Diary

The telltale signs your child is texting about Jeeves and Wooster

5 January 2019 9:00 am

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?

15 December 2018 9:00 am

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

8 December 2018 9:00 am

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

1 December 2018 9:00 am

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)

24 November 2018 9:00 am

‘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

17 November 2018 9:00 am

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

10 November 2018 9:00 am

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

3 November 2018 9:00 am

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?

27 October 2018 9:00 am

Eight years ago, in the course of doing some research into literacy teaching in London, I visited many primary schools.…

Nothing to do with global warming

Ignore the global warming hysteria: hurricanes are not getting worse

20 October 2018 9:00 am

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’

13 October 2018 9:00 am

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?

6 October 2018 9:00 am

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

29 September 2018 9:00 am

Is it just my age, or has summer always galloped past with indecent haste? No sooner do the reluctant leaves…

‘The possibility that our next PM will be named Mogg has prompted me to enquire about one-way tickets to Switzerland.’ Photo: Getty

Max Hastings’s diary

22 September 2018 9:00 am

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

15 September 2018 9:00 am

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!

8 September 2018 9:00 am

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’?

1 September 2018 9:00 am

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’

25 August 2018 9:00 am

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

18 August 2018 9:00 am

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

11 August 2018 9:00 am

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

4 August 2018 9:00 am

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

28 July 2018 9:00 am

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

21 July 2018 9:00 am

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

14 July 2018 9:00 am

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

7 July 2018 9:00 am

Happy 190th birthday, dear Spectator. And in what fine health you are, at such an advanced age. This was hardly…