Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.

There is no housing crisis. It would be easier if there were

10 February 2018 9:00 am

Britain does not have a housing shortage. We have a problem with the cost not the availability of homes. This…

Nigel Farage is wrong: the French are doing us a big favour in Calais

27 January 2018 9:00 am

Last week Nigel Farage described the deal we’ve done with France over the refugee camp near Calais as a ‘humiliating…

Victims of crime should not decide justice

13 January 2018 9:00 am

Hard cases make bad law. The release on parole of the ‘black cab rapist’, John Worboys, is a hard case.…

Leave Brexit alone and get on with governing

16 December 2017 9:00 am

I return often to Cambridge and was there recently. Julian Glover, my partner, was talking to the History Society at…

How I learned to stop worrying and love the monarchy

9 December 2017 9:00 am

Prince Harry does not exist and soon Meghan Markle will cease to exist too. None of the royal family exist.…

The era when you could love a car is over

25 November 2017 9:00 am

There are four of us in this relationship: my partner and I, his horse and my truck. His horse is…

The Westminster sex scandal is what psychologists call ‘displacement activity’

11 November 2017 9:00 am

There are three reasons why Britain’s political and media world finds itself in the present ludicrous uproar over sexual misbehaviour…

What I learned going naked on the green mountain

28 October 2017 9:00 am

The Japanese take a near-obsessive delight in washing, particularly in natural thermal baths

Why May must stay

14 October 2017 9:00 am

As from the Manchester conference hall I watched Theresa May’s big moment falling apart, as I buried my head in…

At last! The subversion of Brexit has begun

30 September 2017 9:00 am

The Brexit crowd are right to smell a rat. In any great national debate a columnist may feel tempted to…

The African bush took me back to my boyhood

16 September 2017 9:00 am

Entering the Bulawayo Club, you step out of the blinding African sunshine on that safe and friendly city’s wide streets,…

May’s opponents are the mad and the bad

2 September 2017 9:00 am

I first met Theresa May, or met her properly, way back in the last century. I’d been invited to speak…

In my other life, I’m a water engineer

19 August 2017 9:00 am

Friends arrived last week to find me in a mudhole, inside a cave-like tunnel into the hill, fiddling around with…

Chris Patten (image: Getty)

We need ideology in politics

5 August 2017 9:00 am

‘Studying history at Balliol,’ writes Chris Patten, ‘I knew that the one thing which made me uneasy was a grand…

We need ideology in politics

3 August 2017 1:00 pm

‘Studying history at Balliol,’ writes Chris Patten, ‘I knew that the one thing which made me uneasy was a grand…

Dear Leavebugs, it’s time to admit your mistake

22 July 2017 9:00 am

‘Brexit,’ says my friend David Aaronovitch, ‘is dying.’ We Remainer irreconcilables certainly hope so. But there’s a slim chance the…

How not to handle an independence referendum

8 July 2017 9:00 am

If David Cameron seeks any testament to his handling of Britain’s difficulties with Scottish separatism, the mess that Spain is…

What should party leaders be allowed to believe?

24 June 2017 9:00 am

‘If he can’t be in politics,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted last week after Tim Farron resigned the leadership of…

The Tories have been diminished by this election

10 June 2017 9:00 am

There’s an expression used in football to describe an approach to the game that discounts the virtues of elegance, style,…

A dementia tax would be a euthanasia bonus

27 May 2017 9:00 am

Had Theresa May not on Monday summarily abandoned her manifesto threat to raid the savings of those who end up…

Why it’s obvious that morality precedes religion

13 May 2017 9:00 am

At a beautiful church service recently I encountered again a Gospel parable that left me, again, torn between sympathy and…

What would Darwin make of trainspotters?

29 April 2017 9:00 am

Why are men so much more likely to be interested in trains than women? I believe this to be a…

Give me the Anglican option

14 April 2017 11:00 pm

The Algerian government’s official tourist guide describes ‘the walled town of Beni Isguen — normally closed to foreigners — where…

Our dangerous impulse to make sense of murder

1 April 2017 9:00 am

‘On Friday noon, July the 20th, 1714,’ begins the small, perfect 20th-century novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, ‘the…

You don’t have to be good to do good

18 March 2017 9:00 am

I am a regular listener to the Sunday morning service just after eight on BBC Radio 4. It’s a habit…