Regardless of who said or emailed what to whom, libertarian Senator David Leyonhjelm’s Adler shotgun blasted a big hole through…

I can’t be the only Speccie reader who’s lost sleep thinking about the Crown Resort employees awaiting trial in China.…

You’d be hard pressed to be overly optimistic about the state of conservative politics in the developed English-speaking world right…

Perhaps all is not lost. There might yet be hope for the education of our youth. Like many people, I…

Spring returned to Sydney for the long weekend, just in time for me to spend three days incarcerated indoors packing…

In conversation with a Liberal insider some weeks ago, I heard the phrase: ‘I’m trying to rebuild the conservative movement…

When old ‘wobble board’ Rolf was sent up to the big house I felt a sense of relief not because…

At a government press conference, a grandstanding British journalist admonished Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, stating to the President of the…

Dear Leftist Millennials, we need to talk. I’ve noticed you’re becoming more easily wounded than ever. You’ve created a fantasy…

‘Bad policy.’ ‘No discernible impact on the key outcomes it was supposed to improve.’ ‘Deliberate misrepresentation of the data… a…

Talking to Camille Paglia is like approaching a machine gun: madness to stick your head up and ask a question,…

Marine Le Pen can be excused for thinking her time has come. With six months to go until France’s presidential…

We’re continually assured that government policies are grounded in evidence, whether it’s an anti-bullying programme in Finland, an alcohol awareness…

It all began with oysters. Londoners used to eat them as they walked along, throwing away the shells much as…

So, is that it? The end of sweetness, and the end of taste? Physically speaking, those things will no doubt…

Six months ago an old friend of mine was murdered on his doorstep. This week his killer was sentenced to…

With the Labour party reduced to a cult in honour of the vain and incompetent Jeremy Corbyn, the Tory party…

Folio society A new collection of Shakespeare’s work credits Christopher Marlowe as co-author of the three Henry VI plays. Some…

From ‘Secrecy and disease’, The Spectator, 28 October 1916: The war might have damned us, as Germany planned, but it…

Bear baiting Sir: I couldn’t agree more with Rod Liddle’s exposé of western politico-militaristic hypocrisy (‘Stop the sabre-rattling’, 22 October). We’ve…

Home The government approved the proposal in Sir Howard Davies’s report for the building of an extra 3,800-yard runway at…

As the 30th anniversary of Big Bang loomed, I found myself back at the scene of my City demise. Ebbgate…

Let us consider the case of the Ashers family bakery in Belfast which, in 2014, refused to make a cake.…

On Wednesday 19 October at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London, a reception was held to celebrate…

Oppositions don’t win elections — governments lose them. This has long been the Westminster wisdom. But the truth is that…

So RIP Pete Burns, transgendered Scouse popstar. His indescribably awful song ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’ — clever…

World leaders are preoccupied nowadays with what is known as their ‘legacy’. In practice, this means being linked with moral-sounding…

I’m writing this in the Highlands. Through the window I can see Loch Maree, being ruffled into white-tipped skirls by…

It always used to be said that, if it had been up to Guardian readers, Ken Clarke would certainly have…

If you are 70-plus, the shadow of TB will have hung over your childhood and youth, as it did mine,…

The Marshalsea was the best and worst place for a debtor to be imprisoned. From 1438 until its closure in…

South African democracy has not, on the whole, been kind to the Afrikaner. During Nelson Mandela’s benign oversight of the…

Married as I am to an antiquarian book dealer, and living in a house infested with books and manuscripts, I’m…

Brrrrr, this is a chilly book. Each time a character put on his sealskin kamiks, muskrat hat, wolfskin mittens and…

Most of us just live in cities, or travel to see them and take them pretty much as they come,…

In an autobiographical note written late in his life, Jonathan Swift set down an astonishing anecdote from his childhood. When…

In the opening chapter of her history of Soviet Central Television, Christine E. Evans observes two Russian televisual displays of…

Hagia Sophia (the Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Istanbul is arguably the most important building in our Judeo-Christian tradition.…

In Australia, I have been told, the female pubic area is sometimes known as a ‘mapatasi’ because its triangular shape…

As a documentary-maker, Werner Herzog is a master of tone. His widely parodied voiceovers — breathy, raspy, ominous — are…

To use a vulgar phrase, I can’t get my head around this exhibition. It seems anything but ‘vulgar’. Daintily laid…

In 1932 Paul Nash posed the question, is it possible to ‘go modern’ and still ‘be British?’ — a conundrum…

In debates about what should and should not be taught in art school, the subject of survival skills almost never…

The Royal Opera’s latest production is Shostakovich’s The Nose and to paraphrase Mark Steyn, whatever else can be said about…

You may not listen to them every year. Or even to every lecture in the current series. But the survival…

Until earlier this year, a squat sculpture nestled rather unobtrusively outside 20 Manchester Square in Marylebone, an address once made…

‘Adam Curtis believed that 200,000 Guardian readers watching BBC2 could change the world. But this was a fantasy. In fact,…

Great subject, terminal illness. Popular dramas like Love Story, Terms of Endearment and My Night With Reg handle the issue…

Farce is a difficult theatrical form to write and to stage successfully. Farce operates beyond reality; a farce must establish…

Extra letters in clues form the phrase BITE THE DUST. Thematically created entries at 10, 11, 19, 29 and 34…

Q. We hired a villa in the Camargue through the so-called ‘Sloane web’. You either know the uber-Sloane who runs…

Roma sells ancient-Roman-style food near Fenchurch Street station at the east end of the City, near Aldgate. It is, therefore,…

I was not on the winning side of the debate, despite giving it the old college try. Thank god for…

I may have made the odd disparaging remark about Brexiteers during the heat of the referendum campaign, but I have…

There were six of us round the table to celebrate Trafalgar Day. We ate the same dinner served to Her…

Coffee shops are becoming impossible. I had been standing in the queue at Caffè Nero on Battersea Rise for nearly…

The other day Sam Allardyce was photographed with Sir Alex Ferguson at a Manchester United Champions League match at Old…

‘He’s such a good competitor. He works so hard and he deserves it,’ said his predecessor Lewis Hamilton after Nico…

The post The Battle for Britain appeared first on The Spectator.

The Gold Cup Finals were played in London this year and proved to be very exciting but ultimately unsuccessful for…

White to play. This is from Lasker–Teichmann, St Petersburg 1909. Black had already resigned this game as he could anticipate…

In Competition No. 2971 you were invited to submit poems written by Jeremy Corbyn. The seven printed below take £20…

Unclued lights consist of a quotation (in ODQ), its speaker and source, and a synonym (one hyphened) of each of…

I’m very glad I followed a friend’s recommendation to read The Bird of Dawning by John Masefield, an author neglected…