Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was in fine form the other day when he proudly proclaimed to a gathering of Victorian…

Well, that was another depressingly terrible week for free speech in this country as political correctness and identity politics stayed…

What a surprise! The newly appointed chairman of the ABC, Justin Milne plans to do nothing about bias on the…

Of all the names Mark Latham was called last week, the one which could most seriously affect his future employment…

How’s this for the ‘balance and objectivity’ that the United States Studies Centre claims to provide as an ‘objective and…

With the Senate voting down the Coalition’s proposed reforms to section 18C, the battle lines for free speech have now…

Recently, Malcolm Turnbull has from time to time tried to act like the centre-right leader of a centre-right government, which…

‘Ayaan Hirsi (is) asking 4 an a$$ whippin’. I wish I could take (her) vagina away – (she doesn’t) deserve…

The Senate’s blocking of the government’s attempted modification of Section 18C indicates that there is something drastically wrong with the…

Kudos to Tim Wilson (to whom I don’t, as a rule, give kudos) for defending Mark Allaby’s right to be…

Marmalade’s had a rough old time of it lately. A recent report in the Telegraph declared it is dying out;…

In response to the Westminster attack, a 100-strong new counter-extremism taskforce has been announced to deal with the terrorist threat…

It’s often said that the Trump administration is ‘isolationist’. This is not true. In fact, we are now witnessing a…

Why don’t tall people get the same sympathy as short people? Everyone feels sorry for minnows, cutting them slack when…

On several foreign policy issues, Donald Trump has mellowed since taking office. His administration still has concerns about the Iran…

We never loved each other, Ken Livingstone and I. We first clashed in public more than a decade ago, and…

Germany’s Great War leader was a blustering, reckless gambler who took the world over the abyss. Sound familiar?

Nice littler earners Cressida Dick, the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, will take a voluntary pay cut from £270,000…

Donald Trump’s Washington is a city of many secrets, but no mysteries. So much about the Trump-Putin story remains unknown,…

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party is coming to resemble a drunk trying to get home on a bike.…

All-round education Sir: While much of Ross Clark’s analysis of the direction that independent education has taken is spot on…

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, visited Saudi Arabia without covering her hair, or even wearing a hat. Earlier, asked…

According to archaeologists and all the papers last week, the 11th-century villagers of Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, used to mutilate…

‘Christ, I would be shot for buying this if people knew,’ says an anonymous fan in the comments below Amazon’s…

Since Article 50 was triggered last week, City traders have been avidly watching the fluctuations of the pound. Analysts at…

An American woman started a website called ‘People I Want to Punch in the Throat’, in which she listed the…

Cadbury and the National Trust stand accused of taking the Easter out of Easter eggs. The Trust’s ‘Easter Egg Trail’…

The death of Princess Diana twenty years ago has been the subject of a wealth of conspiracy theories. James Murray’s…

Helen Dunmore’s new novel concerns lives, consequential in their day, that pass away into utter oblivion. Appropriately, the ‘solitary and…

The name Maud Russell creeps almost apologetically into a few 20th-century diaries such as those of her friend Violet Bonham…

The most appealing phoenix in literature is surely the eponymous bird from E. Nesbit’s 1904 classic, The Phoenix and the…

It is 50 years since the publication of Very Like a Whale, Ferdinand Mount’s first novel. ‘Mr Mount’s distinguishing feature…

The Argentinian writer César Aira is a prodigy: at the age of 68 he has published, according to a ‘partial…

Min Kym is a violinist, but if you Google her name you won’t find sound-clips or concert reviews, touring schedules…

This slight book comes with heavy baggage. In 2009, Rampling handed back a hefty advance for her contribution to a…

Science fiction is not the first thing one thinks of in connection with the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, though the…

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It is estimated that the world’s insects perform an annual pollination service for all humankind worth $215 billion. In return,…

An estimated 400,000 people drown annually worldwide, 50 per cent of them children. Roughly 150 drownings occur in the UK.…

A trio of dazzling scores, the soft clack of gemstones on hips and collarbones, a glittering parure of solos, duets…

Films can be poetry — or like poetry; or poetic, at least — but can poetry ever be film? That…

I wonder what Sarah Sands will do to Radio 4’s Today programme? She is the first editor in more than…

Having seen Bob Dylan play live a few years ago, I’m pretty sure he is not the first person I…

As we waited for curtain-up on Scottish Opera’s new production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle a member of staff walked out…

Cyclone Debbie caused the cancellation of the announcement ceremony in Townsville for this year’s Australian Festival of Chamber Music but…

‘Your favourite virtue?’ ‘I don’t have any: they are all boring,’ wrote the 21-year-old Camille Claudel in a Victorian album…

The house in which I lived in Tokyo was built by my landlady, a former geisha. It stood on a…

Sky Atlantic — available only to Sky customers — has the cunning/infuriating policy of broadcasting the kind of programmes most…

Don Juan in Soho rehashes an old Spanish yarn about a sexual glutton ruined by his appetite. Setting the story…

We all know how important it is to stop and think when defending a hand. There’s just one problem with…

Before leaving the topic of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 tournament to mark the half-century of the Russian revolution,…

White to play. This position is a variation from Portisch-Petrosian, Moscow 1967. Can you spot White’s winning coup? Answers to…

In Competition No. 2991 you were invited to submit ‘The Rime of the Wedding Guest’.   There were, naturally, lots…

The same 26 appears six times in 1D. Remaining unclued lights exemplify its different meanings. The 26 will appear diagonally…

Unclued lights (in red) are the characteristics of ‘the period’, from the opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities.…

A friend of a friend hosted an engagement party in a London hotel. Invitations had gone out six weeks beforehand,…

We were talking about war, the desert and God. In the early Seventies, one of our number, Christopher James, had…

New York   I’d gladly exchange waistlines with him if he’d teach me to cut a phrase the way he…

My brother and I were taking a short cut through an alleyway and saw a copper coming towards us through…

Everybody’s saying it, even though the latest research declares that only 6 per cent of the population is given to…

‘Information,’ came the reply. ‘We want information.’ The voice echoed in my head. Oh no. Oh please God, no. A…

I’ve just made a programme for Radio 4 about the populist revolts that swept Britain and America last year. Were…

From October last year, it was compulsory for all London black cabs to accept payment by card. London cabbies aren’t…

Laikipia, Kenya   For weeks the farm has been in the eye of a storm, with violence swirling all around…