The paradox of our age of abundance, is that we fret incessantly about scarcity, and yet, like the wisdom of…

Scott Morrison must have taken leave of his senses. His change to the national anthem, to delete ‘we are young…

Europe’s woke Iron Curtain Who could have predicted that the gulf between Europe’s west and east would still be there…

Boris delivers on Brexit

We must join the global movement to sanction human rights abusers

Fraudulent practices in the US election have been ignored because they suit the global elite

Divorce – British or Chinese style It took Britain nearly half a century to correct its mistake. How long will…

In 2021, truth is stranger than fiction

Catholicism is an anchor in a sea moral relativism

Australian Muslims must promote respect for the law of the land

Manchurian candidate warning

At a time when so many of us are experiencing some measure of isolation, it is hard to fathom the…

Why no journalist should ever accept a gong

The EU has botched its vaccination programme

The echoes of Diana in Prince Harry

On being sacked from the College

The Democrats have taken control of America

Matt Hancock on vaccines, lockdowns and the case for optimism

Can the vaccine outpace the virus?

So great have been the government’s failures over Covid that it would be easy to forget to give credit where…

Real men are not supposed to confess to feeling fear. But I am frightened, second time round, about the plague.…

Veritas vincit Sir: Professor Dawkins eloquently and engagingly defines true truth for us (‘Matters of fact’, 19 December). It seems…

A ferry tale Gerry Marsden, who died aged 78, was credited with making the ferry across the River Mersey world-famous.…

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced harsher coronavirus restrictions in England, resembling those last March, except that bubbles continued.…

Domenica Lawson, daughter of Rosa and Dominic, the former editor of this paper, has Down’s syndrome. She is classified as…

Depictions of Thomas Carlyle and David Hume in the Scottish Portrait Gallery will be altered to make it clear they…

Justin Welby is having a holiday and people are unhappy about it. He plans, in May, to take a three-month…

A few months ago, Tory aides spotted a suspicious pattern. If they agreed on a new Covid policy to be…

‘This Article shall not apply with respect to financial services.’ That’s what it says on page 92 of the EU-UK…

Can you feel the fascism yet? You ought to by now, more than a week after Britain leaving the EU.…

The Australian language is one of the few bonds that still binds together the Australian nation. And, heaven knows, we…

When Martin Puchner was a child, tramps would turn up at his family home in Nuremberg to be fed by…

In the 1930s curators at the British Museum, under orders from Lord Duveen, a generous donor, scoured and hacked at…

Ruth Scurr reveals what an impulsive, life-loving individual Mary Wollstonecraft was

Francis Bacon once told the art critic Richard Cork: ‘I certainly hope I’ll go on till I drop dead.’ Max…

It wasn’t so long ago that British readers, on hearing about the incompetence and corruption of Latin America’s political leaders,…

To comprehend ourselves and the future of humankind we have to understand where we came from. Unlike the approximately 350,000…

At some point in his twilit, enigmatic novels of vanished lives and buried memories, Patrick Modiano likes to jolt his…

Do we need another wrist-breaking book about Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich and the second world war? Since Ian Kershaw…

There is nothing in world sport, ‘nothing in the history of the human race’, Ramachandra Guha modestly reckons, that can…

Narratives of frozen beards in polar hinterlands never lose their appeal. Most of the good stories have been told, but…

Betraying the Nobel opens with a detonation from Michael Nobel, Alfred’s great-grandnephew. The vice-chairman and then chairman of the Nobel…

It’s 1981 in Richmond, south-west London. Detective Inspector Henry Hobbes is called out to a rundown house where the octogenarian…

There are things to bring us pleasure in this new year. The opera has opened The Merry Widow (until 16…

Ignore the activists, says Tristram Hunt, Alexander von Humboldt’s Enlightenment project, embodied in a flash new Berlin museum, deserves celebrating

The best moment in the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day Concert comes after the end of the advertised programme.…

‘Of course, I am obstinate in defending our liberties and our law — that is why I carry a big…

Love Letters by A.R. Gurney began life as an epistolary novella about two childhood friends, Andy and Melissa, whose on-off…

Andrei Konchalovsky’s Dear Comrades! is based on a true event and set in 1962 in the Russian city of Novocherkassk…

The Serpent is the best BBC drama series in ages — god knows how it slipped through the net —…

I was sitting with one other person in a sterilised public hospital reception area waiting to be tested for COVID…

Now that hate-speech has been recognised as an act of physical violence, using non-problematic language has never been more important.…

Gstaad Chekhovian boredom ruled supreme, but the loss of my luggage brought instant relief. Anger beats boredom by a mile,…

It’s so much easier to play bridge well when luck is on your side. You’ve just doubled your opponents and…

It’s the Portuguese piglet you feel really sorry for. The diminutive (ready cooked) porker — a festive delicacy all over…

The unclued lights (one of two words), when paired, have something in common. Across 5 Fly eggs not at all…

Welcome to the sunlit uplands which, for me, contain small plastic tubs of stock, which is just the opening to…

Your problems solved

In the aisle of Tesco I stood like one thunderstruck. It was not the print of a man’s naked foot…

The Dogs Trust charity received 114 calls on 27 and 28 December from people wanting to offload their puppies. No,…

Mastrovasilis–Marechal, Cappelle la Grande 2011. Black is a whole rook up, so his last move 34… Nd5-e7, angling for an…

Unclued lights are nicknames of works by Beethoven, born 250 years ago. The title referred to the Ghost piano trio,…

In Competition No. 3180 you were invited to submit a Belloc-esque cautionary tale featuring a high-profile public figure. Cautionary Tales…

It is one of life’s comforts to see a forgotten trinket being dusted off and appreciated afresh. So in chess,…

Although I was ten minutes early, Vernon was there ahead of me, framed in the ancient chapel doorway, chatting up…

Our battle with the EU has given me an insight into the parking disputes outside my house. Or is it…

Hearing that the Queen has both a real and an official birthday, a small boy asked the obvious question: ‘Does…