A s heavy snow fell in southeastern Australia this week, for the third time this year, preparations were still underway…

When a few months ago my friend Tom Switzer – former editor of this magazine and now director of the…

Hungary rhapsody for Tony Abbott If only the voters of Warringah had been Hungarian. The land of goulash and paprika,…

Nearly everyone in New Zealand has been made to feel they could play a part in the forthcoming Royal Commission…

The federal government’s draft religious discrimination bill highlights – no doubt unconsciously – some of the limitations on freedom of…

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad,’ wrote Mark…

Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) showed higher education failing democracy and impoverishing students. Forty years later,…

Australia, more than any other, is a child of the two great English-speaking nations. They have for two centuries successively…

In the 1860s, Australian colonies adopted, virtually unaltered, the English Companies Act 1862. Despite initial distrust of this new corporate…

A kangaroo on the beach with a model was the unsubtle cover of Vogue in December 1965. It will be…

Thanks to the refusal of Australian weather to stick to the IPCC script, Sydneysiders have just experienced one of the…

I have recently been reading two political books each of which was a complete waste of time and money. Then…

Who runs Britain? When Boris Johnson’s lawyers made their case in front of the Supreme Court this week, defending his…

Drones have come of age in the war on terror. When the United States and Britain invaded Afghanistan in 2001,…

‘How have you been?’ David Cameron asks, bounding up to meet me. Fine, I say, then make the mistake of…

When I told two neighbours that I had become a no-deal Brexiter they physically recoiled from me. ‘You can’t.’ ‘But…

Since I’m not an alcoholic, recovering or otherwise, I don’t belong to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) but I am close to…

The first book I ever produced, some 50 years ago, was a collection of poetry written by children. I called…

President Harry Truman once observed: ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’ Boris Johnson, as Prime Minister…

The past three years of agonising non-progress on Brexit have damaged Britain in many ways. Our political institutions have looked…

Home ‘I will uphold the constitution, I will obey the law, but we will come out on 31 October,’ Boris…

The nation is deeply divided. We can, it seems, talk of almost nothing else. Passions could scarcely be higher. No…

Talking Turkey David Cameron again accused the Leave campaign of ‘lying’ about the prospect of Turkey joining the EU. A…

David Cameron is convinced he was right to call a referendum and to promise to enact it. Justifiably: there was…

Parliament’s responsibility Sir: I always enjoy reading the intelligent and outspoken Lionel Shriver. But her latest article (14 September) puts…

One of the reasons why Boris Johnson is Prime Minister is that he is an optimist. After the negativity of…

In his memoirs, David Cameron admits that he ‘did not fully appreciate the strength of feeling’ in favour of Brexit,…

A friend’s seven-year-old daughter was asked by her school to write something about the NHS. Her only experience of it…

It’s not often that you come across a book that completely transforms your understanding of the world. Just recently I’ve…

When I first moved to London N1  four years ago, no one seemed to notice let alone discuss all the…

An oil price surge from $60 to $72 per barrel, as happened after the drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq…

This impressively clever, careful, and often beautiful book is the best sort of journey. It takes us through 15 cities…

It’s hard to get your head around Salman Rushdie’s latest novel Quichotte, which has been shortlisted for the Booker. It’s…

‘Penises,’ Aunt Lydia muses, ‘them again.’ Penises are always causing trouble, even in the God-fearing dystopian state of Gilead. The…

Why, I asked some months back in these pages, do the protagonists in American fiction these days seem so lost?…

Rod Liddle has taken a huge gamble with this book. It could be out of date very soon. The book’s…

In 2015, Daniel Markovits, a professor at Yale Law School, delivered a commencement address to that year’s graduating class in…

In 1993, the photographer Peter Menzel travelled across the globe to capture our material world. In each country, he asked…

Two new books offer very different takes on the utter ruination of Germany in 1945. Each in its own way…

Judy Garland is now a myth, a paradigm and a warning: don’t let your daughter on the stage! It’s the…

Two flutes, a clarinet and a bassoon breathe a chord on the edge of silence. As they fade, the sound…

Lynette Linton opens her stewardship of the Bush with a drama about racial and sexual bigotry. Four British women decide…

What else is there to write about in the week that John Humphrys, that titan of the BBC airwaves, retires…

‘My basic intention,’ the late Patrick Caulfield once told me, ‘is to create some attractive place to be, maybe even…

As a lifelong Catholic, I’ve often thought that two of the Church’s chief characteristics are a) how weird it is…

‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ by Muse was on heavy rotation on MTV at a time, 15 years ago, when my infant…

Pub quiz question: what do John Osborne, Brian Friel and Patrick Marber have in common? The answer is they’ve all…

The Farewell is a quiet film that builds and builds and builds into a wonderful exploration of belonging, loss, family…

Gstaad   The cows are coming down, the cows are coming down, and I’m off to the Bagel. My Swiss…

So now I must find somewhere else to put my books and live sometimes. Dartmoor, I thought: one of the…

‘If we are going to Westminster to riot,’ I told my Brexit-voting friends over dinner at the Thai restaurant at…

The bridge world championships are underway in Wuhan in China, and I’m obsessively following the action online. Fortunately it’s taking…

I am often asked which players I admire most and which grandmasters, writers and champions exerted the most influence on…

White to play. This is from Nguyen-Alekseenko, Khanty-Mansiysk 2019. White’s queen and rook are both attacked. How does he maintain…

In Competition No. 3116 you were invited to submit an extract from a government memo whose language would meet with…

The unclued lights (including one of three words, two of two words, and a pair) are names for or are…

The unclued lights were all leaders of the USSR.  First prize Wendy Atkin, Sleaford, LincsRunners-up Robert Burgon, North Berwick, East…

I don’t recall exactly when I first met David Cameron, but it must have been in Oxford in 1985 shortly…

A day of sporting shocks this Sunday past. As if the news of Tracey Horrobin’s bewitching performance with the ball…

Q. The other day a dear friend rang from her car with all the time in the world to burn…

Oxford is a pile of medieval buildings filled with maniacs, and is therefore one of the most interesting places on…

I asked my husband if I should spend £59 on 20 millilitres of Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Intense Reset…