Wherever you are on the political spectrum, one word that should strike fear into you is ‘curfew’. Curfews are tools…

I don’t like praising politicians, but I feel Scott Morrison and his colleagues and even the premiers have been treated…

Worried about Covid or skyrocketing unemployment? Maybe you’ve lost your job or your business has had to close? Worry no…

Why won’t the Coalition fight for the Constitution?

New Zealand is reaping Winston Peter’s harvest

Why are we ignoring the potential cure under our noses?

When will the Coalition stand up for the taxpayer and stop giving grants to Marxist academics?

75 years ago, Japan was saved by the Bomb

The Australian Press Council has joined the cancel culture club

Xi Jinping’s propagandists are cheering on our national broadcaster

Scotland’s new Hate Crime Bill will make criminals of comedians

Rather like unpacking after a holiday, when you take unworn clothes from the case still neatly folded because the occasion…

August, as usual, will be the busiest month for Britain’s amusement parks — which is odd when you consider that…

Is our test-and-trace system ready?

China has its sights on the Bay of Bengal

How Boris should handle the US election

The new Scottish Tory leader – and his familiar sidekick

The capital is the motor of Britain’s economy. It needs to get moving again

It is a particular pleasure to be returning to the columns of The Spectator, more than half a century after…

Throughout the past few months the government has appeared to face an unenviable choice between saving lives and saving livelihoods.…

Home Some 2.7 million people in Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, where many Muslims live, were…

Tackling obesity is the latest government initiative, universally condemned as nannying. Ask a Spartan. From an early age, Spartan children…

Peer review Sir: A neat solution to the levels of inactivity of some members of the House of Lords (‘Peer…

The other Argos The Argos catalogue, known as the ‘Book of Dreams’, is no longer to appear in printed form.…

When Dominic Cummings addressed government advisers recently, he said that he was so out of touch with day-to-day politics that…

There’s nothing unprecedented about Covid-19 itself. The equally novel, equally infectious Asian flu of 1957 had commensurate fatalities in Britain:…

We should take heart from BP’s £5.1 billion second-quarter loss, accompanied by a halving of its dividend. What’s good about…

Activists wish to change the name of a school in north London because it is named after a road which…

The best way (and with politicians sometimes the only way) to know whether people are aware they’ve made a mistake…

Juan Carlos, ex-King of Spain, behaved foolishly in relation to money and sex, and so his decision to leave Spain…

Thirty years ago, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its puppet regimes unleashed widespread celebration, especially among their suppressed…

Philippe Sands on the heroic couple who defied Hitler and paid the ultimate price

In supposedly unprecedented times such as ours, there are compelling reasons to turn to the history of medicine. For hope,…

Over the past 50 years, M. John Harrison has produced a remarkably varied body of work: a dozen atmospheric novels…

The history of rubbish can be scholarship, but the history of scholarship is often rubbish. Hindsight diminishes earlier habits of…

It is easy to forget the abnormality of Donald Trump’s presence in the White House. Before his election it would…

John Giorno, who died last year, was a natural acolyte: he needed a superior being to set him in motion.…

The novelist, memoirist and film-maker Xiaolu Guo writes with tremendous delicacy and nuance about migration, language, alienation, and love. A…

The narrative of an adolescent travelling by water with an older companion, undergoing trials and ordeals, encountering scoundrels and villains,…

Back in my now rather distant days of regular residence in Britain, I listened regularly to a radio program called…

‘Just as I am’ is the recurrent opening line of a hymn written in 1835 by Charlotte Elliott. It was…

In the 62 years since I first heard and saw Don Carlo, in the famous and long-lasting production by Visconti…

An oxymoron is a clever gambit in an exhibition title. The Whitechapel Gallery’s Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium…

American Pickle is a comedy based on a short story by Simon Rich, originally published in the New Yorker, and…

Dancing at Dusk captures the final rehearsal of a new version of Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring. It’s only…

Michael Hann talks to Kevin Rowland about Dexys, insecurity and the cocaine years

Soon, very soon now — even sooner than I imagined, if A Suitable Boy turns out to be as lacklustre…

Back to the West End at last. After a four- month lay-off, I grabbed the first available chance to catch…

Two friends of mine are being harassed by the government. Both men have criticised the more lurid aspects of LGBTQ+…

About 18 months ago, I attended a debate at Policy Exchange, the think tank founded by Nick Boles, Francis Maude…

Is it safe to visit the continent? On the one hand, abroad is likely to be less crowded this August…

Q. We invited two friends to supper in London. As they came in they said they should order their taxi…

T.S. Eliot adopted a method of criticism that I am not aware of any other writer using: he imagined what…

People often tell me I have a strange way of looking at the world. Obviously, it doesn’t seem strange to…

Island of Serifos Let’s get one thing straight: island life is not for me. Island life off a boat, jawohl,…

The whole of Surrey and south-west London seem to have gone abroad on holiday so I’ve got my sanity back.…

Provence-Alpes-Côte D’Azur Until January the foreign correspondent lived in a late-18th-century house with a vineyard, olive grove and vegetable garden…

It was to have been, if not a glorious return, at least an encouraging one. On the Stewards’ Cup day…

Stuart Wheeler was a true original. I was lucky enough to be a friend (we met playing bridge), and will…

Unclued lights are anagrams of Shakespearean characters. These lights are defined by surplus words in eight clues. Across 1 Recreational…

Black to play. Studer–Naiditsch, Biel, July 2020. White intends to meet 1…Bxb5 with 2 Bxe7 Qxe7 3 Qxb5, with an…

The author was GEORGE SAND (19/26), whose original name was AMANTINE LUCILE AURORE DUPIN (25/40/5/16). The perimetric works are INDIANA,…

In Competition No. 3160 you were invited to supply a short story whose opening sentence is ‘I have no idea…

‘Cabin crew, ten minutes to landing!’ Are there any more exhilarating words? Soon, for a few precious minutes, one can…