Mrs Warren’s Profession examines the moral hypocrisy of the moneyed classes. It opens with a…

US eyes Darwin Port prise. That, in case you missed it, was the hedline on the frunt page of last…

Calling all lovers of our language – the semicolon is at risk of becoming extinct! Forget about the bilby or…

I’ve been mulling over Marco Rubio’s latest salvo in the Trump administration’s assault on the Censorship-Industrial Complex. The US Secretary…

Q. I’m the author of 14 books, mostly historical fiction but a few children’s books, all published by a major…

If that was sportswashing, let’s have more of it. The Champions League final, when Paris Saint-Germain vaporised Inter Milan, was…

Hawksmoor is the finest steak chain in London, because it lacks pretension and cares about blood. Years ago, at the…

In Comp. 3402 you were invited to submit a poem or passage about an unusual predilection. The quirks ranged from…

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The youngest of our six children, Giuseppe, nine, received the Eucharist for the first time on Sunday.…

The builder boyfriend sat nervously in front of my laptop as I logged him in to do his speed awareness…

Allegedly the most effective rain dance in the world is that performed by Native American Hopi Indians. The biennial 16-day…