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The Spectator |
When weeping Parisians watched Notre Dame, the city’s beloved 800-year-old cathedral, being consumed by a devastating fire in 2019, it served as a...
Thousands of Brits will be attending Christmas and carol services throughout December. Yet festive attendance masks the reality that church...
Emmanuel Macron will deliver his traditional New Year’s Eve message to France next week, an event that one imagines is testing the skills of his...
Craig Raine has narrated this article for you to listen to. This is Alice B. Toklas, ventriloquised by her partner, Gertrude Stein: I must say that...
If someone were to read the runes, this first Labour Christmas would not augur well. Not only have we had Keir Starmer’s excruciating...
Andrew Watts has narrated this article for you to listen to. Whenever my son’s primary school ring up, they have, very sensibly, a calming form...
Everyone is talking about Reform: Rachel Reeves complains that Nigel Farage ‘doesn’t have a clue’ how to make the economy grow. Kemi Badenoch...
This year, Christmas carol services are expected to draw their largest congregations since the pandemic. As numbers attending carol services swell,...
In some rather strange news this festive season, it transpires that the Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC) has banned John Steinbeck’s Of Mice...
If you’re a writer, should AI companies be allowed to use your work to train their models without your permission? This is a matter of concern...
Those who still make a habit of the Sunday roast are faced with a challenge come Christmas: how to make sure the big meal doesn’t disappoint. What...
Christmas may be two days away but there is little reason for cheer in 11 Downing Street. The Chancellor faces another wave of bad economic news...
This is hardly how 2024 was supposed to end for Labour. Free from the shackles of ‘14 years of Tory misrule’, the economy was supposed to take...
Donald Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita hardly minced his words on hearing that Peter Mandelson had been appointed as the British...
Parish churches are in trouble: about fifty churches close every year, according to a report from Civitas. The review, published last month,...
For a press tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the Church of the Resurrection, the Mother of churches, site of the last four...
Christopher Howse has narrated this article for you to listen to. Why, my sharp-minded colleague Tom Utley once asked after a Telegraph Christmas...
Watching Tyson Fury get robbed last night in Riyadh, I realised on balance that I am in favour of Saudi Arabia’s often ludicrous-seeming recent...
Labour’s election promise to respect Brexit and at the same time reset our relations with the EU was easy to make. Keir Starmer must have...
Most of those commenting on the guilt or innocence of Lucy Letby – the nurse who is serving 15 whole-life jail terms for murdering seven babies...
I have set my husband a Christmas game. He wins a small chocolate sprout each time he spots a word in my list of Twelve Days of Christmas Hates. He...
The overwhelming response to my defence of incest on GB News has been one of disgust: I’ve been called a pervert thousands of times over. It’s...
I adhere to a pretty iron-clad rule: not only do I avoid the bumper cars of social media, but I don’t read the comments after my columns. Many...
It’s been a pretty good year for Nigel Farage. At the beginning of 2024, he was out of politics and fresh out of the jungle, having returned...
Once one of France’s most respected publications, Le Monde is in crisis. Its newsroom is gripped by a climate of fear, where only left-wing and...
Five days before Christmas, Germany has again been plunged into grief. Just after 7 p.m. local time yesterday in the city of Magdeburg,...
The Labour government seems determined to undermine excellence in schools. The Department for Education has announced that from February it will be...
Defence Secretary John Healey has raised the possibility that British military personnel could be deployed to Ukraine to carry out training...
At the start of a roller-coaster ride, a motorised chain pulls the carriages up to the highest point of the circuit, emitting a clanking sound as a...
I joined the Chaldeans in church on the morning after the night that the rebels in Syria took control of Damascus. We weren’t in Aleppo or on the...
The biggest blockbuster hit of the Elizabethan theatre was not by William Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson. In fact it wasn’t by...
I visited Mycenae for the first time this autumn. While the ruins of classical Athens can seem almost familiar, the ancient hillfort of a millennia...
Gruesome images of dead North Korean soldiers sprawled in the mud and snow have flooded military Telegram channels this week. Pyongyang’s troops...
More than 200 people were injured and at least five lost their lives after a man ploughed a car into crowds at a Christmas market in the German...
Schools are a relatively new phenomena in human history. In Britain, they expanded in the 19th century and early 20th century in step with...
Is there room for more than one furry feline in Whitehall? Initially brought into quell the government’s mouse problem, the various departmental...
If you are of a traditional turn of mind, you might well go to church this Christmas, sing the carols you knew in childhood and feel a bit of a...
They passed into the harbour of Favignana at the beginning of spring, the island’s single small mountain heaving into view from the Trapani...
Nigel Farage was in fine fettle when he appeared on GB News on Tuesday evening. He boasted of his weekend in Florida, chewing the fat with Elon...
Lisa Haseldine has narrated this article for you to listen to. It’s 500 years since Martin Luther, along with the preacher Paul Speratus, put...
Have the plutocrats of the internet age finally realised that all Donald Trump wanted was their love? This week, Jeff Bezos had dinner at...
Perhaps because more and more BBC radio programmes are being broadcast from Salford, the whole of Britain is getting used to hearing multiple uses...
Kate Weinberg has narrated this article for you to listen to. It’s half an hour before lights out when my dad arrives at my bedroom door holding...
Uh oh. Less than 24 hours after Peter Mandelson was appointed the next UK ambassador to Washington, Donald Trump’s team are kicking up a fuss....
Parliament may be in recess, but Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government still can’t catch a break. The Prime Minister is facing further allegations...
Well, well, well. The political peerages list is finally here and the nominations from Sir Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Sir Ed Davey have been...
Another day and another thumping defeat for Keir Starmer. This time, it’s for one of three seats in the previously safe ward of Brockmoor and...
A few journalists have pointed it out. So have some Conservative and Reform MPs, think tanks and one or two of the City banks. Now, it is official:...
The government’s net-zero noose draws tighter. At energy questions in the House of Commons on Tuesday, the Conservative MP Charlie Dewhirst asked...
Today’s figures on the public finances and retail sales will bring some relief to Rachel Reeves; both show a small positive direction. In...
If Keir Starmer does succeed in his aim of stimulating a house-building boom, it may be that landowners will have little to celebrate. The...
At the end of what has undoubtedly been a true annus horribilis for the monarchy, King Charles, at least, seems to have recovered something of his...
Dual-purpose trainer Hughie Morrison usually has one of two jumping stars to supplement his talented flat horses at his Berkshire stables. In...
When the editor of this magazine called to congratulate me on being given a peerage, he said: ‘It’s QPR’s first win this season.’ Not quite...
More than half of Britons receive more from the state than they pay in taxes, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. The...
Ouidah, Benin On a free afternoon in Benin, I decide to walk the slave route in Ouidah, the port from which perhaps a million Africans were...