There seem to be an awful lot of rogues out there. When it became clear that corruption allegations against former…

A footnote to the Dolce Affair in which the literary-political magazine Overland has banned the work of the songwriter and…

What an inspired choice for Governor-General! General Cosgrove will acquit himself well and be a distinguished occupant of that high…

‘Shaping a better world’, the theme for this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, was nothing if not…

Step forward Scott Morrison for working up your ideological foes into a collective state of hysteria

Two historical exhibitions on Australia and the US struggle to capture the spirit of the two nations

For the sake of the country, the church, and the politicians who pray it

I’ve lost a lot of friends this week. News travels fast and the idea of someone writing a weekly column…

Why big middle-class families are an endangered species

It's one of the world's most ancient traditions - and it does little lasting harm

It's time to end the archaic privileges of taxi drivers

It's not only Iran that threatens the Jewish state

The coup at the ICC - and its consequences

This time, Russia's thuggish president has picked on the wrong minority

Of course one feels free on a holiday: that’s what holidays are for. But I have rarely felt freer than…

Worryingly, some of them prefer the second option

Home Britain’s gross domestic product grew by 1.9 per cent last year, the most since 2007, according to the Office…

Plus: The Daily Mail has traduced Princess Michael of Kent

Plus: Where to go for lower income tax, and the Premier League of rip-off tickets

What Ancient Greeks would have made of Ed Balls

Too right wing Sir: I have been a subscriber to The Spectator since the early Eighties. Like many readers I…

The Lib Dems and the Tories are staying together, but they want to start to see other policies...

Plus: The trouble with John Biffen, and a tip for Ed Balls

Everyone should have the right to be offended - preferably every day

This medical miracle is shockingly close

My old friend's problem is that he's just too easy to understand

Plus: What's next for RBS, and Karl Slym's brilliant career

The Jacobean Grand Tour is packed with sumptuous detail about a time when Stuarts sent their sons to the Continent for a well-rounded education

Frank Furedi's First World War: Still No End in Sight gathers commentary from academics and sociologists. How wrong some of them were

Olivia Glazebrook's intense and disconcerting Never Mind Miss Fox casts an unflinching eye on the darker aspects of marriage and motherhood

William Nicholson entwines his compelling novel Reckless with the sex-and-spies scandal — but his prose gets clunky when describing real events

Robert Wainwright's interesting biography of Sheila Chisholm traces her journey from grazier's daughter to wife of royalty and lover of Prince Albert

After two voyages on Maersk containers, Horatio Clare wrote Down to the Sea in Ships — an extraordinary and haunting account of ocean-borne men and machines

The Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien is, not surprisingly, full of beerswillers and liquorslobbers

The characters in Katharine Grant's Sedition, full of glittering meanness and incomprehensible cruelty, are an immense draw

Plus: Af-Pak rap, Caravaggio vs Goodfellas, Egyptian threesome fantasies, CIA agents can't smell the roses

Was Agatha Christie just a formulaic writer? Black Coffee, her first play with the Belgian sleuth, shows we mustn't underestimate her

The late conductor trained as a generalist like Karajan, but could also have specialised in Early and contemporary music

Have you discovered the Voice of Firestone video clips online? Many happy hours await, and then there are the VHS recordings....

Alex Gibney's film huffs and puffs and pedals like mad, but never gets over the finish line

Sprawling, baffling and unwieldy, the play punishes everyone who gets involved with it: actors, directors and play-goers

There are excellent examples of Craxton's work in this exhibition — just don't think this is the best he can do

A hundred years on, we're still conflicted about the conflict — and it shows

Plus: Searching for Swazi soul; sleeping where Hitler slept; Germaine Greer meets a rare bird

Shop among a huge range of art at Works on Paper at the Science Museum

What's a talented director like Martin Scorsese doing glamourising the lifestyle of a crook who stole from the working poor?

Bo was a terrier who believed her calling was in badger-digging. I introduced her to bunny-bashing instead

Drip, drip, drip, goes water from my upstairs neighbours' flat through my ceiling. At first, I was calmness itself...

Apparently, my brain is not slowing down but just taking time to sift through data. I wish there were a Delete button, though

I always find it impossible to sleep when I’ve played poorly, and last night just one sleeping pill was never…

In Virgil’s Aeneid the hero Aeneas escapes from Hades via one of two gates, one made of ivory and the…

Black to play. This position is from Aronian-Van Wely, Wijk aan Zee 2014. Having already clinched first prize, Aronian’s only…

In Competition 2832 you were invited to compose an address to an item of food. The assignment was inspired by…

Each of the 22 across solutions, in clue order, contributes one unchecked letter to a two-word phrase (13,9) in Chambers…

The work was ‘THE TAMING OF THE (1D) Shrew’. ‘Shrew’ is suggested by 15, 27 and 33. The ‘Shrew’ of…

The streets are cleaner. But the equality is corrosive

Lesson one: start memorising important phone numbers

First, take out your iPhone...

The glory of a staple food that has become a luxury

Why scholars need to annotate ‘ill’, ‘out’, ‘free’ and ‘perfect’