The flags will unfurl, the crowds will cheer, the bands will play, an explosion of red, green, black and white…

Malleable expectations Gary Johns is a fellow Speccie contributor. He’s also a friend. In fact, next month my wife and…

Despite what certain scurrilous publications have said about him, no doubt to foment discord in an otherwise harmonious party, I…

Young Liberals let us all rejoice, for we are young (and free?) Well, when I found out I was speaking…

‘I’m bored!’ declares my companion while yet another naked body is hoisted – like Jesus – onto a makeshift cross.…

In Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe the British House of Lords, which ‘did nothing in particular, but did it very well’,…

Canberra, 2026 Simone entered the kitchen, hips swaying. ‘House goddess’ – this was her walking style. David had selected it,…

The first duty of a leader is to keep the team together. This is Malcolm Turnbull’s biggest failure. The federal…

The late Allister Sparks (1933-2016), veteran political reporter and book author, in the year before he died, reflected on some…

I once spent three months living in the Languedoc, writing my first novel. The highlight was the few days I…

A thread runs through several of the stories that have defined this turbulent summer: reporters have been shocked by the…

Could there be a better metaphor for the corruption that now pervades all top-level sport than the use of motors…

Meeting men used to be so easy. I don’t mean that in a Grindr sort of way. I just mean…

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in Covent Garden and we are all learning how to kill ourselves. The venue…

Few events have appalled London liberals so publicly as the surprise emergence of the ten MPs of the Democratic Unionist…

Britain is a strong and wealthy nation. Let’s behave like one

A trip to the supermarché at the beginning of our French month yielded many of the necessary things one also…

From ‘The Russian awakening’, 6 July 1917: M. Kerensky, the Russian Minister of War, has kept his word. He promised…

Just a few weeks ago, the Conservatives triumphed in the local government elections and Theresa May was hailed as an…

Hot stuff Sir: If Dr Williamson of East Anglia wishes to be taken seriously then he should refrain from using…

Home Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, urged colleagues to make the case for ‘sound money’; he said, ‘We…

I voted Remain last year for two reasons. First, however irritating I found some aspects of the EU, I could…

Because I’d been reading about Stradivarius on the bus home, my helpful iPhone suggested a related story: the Totenberg Ames…

If David Cameron seeks any testament to his handling of Britain’s difficulties with Scottish separatism, the mess that Spain is…

The Tory party is suffering from an intellectual crisis of confidence. Before 8 June, its collective view was that Jeremy…

I lit a cigarette in an open-air car park a couple of years ago as I was walking to the…

Having worked flat-out to defend judges over the Article 50 case in the Supreme Court, the BBC has gone the…

In The Ambassadors, Henry James sends Lewis Lambert Strether from Boston to Paris to retrieve Chad Newsome, the wayward heir…

Medea’s continuing hold over spinners of tall tales from Euripides to Chaucer to Pasolini needs little explanation; she’s an archetype…

What led a person in 17th-century England to get on a ship bound for the Americas? James Evans attempts to…

As bombs fall everywhere in Syria and IS fighters destroy Palmyra, a musicologist in Vienna lies awake all night thinking…

Imagine if Kathy Lette — or possibly Julie Burchill — had written a feminist, magic-realist saga that sent four women…

John McEnroe’s father calls. In fact, he calls McEnroe’s manager’s phone, presumably because dad doesn’t have a direct line to…

The details of Mussolini’s fascism are perhaps not quite as familiar in this country as they might be. Even quite…

It might seem unlikely that a Christian noblewoman could have had influence over a Muslim city in the 13th century,…

I’ve diagnosed myself with early onset cottage-itis. It’s not supposed to happen for another decade, but at 29 I dream…

Henry Marsh’s book Do No Harm (2014) was that rare thing — a neurosurgeon showing his fallibility in public and…

He left Melbourne in 1936 to become a famous writer, and he did. Not just a famous writer but a…

We routinely feel emotional about materials — often subliminally. Which is why new substances and techniques for manufacturing have provoked…

It Comes at Night is a horror film and I can’t say horror is my favourite genre. In fact, as…

Melvyn Bragg on TV: The Box That Changed The World (BBC2, Saturday) was just what you would have expected of…

Boy is she fat, and getting fatter. I realise this is something we’re not meant to mention when talking about…

When I began listening to music seriously, in about 1950, I had read about Mahler but wasn’t able to hear…

Mitridate, re di Ponto was Mozart’s fifth opera, written and first produced when he was 14 years old. Absolutely amazing.…

Tennis is best played with a wooden racket on a shady lawn somewhere close to Dorking. There is no need…

The Vaults at Waterloo are gallantly trying to pose as the party spot for hipsters in the world’s coolest city.…

Give them all peerages as far as I’m concerned: if you can pick up a gong for bunging a few…

Is diversity training snake oil? According to its proponents, women and minorities are not competing with white men on a…

Having spent three quarters of my life covering politics and the other quarter following racing, I am often asked what…

The European Open Pairs, the final event in Montecatini, was a long and arduous five-day slog, three of those days…

In Competition No. 3005 you were invited to take your inspiration from Anthony Lane’s terrific ‘The Book of Jeremy Corbyn’,…

The subtraction reveals the link between the unclued lights which saw light then. Three unclued lights consist of two words,…

One of the unclued 4-letter lights is placed in the very middle of another to form each of the four…

Q. ‘Alfred’ is a friend of 30 years’ standing who has just married for the first time. Alfred retains all…

Bibendum is a hushed restaurant on the first floor of the Michelin House on the Fulham Road. (Bibendum is the…

A funny thing happened on my way to lunch last week. I opened the Daily Mail and read a few…

Up on the fifth floor the wind was like thunder. Wild gusts shook the window glass so violently I thought…

The most tired cliché in English, suggests ​​Orin Hargraves, the American philologist, is at the end of the day. I’ve…

Last night, I had dinner at the M25 services. I don’t mean I stopped for a break mid-journey. I mean…