Light, or enlightenment, is a metaphor for so many optimistic, positive and critical components of our humanity, and of our…

Last week a friend invited me to the final year art students’ show at the University of NSW. As I…

On arriving for the first time in decades on Spanish soil I realise that the last time I visited –…

Maybe like Dorothy of the ruby red shoes former foreign minister Julie Bishop is hoping that the scarlet stilettos she…

When oil prices spiked to $US140 ($A193.85) a barrel in 2008, veteran analysts declared that prices would reach $US200 or…

‘Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,’ secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria assured the equally loathsome mass-murderer…

According much of the media, last Friday’s climate change ‘strike’ staged by school students across Australia was an epoch-making moment…

Ever heard of the wonderful American magician team of Penn & Teller? My son and I saw them in Vegas…

Malcolm Fraser said life wasn’t meant to be easy and then went and joined the Greens anyway. So here are…

Unless Theresa May delays the vote, 11 December 2018 might be about to become one of the most important in…

Parliament is in deadlock over Brexit. So what can we expect in the coming days and weeks after the vote?…

Over the past 20 years, the old British trait of self-deprecation has been killed off. And in its place, boasting…

‘But what must it be like for the fish?’ We’re talking about cormorants, Neil MacGregor and I, and the spectacular…

Sadiq Khan is an Islamophobe. Not just any old Islamophobe, and not just in the woollier parts of the web.…

Emmanuel Macron is supposed to be the cleverest man in France but he has painted himself so completely into a…

I met a friend for lunch in Paris last Sunday. He and his wife had come up from the countryside…

The world knew him as ‘Bush 41’. I knew him by a different name -during the time I worked for…

St Martin’s really did once stand in the fields, just as nearby Haymarket was a market selling hay. But the…

On Tuesday, MPs will face something rare: a Commons motion which really does deserve to be described as momentous. It…

Home Political hobbyists speculated on the future of Brexit if the government fell, if a new Conservative leader was chosen,…

I recently returned from several months in Los Angeles working on one of the most popular US TV shows. American…

Big defeats Could the vote on the Brexit deal set a record for a government defeat in the Commons? Aside…

Sleeping on the streets Sir: Mark Palmer claims that ‘homelessness is hardly a top government priority’ (‘Home truths’, 1 December). I…

Inside the Dominic Grieve amendment carried on Tuesday is the embryo of a new political party. Any parliamentary majority for what…

Thank the blessed Lord it’s over. Not Brexit, or Theresa May’s flailing and spastic governance. I’m talking about John le…

For any bosses from the Singapore education department reading this, I have a message. It comes from (I’d guess) most…

Behold, the most incendiary statistic in America: the Census Bureau’s projection of when whites will become a minority in what…

There’s been a strong sense of pre-Christmas turkeys coming home to roost in this week’s news, as stories I’ve written…

‘A is for Amy who fell down the stairs/ B is for Basil, assaulted by bears…’ The Gashlycrumb Tinies, an…

In her 66 years on the throne the Queen has represented Britain on official visits to at least 126 countries…

A young girl finds the body of her nanny, brutally murdered, and the barely moving form of her mother, a…

There’s no shortage of magical rings in the children’s canon, the sort of things that usefully make you invisible or…

Picture India in 1991. You need to make several trips to Delhi and wait three years to import a computer.…

This book — the title is from Pasternak —is billed as ‘literary fiction’. The narrator, a Russian gambler and drinker…

Michelangelo seems never to have travelled to Turkey to advise the Sultan on a bridge to span the Golden Horn,…

From Colette to Rudyard Kipling, celebrities flocked for front-row seats at the 1921 trial of Henri Landru, the notorious ‘lonely…

Its Booker-longlist nomination meant that Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina (Granta, £16.99) was the comic that everyone has heard of this year,…

If you don’t know who Lionel Messi is you won’t enjoy this book much. If you do, you probably will.…

In the opening pages of Turbulence, a woman in her seventies, who is visiting her sick son in Notting Hill,…

The Institute of Public Affairs infuriates the Left. The IPA’s success in being the public face of centre-right thinking, even…

There is very little art about modern poverty, because who wants to know? It is barely acknowledged, unless there is…

One of the biggest stars of the 1970s was the professional lard-bucket Mick McManus, who plied his trade as an…

It’s December, and while musical theatre is busy celebrating ‘warm woollen mittens’, opera, as usual, is far more interested in…

Roma is the latest film from Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity,Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and…

Don’t watch The Sinner (originally on Netflix; now on BBC4) because, despite your better judgment, you’ll only get addicted after…

‘Without death,’ says Salena Godden, ‘life would be a never-ending conveyor belt of sensation.’ For her death is what gives…

Not a bad year for the award. Honourable mentions must go to the landfill abstractions of Oxford’s new Westgate Centre,…

The Spectator is responsible for many coinages. One of the most significant came in 1968, when an article by our…

He was a solicitor, journalist,war correspondent, soldier, grazier but, most importantly, a poet. Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson CBE (1864-1941) was…

New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The…

I entered the cave house carrying groceries and panting from the climb to find an old hippie woman displaying rugs…

Decorating a tree on the unfinished minstrels’ gallery was an appealing idea if only for the health and safety violations.…

It may yet turn out that the most significant development in racing this year was the sale of some 250…

This is my last column before Christmas (I know… I’ll miss you too) and as 2018 rolls to an end…

After 12 games of classical chess, the world championship between the incumbent, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, and his American challenger,…

Black to play. This is a variation from Caruana-Carlsen, World Championship (Game 10), London 2018. Black is a rook down.…

In Competition No. 3077 you were invited to submit a sonnet with the name of a Shakespearean character hidden in…

‘12/15’ (six words in total) is a quotation (in ODQ) suggested by the remaining unclued lights (two hyphened), whose fifth…

The two people were Prince RUPERT (12) of the Rhine, born 1619 in PRAGUE (6) and died 1682 in WESTMINSTER…

For months I’ve been looking forward to the Guardian’s much-heralded report on racism in Britain, which was unveiled this week.…

I have just spent a weekend planning a family trip to Chennai and Hyderabad. Since some of the flights are…

Q. A friend and I are giving a combined Christmas drinks party for 120 people. It’s being held at her…

One of the pleasures of journalism is the opportunity to meet eminent persons: bankers, businessmen, civil servants, diplomats, politicians, vignerons.…

Martin Allen has written with a very interesting question. It follows on from his initial query, which is why people…