‘The United States,’ opined former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd back in early 2021, ‘has been run by a village…

Notes from the US

Which state takes the wooden spoon?

Our Prime Minister continues to shamefully neglect our defence

Abortion laws are out of control

Culture and class betrayed those poor white girls

Dissecting the Trump doctrine

Something nasty in Woodsie’s Shed

Perhaps non-Aboriginal Australians need their own version of Naidoc week

But they have a fan in our Prime Minister

Terrified of the White House, Albo retreats to Beijing

Perhaps the most traumatic part of attending an American wedding – much worse than the bridesmaids coming in the wrong…

This Saturday is the centenary of the birth of one of France’s most controversial writers. Jean Raspail, who died in…

Syria’s Alawite communities are in the grip of a fear that their women and girls could be kidnapped and held…

Worse for drink, and lonely in his Hollywood apartment, F. Scott Fitzgerald sat down to write a postcard. He began,…

It was the chronicle of a death foretold. Last year Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, drafted a memo…

For Keir Starmer, it seems everything is going south. His MPs are openly rebelling, his advisers are mutinous and it…

It is the most civilised way to travel anywhere in the kingdom. Which is why I am so distraught that…

The usual piece about public libraries runs like this. Public libraries are for ‘more than just books’. They are in…

Manhattan The Friday before New York’s Democratic mayoral primary election, the 33-year-old candidate Zohran Mamdani walked the entire length of…

The late John Updike once wrote an amusing article about signing books. This wasn’t at some literary event with a…

Labour swept to power on a pledge to ‘save the NHS’. As shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting said he would…

Movers and shakers Sir: As a parish priest of 35 years, I read Francis Pike’s account of his supernatural experiences…

Now that new drugs have allowed the government’s Fat Controller to celebrate a nation of skinnies – let us hope…

I’m fresh out of advice for those now leaving university and wondering how on earth they’re going to make a…

Couldn’t we just skip to the end? I’m old enough to have seen this so often: must I sit through…

It’s disorienting but satisfying that Labour now accepts that Asian grooming gangs exist. Some of my left-identified friends are even…

There probably never has been a time when a governing party much liked its MPs. If you are on a…

For the past year, Nigel Farage has served as the great pacesetter of British politics. Reform UK has shot to…

A small yield nuclear weapon, such as the American W89, dropped on Glastonbury in late June would immediately remove from…

Anyone who has visited Canada or Australia in recent years might have noticed an interesting new tradition. This is the…

A struggling widow hooks up with a serial confidence trickster in a novel as witty and ruthlessness as its Georgian setting

As the Manhattan attorney in 1987’s Fatal Attraction, Douglas epitomises the alarm many men felt for women’s new-found openness about sexuality

Even in the past century the animal was considered so exotic that many doubted its very existence

Mourning the loss of their parents, two brothers succumb to listlessness and lethargy in a sweltering London gripped by Olympic fever

In a thought-provoking family history, the BBC journalist addresses questions of identity – and to what extent we are products of our forebears

Two former Izvestiya journalists describe how all but the bravest in the media have crumpled under pressure to toe the Putinist line

The once sullen, bullied girl, abandoned by her father as a baby, found iron in her soul and refused to become a victim

The bomb was necessary to the Allies, but still horrified those responsible for its development – many of them refugees from Nazism

Barry Jones likes to allude to the fact that John Adams declared that he had to study agriculture and warfare…

It’s all very well for people like me to sneer at dance makers for drawing on classic rock as a…

Slowly the canvas was unfurled across the concrete floor of a warehouse on an industrial estate in Suffolk. On and…

There is no higher calling than making great pop music, and no mechanism by which such an achievement can be…

Everyone who wasn’t at Glastonbury this year knows exactly what it was like: a seething mass of hatred and rabid…

King Arkel, in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, is almost blind, and he rules over a kingdom of darkness. Debussy’s score…

Marge Simpson is dead. But does anyone care? I’ve written loads of pieces over the years about the genius of…

A Moon for the Misbegotten is a dream-like tragedy by Eugene O’Neill set on a barren farm in Connecticut. Phil…

If you’re looking for an early example of Tom Stuart-Smith’s work, you’d have to go to a car park to…

Midway through Jurassic World Rebirth the scientist character played by Jonathan Bailey, whom we can all immediately spot as a…

Tony Abbott has written Australia, a personal take on our history, focused on the positives. But this is a mug’s…

A short time ago I was chatting with the former deputy prime minister of Australia John Anderson about the sort…

Town – well-named, it has vitality – is on the ragged part of Drury Lane WC2 near the Majestic Wine…

For Competition 3406 you were invited to cast a well-known fictional or non-fictional character, living or dead, in the role…

‘What larks!’ exclaimed my husband archly, assuming that a connection between personal independence payments and Pip in Great Expectations would…

Earlier this week, GB News again found itself at odds with Ofcom. The channel had written to the broadcast regulator…

A state-school cricket competition announced last week with a final at Lord’s is such a good idea you wonder why…

I have always enjoyed Royal Windsor Racecourse, as it styles itself. It may not have quite so many dignitaries popping…

Leaving home is the best way to find out who you are. In my case, it’s a muddle. Welsh dad.…

‘Right, we’re going to book into Pauline’s B&B and give her a four-star rating and that will drop her down…

Q. I had the same Spanish housekeeper for 25 years and was devoted to her, and she to me. She…