Within the space of a week, the federal Labor government managed to rack up one happy wedding, which they downplayed,…

I have written before about my love for rebels and outlaws. As a general rule, I have no time for…

The Work From Home rort

...and it’s certainly not Australian

‘Aboriginal heritage’ is now a major risk

Whither the twelve angry men?

How American conservatism lost its mind

No longer the economic juggernaut it once was

Bonfire of the Green vanities

Lefties projecting their very worst traits

A Roman solution

Watching David Dimbleby watching the royal family, I am instantly reminded of the BBC’s other royal David. It is pure…

Usually when my tweenage sons ask about relics from my 1990s adolescence – ‘What’s a landline?’ ‘What’s a phone book?’…

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have gone into bunker mode. The pair – whose political fortunes are so tightly bound…

Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed…

You’ve probably seen the videos. Kemi Badenoch delivering her Budget response in the form of a rap to a sobbing…

In August, The Spectator began to investigate allegations that Harry Shukman, a 33-year-old freelance journalist, had used a fake British…

I’ve decided I need a party trick. This thought occurred to me at a recent dinner party as I watched…

Many years ago, and well retired, I was working in my study when the phone rang and a voice said:…

Many mansions Does a two-bedroom flat worth £2 million deserve to be called a ‘mansion’? — The word ‘mansion’ is…

The Pope is visiting Lebanon and Turkey. Will anyone be raising the vexed question of the Latin mass and sacraments…

Last week, our political editor, Tim Shipman, revealed a recent meeting between Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the Chief…

I was in Singapore last week, a city that hums with energy. It feels efficient, cosmopolitan and yet personal –…

Home What Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told voters about the economy in a special press conference on…

Tried and tested Sir: Your otherwise excellent leading article opposing proposed restrictions on jury trials (‘Judge not’, 29 November) misses…

For perhaps the first time in my life I have experienced ‘fomo’ – fear of missing out. It is strange…

I’m committed this winter to too many expensive building projects at once. As the balloon of my bank balance drifts…

‘Banks don’t vote and citizens don’t love them, so they’ll always be the Chancellor’s target of choice,’ I wrote in…

Sir Tom Stoppard, who died last week, never wrote a memoir, but he did sort of speak one. Just over…

It is easy to criticise the Budget. The process was a chaotic mess. For many on the right, Rachel Reeves’s…

Too much information. That’s what you’re about to get. I wouldn’t read another line if I were you. I will…

In Chekhov’s first stories, rooted in the provincial Russia of the early 1880s, we see various plots and characters take shape that will emerge fully formed in later works

Robert Elms recalls the glory days of London’s Blitz Club, where the likes of John Galliano, Boy George and David Bowie danced in outlandish costumes to futuristic electronica

Things turn nasty when lonely Ruth finds herself taken advantage of once too often by selfish, glamorous Sookie, a faux friend from distant schooldays

A peerage for the Randlord Sir Joseph Robinson, convicted of fraud, caused such an outcry in 1922 that even Lloyd George realised it was a step too far

Robert Cowley’s agonising account of the bloody struggle for Ypres and the stalemate on the Western Front transports us to the very heart of the action

A fascinating compendium of herring-related stories includes the attempted poisoning of St Patrick, the message contained in a Van Gogh still life and the superstitions of Manx mariners

Some of the stranger reimaginings involve dragons, zombies, Lydia Bennet as a witch, Lizzy ending up with Charlotte Lucas and the story narrated by Anne de Bourgh

Also discussed in the latest miscellany are classic Italian gesticulations, the nuances of graffiti, the hierarchy of Venetian gondoliers and how to deter paparazzi

Before Holbein’s arrival in 1526, painting in England tended to be religious in nature. But that soon changed when his portraits spread like an exquisite virus through the country’s elites

‘Affairs are cruel, and if they are sin, they carry the punishment with them’, he wrote to one of the many women he cheated on throughout a long life

When Tom Stoppard, playwright extraordinaire, was at the early height of his fame, with Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons in…

All My Sons, set in an American suburb in the summer of 1947, examines the downfall of Joe Keller, a…

The playwright Peter Nichols created a character based on Tom Stoppard. Miles Whittier. On a car journey across London, I…

The Beast in Me is one of those ‘taut psychological thrillers’ that everyone talks about in the office. This might…

Bruckner at the Wigmore Hall. Yes, you heard right: a Bruckner symphony – his second: usually performed by 80-odd musicians…

Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly stars George Clooney as a handsome movie star playing a handsome movie star who has an…

Slavoj Zizek Hegel thought that, in the movement of history, the world spirit passes from one country to another, from…

Like mansplaining and body hair, the ability to hold and express conflicting opinions is probably something most people would hesitate…

In the NSW parliament Premier Minns referred to another member as ‘mate’. Then an opposition member got up and took…

We knew the church would be packed as Shelley had died so young. We knew the church would be freezing,…

Elizabeth II was a god and a commodity: now she is gone it is time for posthumous exploitation. Lilibet’s is…

Q. My godfather, who has managed to get me a valuable internship in the Far East, has also sent me…

It was just a straightforward dinner in the bosom of the House of Lords, talking to members of the Jockey…

The smashed pick-up truck was delivered back to us after I burst into tears and began wailing at the recovery…

There’s tetchy, and then there’s Ben Stokes ‘tetchy’ – pulling out his mic and stomping off cursing, or so I’m…

Comp. 3428 was inspired by Rose Ruane’s Larkin/Shelley mash-up (many thanks to Bill Greenwell for flagging this up): They Oz…

On Tuesday, David Lammy announced in parliament that a bill would be included in the next King’s Speech restricting the…