‘How can you look at future technologies? They’re not invented yet!’ retorted Leigh Sales gleefully. If Lewis Carroll had created…

Enemies of free speech hide behind a bill of rights An intriguing feature of the debate about freedom of the…

The Left’s ‘net-zero’ push is a dangerous farce

...but I've nominated Donald Trump to take home the big one!

Enthusiasm for the Paris Agreement is on the wane

Feminists must speak out against the misandry of the trans movement

SARS -2 turns Silk Road into a sow’s ear

A day on the green with St Greta

Coronavirus - another anti-Trump ‘fake gloom’ conspiracy?

My speech at the launch of his latest book

...and the media mogul we should have had

During times of contagion, you begin to understand why fascist salutes were once so popular. The foot-tap is replacing the…

I was still digesting my delicious breakfast (kippers, poached eggs and soda bread — all local) when the sad news…

Eco-friendly is not woman-friendly

Does coronavirus mark a turning point in the history of hyper-globalisation?

If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read

Even a deadly pandemic has its positives

What can Ben Houchen teach Johnson’s Conservatives?

Biden’s campaign is back from the dead

‘Aren’t you meant to be in quarantine?’ the man in the cloakroom queue asks. I sense that his enquiry is…

Thirteen years ago, when John Reid became Home Secretary, he declared the ministry he presided over ‘not fit for purpose’.…

Home After a Cobra emergency meeting about the coronavirus Covid-19, when the number of cases in the United Kingdom had…

We need career detectives Sir: Your lead article (Trial and error, 29 February) rightly condemns Tom Watson for pressurising police…

Heathrow’s nine runways When was a third runway for Heathrow first proposed? Heathrow was always planned to have multiple runways.…

Last week Ross Clark expatiated on the hysteria and panic generated by Covid-19 that threatens to send the world into…

I’ve put off sending a private email that’s been ready to go for weeks. Then last Sunday, I read Julie…

We have now got past the absurd stage of glaring in a reproachful manner at Chinese people on the tube.…

Hit-and-miss, heavy-handed, but a necessary use of justice to deter repetition. That was my summing-up, last year, of the Serious…

Months ago, not long after Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election triumph, I wrote a Times column of a cautiously hopeful…

When Sajid Javid resigned in a row with No. 10, there was much speculation about what would be in the…

The government is trying to get onshore windfarms going again, defying the damage they do to unique environments. I am…

Andrew Ziminski is the man who rebuilt the West Country. For 30 years, this skilled stonemason has renovated some of…

‘James Scudamore is now a force in the English novel,’ says Hilary Mantel on the cover of English Monsters, which,…

The reality (or lack thereof) of numbers is the kind of problem some philosophers consider overwhelmingly important, but it’s of…

On 8 November 1954, Dave Brubeck’s portrait appeared on the cover of Time magazine, accompanied by the words ‘The Joints…

In Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders, the social historian Jane Robinson — whose previous books include histories of suffragettes and bluestockings…

In 1540, he, himself, Lord Cromwell fell victim to the king’s caprice. His execution brings to a close one of English literature’s great trilogies, says Mark Lawson

Humanity has come startlingly close to destroying itself in the 75 or so years in which it has had the…

‘That sinkhole of ambition and superficiality we call Sydney.’ That’s a direct quotation from the Melbourne Theatre Company’s promotion of…

One of my perpetual gnawing terrors is that I’ll recommend a series that looks initially promising but turns out to…

Nicolaes Maes (1634–93) relished the simple moments of daily life during the Dutch Golden Age. A woman peeling parsnips over…

For 500 years the State Oracle of Tibet has worked as a kind of angry immortal advisor to the Dalai…

The Prince of Egypt is a musical adapted from a 1998 Dreamworks cartoon based on the Book of Exodus. So…

Military Wives is a British comedy drama starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan. It is based on the true…

In seven short years, Aubrey Beardsley mastered the art of outrage. Laura Gascoigne on the gloriously indecent illustrations of a singular genius

‘People may say I can’t sing,’ said the soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, ‘but no one can ever say I didn’t…

Grade: B+ It is an eternal mystery to me why Britain has never had much time for power pop, seeing…

Miriam Margolyes chews the fat with Tanya Gold about mother love, anti-Zionism and too much shagging

One clued light can be associated with ten unclued ones. Ignore accents. One solution is an IVR. Across 4 Thrills…

It is time to begin with an apology, and hope. In the course of these columns, I have already admitted…

I wish I shared the Prime Minister’s confidence about the ability of the NHS to cope with coronavirus. ‘I have…

Gstaad   I shoulda been a weatherman: no sooner had I announced snow to be a Gstaad rarity than it…

Every time the Cheltenham Festival looms, I recall a remarkable experience. It was already 25 years since Dawn Run’s recovery…

Q. I am arranging the seating plan for my daughter’s wedding and have a problem with one of her guests…

One of the many technological things I don’t understand is, how come I’m paying to watch television? I know why…

On a hard chair next to the waiting-room door, I sat for an hour defusing thoughts of my own demise,…

The German word for pawn, ‘bauer’, can also be translated as peasant, or farmer. There are many spectacular games in…

I love the French expression esprit de l’escalier (‘wit of the staircase’); it perfectly captures that moment of frustration when…

‘Somebody loves me,’ said my husband, waving a copy of The Spectator above his head as though pursued by wasps.…

A consensus seems to be forming that the BBC licence fee is for the chop. In a digital age, the…

The unclued answers are all words inChambers, having their origin in Indonesia (clued by wordplay in the title). First prize…

In Competition No. 3138 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘Lines on a Young Lady’s Instagram’. Thanks to…

Black to play. Puranik–Sjugirov, another spectacular game played at the Aeroflot Open. Puranik was perhaps counting on 1…Rc1 2 Qa3…