Diary
The telltale signs your child is texting about Jeeves and Wooster
You’ll be relieved to learn my penguin is back. ‘How long was it gone?’ you ask. About six months. ‘And…
Are we really going to abandon Brexit because of a Mars bar shortage?
The nice French doctor looked beadily at the screen. There were the results of my tests, in irrefutable detail. They…
Joan Collins: My own transgender moment
I recently returned from several months in Los Angeles working on one of the most popular US TV shows. American…
I’m the latest victim of George Osborne’s austerity
I got the sack the other day from the London Evening Standard, where I’ve been a weekly columnist for about…
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Why Boris Johnson would make a good leader (and I wouldn’t)
‘Away with the cant of “measures not men”! — the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the…
Jo Johnson: My Brexit resignation was a revolutionary act
Jacob Rees-Mogg observed that my resignation last week was ‘the “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment in the Brexit process’. If this…
Tim Laurence’s diary: how Macron broke a gentleman’s agreement for Remembrance Sunday
How on earth should one do it? How should the centenary of the end of a war be marked? Not…
The lost joy of swearing
Upon discovering that Sinéad O’Connor has converted to Islam, I was about as shocked as a Yuletide shopper hearing the…
What do #MeToo women feel about downtrodden husbands?
Eight years ago, in the course of doing some research into literacy teaching in London, I visited many primary schools.…
Ignore the global warming hysteria: hurricanes are not getting worse
When I land on the east coast of America, people tell me they’ve never met a Trump voter. When I…
The day I signed a book ‘Adolf Roberts’
I’m giving 93 speeches over the next four months to promote my new book, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, but I…
Who to believe: calculating Kavanaugh or forgetful Ford?
A weekend news report says Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s childhood has been scrutinised by colleagues ‘for clues to understanding this…
Prue Leith: Forget home remedies — morphine is the real way to cure cramp
Is it just my age, or has summer always galloped past with indecent haste? No sooner do the reluctant leaves…
Max Hastings’s diary
The Hastingses have idyllic lives but, like most seventysomethings, we find ourselves in ever-closer proximity to mortality. We hold season…
Rachel Johnson: Getting sacked is a badge of honour. And I should know
People are still asking ‘So, how was your summer’ and mine was nice as far as it went: I didn’t…
No whisky for breakfast? But this is Scotland!
I begin my 87-day reading tour of the US, UK and Canada on a BA flight that will take me…
Joan Collins: Why are people so baffled by the title ‘Dame’?
Attending my goddaughter Cara Delevingne’s 26th birthday party at the trendy Chateau Marmont hotel in LA, I was interested to…
Richard Madeley: Thanks to Gavin Williamson, everyone is calling me ‘the Terminator’
Down here near Nice, you find most locals unsurprised by the catastrophic Genoa bridge collapse. The Italian border is only…
Ayesha Hazarika’s Edinburgh diary: The most offensive thing about Boris’s burka joke? It wasn’t original
Taking my new stand-up show Girl on Girl to the Edinburgh festival this year and playing at the prestigious venue…
Why British weather is like a bad boyfriend
The British weather is just like the worst boyfriend. The kind that keeps you in a state of permanent insecurity…
Susan Hill’s diary: The return of the eels
The swifts had not arrived by June, nary a one, though a Yorkshire Dales friend reported their return, and there…
Boris Johnson: Why we should chuck Chequers
Surely there is a bit of humbug in this outrage about the two remaining jihadi Beatles, Kotey and Elsheikh, and…
What Uber rides taught me about immigration
It was blessedly cool inside the Romanesque nave, its massive arches resisting the heat as they had done everything else…
This is what happens when you put Brexit in the hands of unbelievers
Well, we did it. No, not Brexit, the World Cup or my (somewhat less) ambitious scheme at Legal & General…
Dominic Lawson: The day Boris claimed I was an MI6 agent
Happy 190th birthday, dear Spectator. And in what fine health you are, at such an advanced age. This was hardly…