With the nightmare of the Sydney siege still fresh in Australian minds comes the not entirely unexpected heightened terrorist alerts…

If only Tony Abbott could bring the conviction and even eloquence he demonstrated in Baghdad to bear on the Budget…

Holidays are a time to abandon the comfort zone and try new things. So when my mate Adam Brereton, an…

A film that purports to show the ‘other’ side of the ANZAC story does anything but

The 2014 Thawley Prize winner

Gary Johns has conceived of ‘No contraception, no dole’. Can it work?

Channel Seven producers shamelessly exploited my goodwill project

Even if David Cameron or Ed Miliband secures a majority, the next parliament looks impossible to handle

Based on his first wife’s memoir, the film refuses to tell her complicated and disturbing story

No politician today would dare to speak about a ‘national soul’. No one will believe them until they do

The Islamic State’s real social media skill makes commentators too willing to believe its shaky territorial claims

Chambéry airport just isn’t built for peak skiing season – as I discovered in the most unpleasant way

Soon the day will arrive when someone asks ‘Would it be OK if myself puts yourself on hold?’

Famed criminal barrister and former MP Sir Ivan Lawrence on why he went up against the Justice Secretary and the duties of a defence lawyer

And would you rather stay in a pub or a monastery?

Shocking violence is the resort of the desperate

Home The electorate was bombarded with contrary claims by parties beginning campaigns for the election in May. David Cameron, the…

Plus: Mystery shoppers, cod philosophy in advertising, and Ethel Merman

...350 or more years ago. Plus: the oil price rollercoaster, the most valuable lost cargoes, and doomed animal rescues

The emperor Augustus knew how it was done

From ‘Lord Curzon’s speech’, The Spectator, 9 January 1915: We are glad to record, though in no way surprised to…

No Christmas Sir: To follow up on Chris Ashton’s ‘the real War on Christmas’ (Spec Aus Christmas Special) might I…

He has served the required amount of his sentence, and he should be allowed to do the job he chose and is qualified for

I thought telling on friends, even for drink-driving, was contrary to our culture. It seems I was wrong

Had I not known that, I might have wanted to blame other people

Plus: France’s latest eruption of bureaucracy, and the Chinese bid for Club Med

A review of Honeydew by the American writer Edith Pearlman suggests that while the short story may be flourishing in the States, its counterpart over here is shamefully neglected

The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis is a furious, sprawling work of fiction exploring ‘the slippery algebra of enemies’

A review of The Architect’s Apprentice by the prize-winning Turkish author promises an enthralling read from start to finish

A review of Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert reveals that while Britain abolished the slave trade in the early 19th century, 50 years later its cotton industry still depended on American slave-labour

In a review of Painted Glories by Nicholas Eckstein, Honor Clerk finds Florence’s intimate Brancacci chapel more thrilling than any blockbuster exhibition

Cressida Connolly’s reckons that to be alone in a room reading Antonia Fraser’s My History is the perfect way to start the new year

Ian Bostridge's guide to Schubert's Winterreise will open your eyes not only to the song cycle but to the age and place that produced it

On the eve of a BFI season of Marx Bros films, Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers

The devil is in the detail — and on his latest album Avonmore there’s more detail than you know what to do with

The great achievement of lovers Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde is finally coming to light in this super show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Steve Carell’s nose alone deserves an Oscar in this taut American thriller

Plus: a play involving audience participation at the Southwark Playhouse that makes Lloyd Evans want to participate and end the show

The libretto may not be great but Katharina Thoma’s new staging was a travesty

Plus: sense prevails in the saga over Mantel’s short story, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

Plus: a remake of Mapp and Lucia that had James Delingpole’s family royally amused

Not many people would still argue that fashion, as in garments, has no place in an art museum. After all,…

And my hopes on the horizon in 2015

You can keep your coke at £90 a gram. All I was interested in inhaling this Christmas and New Year was a £2.50 tub of Vicks

Once you grasp that you are on your way to understanding the nature of the bind you’re in

For the past two and a half years my brother John has been living next door to me in the…

Few regular racegoers could name many of her horses but serious punters know she’s the one to watch

The last tournament of the year is the hugely popular one-day Swiss Teams in the EBU’s Year End Congress in…

The key feature of the London Classic, which finished shortly before Christmas, was the resurgence of Viswanathan Anand, the former…

White to play. This is a position from Adams–Caruana, London Classic 2014. How did Adams convert to a winning endgame?…

In Competition No. 2879 you were invited to follow in the footsteps of Hilary Mantel and provide a scene that…

Clockwise round the grid from 31 run the titles of four works (6,3,5,7,5.1,5,7,8,5) associated with a 21 and 25A born…

Ambrose Bierce defined history as an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly…

I’m all for giving more respect to people on the autistic spectrum – but not because they’re ‘special’

Plus: the game where Alastair Cook gets out at the right time

Plus: how to stop a dog assaulting your leg

It’s not because the place is full, that’s for certain

And why an anachronism can make dramatic sense