Two out of three ain’t bad. Or so we are supposed to believe. So let’s start by accepting that the…

My previous key speech in London, in October 2015, was to call for rational border protection policy. This time it…

Piggy’s prevaricating protégé Australians who like to poke fun at quaint, idiosyncratic New Zealand have, for once, got all the…

Toughen up, snowflakes Another parliamentary sitting week has passed, with nothing done to confront the fate that has been staring…

When the dispiriting kabuki theatre that is the same-sex marriage survey finally reaches its denouement next month, focus will again…

To step back and take a broad view of history is to see a constant and almost incessant Muslim onslaught…

BHP’s green-aligned sabotage of the Mineral Council of Australia’s battle to save the Australian coal industry cannot be explained simply…

Tony Abbott may have annoyed the climate change mob with his speech in London (see Diary), but a far more…

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Whilst this quote is often attributed to…

Emerging from a gifted family, Cressida Campbell is now one of Australia’s most celebrated artists. She chose an unusual medium…

When Crystal Cruises invited me to join their flagship as the guest classical pianist for a springtime voyage around the…

Brian Sewell once wrote an article about abortion headlined: ‘Women, the killers in our midst.’ He got an awful lot…

Lothario, Don Juan, philanderer, ‘naughty’, ‘plays away’ — all terms for men who have an overwhelming drive to seduce scores…

Optimists speculate that Xi Jinping’s power accumulation is the prelude to a burst of liberalising reform in his second five-year…

If Michel Barnier and David Davis, in their regular dialogue of the deaf, seem to be inhabiting different mental universes,…

So Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker enjoyed a ‘broad and constructive exchange’ during their working dinner in Brussels. Last time…

In Dan Brown’s new thriller, Origin, we are introduced to the Catholic church’s sinister far-right rival — a paranoid worldwide…

The cult of personality behind China’s president

New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Dallas… I’m on a book tour in Donald Trump’s USA, which feels much like the…

The routing of Isis in northern Iraq ought to be a time of international celebration, but as ever in the…

The great divider Sir: Niall Ferguson (‘Tech vs Trump’, 14 October) draws a parallel between the Reformation — powered by the…

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, and David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, went to Brussels and had dinner with Jean-Claude…

There will be no chance of the United Kingdom making a success of Brexit if Scotland votes to break up…

Matt Ridley’s fine recent Times column was hardly the first to raise the alarm about the pseudo-Soviet intolerance of the…

How did we mislay half a trillion pounds? Revised data from the Office for National Statistics has just reduced the…

‘Persecuted and Forgotten?’ is the name of the latest report by Aid to the Church in Need. Unfortunately, there is…

What is the point of the World Bank? You probably think of it, if at all, as a benign institution,…

I have been watching Donald Trump closely for more than a year and I have come to the considered opinion…

Black Rock White City (Melville House, £16.99) is ostensibly about a spate of sinister graffiti in a Melbourne hospital. ‘The…

This delightfully good-humoured novel is the sort of genre scramble that doesn’t often work: there’s a bit of 1990s family…

Liza Picard, an chronicler of London society across the centuries, now weaves an infinity of small details into an arresting…

Lord Woolton put it best: ‘Few people have succeeded in obtaining such a public demand for their promotion as the…

When Adam Gopnik arrived in Manhattan in late 1980 he was an art history postgrad so poor that he and…

Philip Pullman’s new k, the prequel to his Northern Lights series — the one north Oxford academics very much prefer…

Complaints about the decline and fall of political oratory are nothing new. Back in 1865 a British reporter branded the…

Who would want to read a whole book about a teenage boy’s gap year? When most 18-year-olds take time off…

How do you like your ghosts? Supernatural fiction is arguably the hardest to get right. Ideally it should terrify, but…

In the expensive realm of musical comedy, it’s impossible to predict what will take off and what will crash and…

During a panel discussion in 1949, Frank Lloyd Wright made an undiplomatic comment about Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated picture of 1912,…

Grade: A The old Tulsa sound was a rather agreeable low-key, shuffling, blues-inflected rockabilly — primarily J.J. Cale and Leon…

Twenty years ago I wrote of the otherwise slaveringly praised Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: I’m in a minority of, apparently,…

An opera without singers, a Strauss orchestra of just 16, and an early music ensemble playing Mahler: welcome to the…

Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti begins not with a prelude, but a jingle. In Matthew Eberhardt’s production a trio of…

Slow radio is popping up everywhere at the moment — programmes that have no outward form but just meander through…

Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin is nearly two hours of men in bad suits bickering, but if you have…

Any rival reality-TV makers watching Channel 5 on Thursday will, I suspect, have been both mystified and slightly embarrassed at…

Dance is an ephemeral art. It keeps few proper records of its products. Reputations are written in rumours and reviews.…

Simon Stephens gives his plays misleading titles. Nuclear War, Pornography and Punk Rock contained little trace of their advertised ingredients.…

Bridge is a partnership game — but haven’t you sometimes wished you could file for a quick divorce mid-rubber? The…

Black to play. This is from Sanal-Arnaudov, Antalya 2017. How did Black finish off the horribly exposed white king? Answers…

In Competition No. 3020 you were invited to submit the formula for a successful marriage courtesy of a well-known husband…

The unclued lights (one of two words and one hyphened) when preceded by a five–letter word are phrases listed in…

Q. A newish friend who has very good manners lent me a DVD of his grandfather at the Olympics. I…

I may have spoken too soon last week when I defended my old friend Harvey Weinstein. It now looks very…

On Saturday night, I toddled up to the village hall for the fish-and-chip supper, quiz night and raffle — bring…

Before I forget, I was cheered by the letter from Keith Aitken in last week’s issue noting another sense for…

The American grandmaster William Lombardy died last week (4 December 1937–13 October 2017). He was an amazing talent in his…

The paired unclued lights are food items which include a place-name. BATH and BUNS do double duty, BUNS is the plural…

In 1995, a young Dutchman completed an MBA. Banking beckoned. An internship was arranged. But Alexander van Beek thought that…

I am currently wrestling with a dilemma. I have agreed to contribute to a panel discussion on character education at…

I hate to tell you this, but every time you watch television you are being duped. In fact there are…