As we go to print the US election hangs in the balance. Both candidates have made late night speeches; one…

Covid has emboldened totalitarian authorities

A study in early cancel culture

On the singularity of the maverick Donald Trump

Liberal policies save Labor from the slag heap

Identity politics is based on a fallacy

Jeremy Corbyn is a symptom of a far wider problem

Runner-up: ‘Sink the subs’

Qui tacet consentire

Constitutional review overdue

Why is buying a car such an ordeal?

How does Macron hope to prosecute his war?

I recently bought some quinces in our local farmshop as part of my new policy of investing heavily in right-wing…

It has become normal to think of the Islamist attacks in Europe as attacks on a secular way of life.…

What lockdown means for families with disabled children

Will churches ever fully reopen?

Once again, Trump has shown how well he understands America

Is the harm it causes justified?

How Russia will try to influence what happens next

Woeful Wales Sir: Allison Pearson succinctly points out the absurdity of the so-called Welsh government and its assembly, now trying…

The ancients knew nothing about global warming, but they still reflected on the relationship between man and nature. In the…

American expats have a conundrum on election night: do you stay up to watch the results come in or do…

Home The government imposed a lockdown on England to last until 2 December. On television, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister,…

The benefit of having a lockdown announced some days in advance is the ability to savour what is about to…

The start of lockdown The earliest known use of ‘lockdown’ in its current sense was in a 1973 story in…

A frothy new drama called Emily in Paris arrived on Netflix last month. Starring Lily Collins — daughter of Phil…

Aviation, nuclear power and public transport — along with good restaurants, golden retrievers and hand-knitted bed socks — are, as…

Monday night’s murderous gunman in Vienna is officially described as ‘Islamist’. Brahim Aioussaoi, the man accused of murdering worshippers in…

Keir Starmer has his first attack line of the next general election campaign. He will say that England’s second lockdown…

It seems, then, that this latest lockdown has been instigated simply to protect two very questionable institutions — the National…

 Washington, DC On election day in the capital there is no thrill in the air, but there is a sound:…

Evolutionary theory is primarily about survival but, as Jonathan Silvertown makes clear in this intriguing book,  as well as having…

On the weekly ‘opinions’ afternoons, the public would arrive with carefully wrapped parcels holding items to be identified, writes Claire…

Hours after Benazir Bhutto arrived back in Pakistan on 18 October 2007, two bombs exploded near the bullet-proof truck carrying…

As Lionel Barber recounts unrolling his pitch to replace me as editor of the Financial Times to the newspaper’s proprietor…

This book has appeared with no fuss or fanfare and yet by any account it is something of a scoop.…

Sybille Bedford died in 2006, just short of 95. She left four novels, a travel book, two volumes of legal…

We have a fine crop of Christmas gift books this year, so good that some of them actually qualify as…

The region of Dolpo in Nepal forms part of a border zone between that country and China in the central…

Nigella Lawson is many things to many people: the perfect hostess, the TV star, the thinking man’s crumpet. To me…

Eight centuries ago in Turkey, at a gathering of intellectuals, a Muslim sultan insisted that one of his courtiers write…

Aneliya, the Russian narrator of David Keenan’s enjoyably weird new novel, is worried about her dad. Tomasz’s modest music career…

Reviewers choose the books they have most enjoyed in 2020 – and a few that have disappointed them

Sean Connery outlived all of them, those great British actors who came to such prominence in the early Sixties: Richard…

Simon Fieldhouse is a Sydney- based artist who has developed a very particular area of expression. Typically, he uses watercolour…

In an extract from their book, Antony Gormley tells Martin Gayford that the 3-D will always trump the 2-D

It’s touch and go whether the theatre will survive this latest assault. Some venues have pushed back their entire programme…

The timing couldn’t be better. Just as the gates clang shut on another national lockdown, trapping us all indefinitely with…

The Slightly Foxed podcast, like the quarterly and old bookshop of the same name, is almost muskily lovely. It’s the…

When Carlos Acosta was named artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet in January of this year, he announced ambitious plans…

The Life Ahead stars Sophia Loren, and if there is one reason to see The Life Ahead it is this:…

There must be some people somewhere who vaguely know their own spouses — but if so, they don’t tend to…

Tony Letford In a recent article in the Weekend Australian, Alison Broinowski refers to ‘America’s unjustified atom bombing of Japan’…

The cyclist pulled into our gateway, got off his bike and grabbed hold of the electric fencing. Installing game cameras,…

Boris Johnson looked unhappy, as well he might, standing at his indoor lectern last Saturday to announce the new lockdown:…

New York Back when people used to read newspapers, they called it a ‘human interest’ story. Now it appears as…

In Competition No. 3173 you were invited to give a fresh twist to a well-known single line of poetry by…

Everything is happening so fast. First we were put under a night curfew. A few days later M. Macron announced…

The unclued lights are heraldic terms. First prize J.P. Carrington, Denchworth, OxfordshireRunners-up David Shields, Merthyr Vale M.E. Bosence, Bournemouth

The unclued lights (one of two words) display a common feature, different in each case. Across 1 Fundamentalist group keeps…

‘It’s chess. We’re all prima donnas.’ You can hear it spoken with a wink in the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s…

It’s a good day to stab something and tear out its heart. Elaine Lorys is the only female master fishmonger…

‘At least there’s sport,’ said the woman in the supermarket queue. True enough, and in a welcome sop to an…

A second lockdown won’t cause me much suffering. I don’t have a shop selling ‘non-essential’ goods (e.g. books) that will…

White to play and mate in 3. A puzzle featured in The Queen’s Gambit, apparently composed by W. Atkinson in…

How many times have we had it hammered into us: ‘When dummy goes down, plan the play’? Well, if we…

Q. Is there a tactful way to wind up a Zoom call when one of you has more time on…