The United Kingdom faces two defence challenges. The first is financial. After decades of underinvestment, rebuilding military capability is essential. But the second challenge is intellectual.

The chancellor Rachel Reeves is set to appoint a corruption commissioner to recover £2.6bn lost to fraudsters during the Covid-19 pandemic. There will be millions to retrieve from local ...

There’s an idea kicking around that “woke” is killing culture. According to elder statesmen of the arts, from John Cleese to Sean Penn, do-gooders and virtue-signallers are suffocating the life out of ...

The narrator of Ted Chiang’s short story “The Great Silence” is a parrot at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The bird watches as humans desperately seek life in other solar systems using a huge ...

If, like me, you missed the October 2024 episode of BBC’s Panorama, you may well have wondered about the fallout it engendered: the resignations of two of the broadcaster’s top executives, a ...

As world leaders gathered in New York for the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, few would have had Resolution 2758 uppermost in their minds: most attention was focused on the continuing horrors ...

What’s your favourite book of the 21st century? The key authors today are female crime novelists, so it’s Tana French’s The Likeness. If there ever was a subtle leftist novel, this is it; one can ...

One summer day in 1994, a young law student called Jo Maugham arrived at a central London office to cover for a secretary who’d called in sick. Smart in his suit and tie, he was surprised to be ...

How the UK Supreme Court decided a fundamental rights case without using human rights law ...

Tilly Lawless is a queer, Sydney-based full-service sex worker. She is the author of two novels: Nothing But My Body (2021) and Thora (2024) ...

The hour-long coastal cycle ride from Margate to Ramsgate offers a vivid illustration of the paradox of England’s relationship with its seaside, one of both intense affection and careless neglect.

Last summer I was invited to take part in two small private events attended by many US, European and Asian billionaires, some worth many tens of billions. The events were fun and stimulating, and many ...