Spectator Competition: Elementary

10 January 2026 9:00 am

For Competition 3431, you were invited to submit a passage in which Sherlock Holmes solves one of the great mysteries…

Don’t blame Ben Stokes

10 January 2026 9:00 am

So what was the best bit of this dispiriting Ashes series? Lucky you if you’ve found one, but for me…

Dear Mary: How do I get my friend to clean up after her dog?

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Q. Every so often we’re invited to our friends’ house for lunch or dinner. It’s close by and the house…

Scott’s vs Mayfair

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Kingsley Amis was obsessed with Scott’s on Mount Street, Mayfair, and he knew a lot about food. He ate himself…

If you’re ‘reaching out’, you sound deranged

10 January 2026 9:00 am

‘Why doesn’t anyone do what you ask them to?’ enquired my husband, who is something of an expert on the…

My advice to the next generation

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Everyone went to the same school as someone famous. In my case it’s Spider-Man, Tom Holland, who joined my former…

Luckily I made it to my ‘secure room’

10 January 2026 9:00 am

I don’t know why we come to this pub, we can never get a seat

10 January 2026 9:00 am

No. 881

10 January 2026 9:00 am

World Rapid and Blitz

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Why are roast potatoes so hard to get right?

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Roast potatoes shouldn’t be complicated. We’re talking two ingredients, plus some salt and maybe herbs if you’re feeling fancy. It’s…

The Battle for Britain | 10 January 2026

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Make mine a Moka pot

10 January 2026 9:00 am

It’s strange the things that can trigger amity or affection. At the beginning of the capsule/pod coffee-maker craze, when George…

The young women hypnotised by Polanski

10 January 2026 9:00 am

A friend mentioned to me last week that a third of young women in the UK are planning to vote…

‘Oh Gruffalo, thank goodness! For a minute I thought you were David Walliams.’

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Blame the EU for your increasingly bossy car

10 January 2026 9:00 am

When Eileen, a 75-year-old British grandmother, bought a brand-new car she found its advanced driver-assistance repeatedly told her the speed…

The pavements are really slippery… We should go out

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Foetal femicide has arrived in Britain

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Last summer, the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi introduced a clause to the Crime and Policing Bill that will decriminalise all…

And they all lived happily ever after until the invention of the smartphone…

10 January 2026 9:00 am

Greenland

10 January 2026 9:00 am

In praise of the climate ‘emergency’

10 January 2026 9:00 am

All this winter, until New Year’s Eve, and for the first time since I started keeping llamas, Vera, Ann and…

No sex please, we’re Gen Z

10 January 2026 9:00 am

For many years now we have all been agonising over the fertility crisis. Why aren’t the kids having kids? It’s…

Seashells

10 January 2026 9:00 am

We didn’t want dogs

10 January 2026 9:00 am

In defence of the Freemasons

10 January 2026 9:00 am

It’s a personal delight that on 29 September 1829, the first day of Robert Peel’s new force, the first warrant…