When it comes to power generation, only two things matter. One, ensuring a sufficient and reliable supply of electricity to…

One of the great pleasures of spending time in Budapest is admiring the city’s restoration. Despite war, communism and 1956,…

When the Chifley Government, in 1948, decided to implement a scheme to harness the waters of the Snowy Mountains and…

Lord Carrington, who died last week in his hundredth year, witnessed and shaped much of the international politics of the…

If when you woke on the morning of Sunday 15 July, you made the error of watching the ABC television…

History in the old sense of events and names isn’t much taught in our schools any more, such history as…

On both sides of the Tasman, too many of our MPs haven’t listened to the brilliant black American academic, Thomas…

‘Trailing clouds of glory’ is so apt for Julia Gillard AC’s post-prime ministerial career. This month the apolitical.co blog for…

Once again, Western civilisation is under mortal threat. This time it comes from a deepening schism between the rank-and-file and…

He was already skating on thin ice when Oscar Wilde opened his newest play at the Haymarket Theatre on 3…

One of the more obvious features of left-leaning luvvies is that they are all stupid. They simply cannot think straight,…

Like most Australian men I am horrified by reports which attest to the ubiquity of violence against our womenfolk. But…

Amid the confusion and the almost deafening cries of treachery and collusion over Donald Trump’s relations with Russia, few noticed…

The atmosphere in Brussels has become, of late, reminiscent of the late Brezhnev era. We have a political system run…

On 20 July, Germany’s political elite recalls the day in 1944 when Colonel Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg exploded a…

What to do about illegal migration from Africa into Europe? The EU’s repatriation programme seems at first like a great…

My wife died earlier this month. We knew it was coming. A lump in the breast begat bone tumours, begat…

England didn’t just lose the World Cup. When it comes to male nudity, the country has also lost its sense…

‘Safe as the Bank of England.’ So goes the old phrase. And yes, with walls 8ft thick, the Old Lady…

Handling Brexit was never going to be easy for Theresa May, given that the Tories have been fighting a civil…

Home The administration of Theresa May, the Prime Minister, staggered on, as Conservative MPs exchanged angry words in the Commons,…

It was blessedly cool inside the Romanesque nave, its massive arches resisting the heat as they had done everything else…

Blimpish beginnings Protesters flew a ‘blimp’ depicting President Trump as a baby in central London. Why are balloons known as…

Everyone talks about the importance of ‘charisma’ in a politician. But while it may take one a long way with…

Russian meddling Sir: Please help me out here: just what, exactly, did the Russians do, and/or try to do to…

The collapse of Mrs May’s Chequers plan, followed by Tuesday’s failure of the Tory Remainers to defeat the government, creates…

The summer holidays couldn’t come soon enough for Theresa May. So desperate was she to get MPs away from Westminster…

It’s middle-class commentators – not supporters – who seem obsessed with the number of black players There were altogether too many darkies in England’s World Cup…

Omissions can be as instructive as inclusions. I noted a curious example in a column Nick Timothy wrote last month…

Before the referendum, I predicted behind closed doors that even if Leave improbably prevailed, Britain’s political establishment would ensure that…

When I first visited Canary Wharf in the early 1990s, I was struck by a set of black-and-white posters in…

Jesse Norman is one of only three or four genuine intellectuals on the Tory benches in the House of Commons.…

‘Much of what I say may turn out not to be true.’ Hardly the ideal beginning to a guided tour.…

Willa Drake’s second husband calls her ‘little one’, even though she is over 60 and the mother of two grown…

Varlam Shalamov’s short stories of life in the Soviet Gulag leave an impression of ice-sharp precision, vividness and lucidity, as…

It is tempting to compare two highly intelligent, learned and gifted young Dublin writers, suffering under the burdensome, Oedipal influence…

All good non-fiction writing shares certain characteristics: consistent economy, upbeat pace and digestible ideas that logically flow. Tech writers have…

Sofka Zinovieff’s new novel, Putney, is an involving, beautifully written, and subtle account of an affair in the 1970s between…

Jonathan Raban was largely responsible for changing the nature of travel writing. Back in the 1970s when he began, the…

‘I’m an amateur,’ Barry Humphries tells me. The Australian polymath uses the word in its older sense of ‘enthusiast’ rather…

When President Trump refused to take a question from a CNN reporter at the Chequers press conference last week, I…

One area of life in which globalism certainly rules is that of contemporary art. Installation, performance, the doctrine of Marcel…

There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…

Stefano Massini’s play opens with a man in a frock-coat reaching New York after six weeks at sea. The year…

Early in 1987, a middle-aged woman approached me on the record counter of the Slough branch of Boots. ‘What do…

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again aims to do what it says on the can. That is, be Mamma Mia,…

New York I am seriously thinking of moving back to London. The family insists on it. New York, they say,…

Saturday morning. Quarter to 12. Sit-down fish and chips at the Silver Grill: me, Oscar and Oscar’s cousin Atticus. Atticus…

Instead of carpeting the upstairs of the house, I had grass fragments removed from the dogs’ ears. I can’t say…

For Coleridge, ‘…the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind…

Last Friday, merrily on my way to Young Chelsea (still the best IMPs duplicate in town), I couldn’t know that…

Sporting commentators frequently resort to chess metaphors to convey the flavour of a particular contest. In the case of football, chess tends…

Black to play. This is from Carlsen-Polgar, Mexico 2012. Judit had been struggling in this game but when Carlsen slipped…

In Competition No. 3057 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The day the internet died’.   Phyllis…

The unclued lights (two of two words, and the rest paired) are of a kind.   Across 1    Book with…

GARDEN (at 46 Across) reveals the theme. Paired solutions are ‘gardens’ in ‘countries’; 8/10, 32/1D, 33/28+29, 12/36, 37/34, 38/2, and…

Are we witnessing the rebirth of Radical Chic? That was the term coined by Tom Wolfe in his 1970 essay…

When I saw my first jogger in Wales in the early 1970s, I assumed he was running away from the…

Q. A dear friend of my husband, a shy bachelor, is an acquired taste. Once you acquire it you are…

The Kingdom of Spain always sends outstanding ambassadors to the Court of St James, none more so than the appropriately…

I’m not at all sure about the formula a person living with, followed by something unwelcome, such as Alzheimer’s disease,…