The famed ‘cultural cringe’ of the Sixties and Seventies was exacerbated by the realisation that most artistic and fashionable trends…

China’s long arm

Love that gas!

Governments are trashing the fundamental tenets

Who will defend us if not the ‘rough men’?

The Trump charges are a farce

Any form of constitutional recognition would be pointless

The national broadcaster has disgraced itself

There is nothing heroic about sexualising children

Albanese has almost certainly misread the will of the people

What went on between Putin and Prigozhin?

The next generation is waiting for Putin to fall

The Wagner Group isn’t Russia’s only private army

The lewdness and lyricism of ancient Roman graffiti

The march of Europe’s right-wing women

The convicted phone-hacker assembling complaints against the tabloids

The curious obsession with glucose monitoring gadgets

Rishi Sunak tends to shy away from social issues so it has been left to a backbencher, Miriam Cates, to…

Teacher trouble Sir: Rod Liddle (‘The trouble with teachers’, 24 June) is quite correct in what he says about the…

Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak have something in common: both men are under pressure to reshuffle their front benches and…

A few years ago I mentioned the profusion of moaning women on BBC Radio 4, after a longish car journey…

Earlier this year I was a panellist for Any Questions, and a young man in the audience asked what could…

Pantomime is meant to be silly and perhaps superficial, but fun. One does not (for example) join an audience for…

One of the most reliable standards in international comedy has long been the outstanding ineloquence of American politicians. In this…

One of the things I most enjoy about George Orwell is his love of tobacco. It was essential to him…

Count Maxim pursues his former cleaner Alessia to Albania – but sex in badly plumbed bathrooms while senseless on raki doesn’t sound that thrilling

Aristotle had long proved that the Earth was spherical, and even the illiterate masses of early medieval Europe were aware of the fact, says James Hannam

Born in 1559, Alice Spencer, a formidable networker, matchmaker and patron of the arts, was the muse of poets including Edmund Spenser and John Milton

Broad in scope and beautifully written, this unconventional autobiography contains some of the best advice struggling writers will ever receive

Hannah Pick-Goslar, a survivor of the Holocaust and Anne’s friend in Amsterdam, movingly describes their snatched conversations in Belsen before Anne disappeared forever

Structured around interlocking stories, the novel is a moving depiction of illness and death – but quantum physics, telepathy and time travel make for cerebral fun as well

Too often dismissed as leaden or trivial, Dutch art is a ‘fathomless world, with a strangeness to arouse and disturb’, says Laura Cumming

Ge’s short stories set in China are her most adventurous, ranging from politics in the time of Confucius to sex in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake

Between his return from exile and his death, Lenin launched – and perverted – the revolution that shapes world politics today

The emperors of Rome’s golden age avoided civil war at all costs. But wars against other peoples were a different matter, says Peter Stothard

The world has seemed like a procession of deaths lately. Generally, of those in old age. Of all of them,…

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fifth and final film in the franchise so it’s Harrison Ford’s…

Here’s a mystery for you. Why were Spoon, one of the most dynamic, sharpest rock bands in the world, playing…

James Graham’s entertaining new play looks at the England manager’s job. Everyone knows that coaching the national side is just…

As I sat down at this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, I overheard a curious exchange. ‘You mustn’t create art within art,’…

No one does agonising quite like Mobeen Azhar. In several BBC documentaries now, he’s set his face to pensive, gone…

In front of the banner advertising the RA Summer Exhibition, the swagger statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) by Alfred…

The Chester Mystery Plays date back to the 13th century – but are more popular now than ever, finds Richard Bratby

Amanda Stoker’s willingness to talk about her bottom has given David Van the distinction of becoming Australia’s first real subject…

I have written here in the past about the expression ‘weaponised words.’ There are many examples: ‘fascist’, ‘Nazi’ and ‘hard-right’…

In Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the hopes embodied in the title dissolve into grimness and black irony. It was all…

I have a hunch why people in late middle age are abandoning the workforce: their jobs, as they once knew…

Reading the title as ‘backup’, unclued answers VOLTE-FACE, RETREAT, SPIN, TURN, COUNTER, BACKTRACK, WITHDRAWAL, ROTATE, RETIREMENT and RECOIL had to…

I’ve always been envious of journalists who give their names to ‘laws’, as in O’Sullivan’s First Law: ‘All organisations that…

In Competition No. 3305, you were invited to submit a sonnet entitled ‘Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets’. The germ…

White to play and win. Composed by Josef Hasek, 1929. One plausible try is 1 Kc5 but 1…f5! prepares to…

Somewhere in hell, there is a cavernous hall filled with row upon row of people playing online speed chess. Their…

We all wanted Frankie to have a last Royal Ascot hurrah. In the end he got four, including a ninth…

‘Do you want me to put my dog on the lead?’ shouted the woman on her phone, as she came…

Rome To the Eternal City for the saddest of occasions, the funeral of the mother of Taki, 17, and Maria,…