‘I grew up… with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot. He got on his bike and he looked for work. And…

Tell a big lie often enough… ‘This government will cost schools in Scullin $201 million – $201 million ripped out…

The redoubtable Andrew Bolt wants a referendum on same sex marriage. Edmund Burke gave the best and traditional answer to…

Before there was Nineteen Eighty- Four and Animal Farm, there was Homage to Catalonia written by George Orwell in 1938.…

I’m hoping that at least a few readers will be happy to hear that I survived my first ever trip…

Why is the Magna Carta glossed over in our schools?

Thanks to the Magna Carta, we avoided the dismal fate of becoming another Argentina

They were the political grotesques that political junkies can’t get enough of. Thank god they’re back.

From corporations to politicians, everyone’s looking to purify themselves via gay marriage

Why is the Magna Carta glossed over in our schools?

Projections aren't predictions. But there's no denying that churches are in deep trouble

These days, when lefties are losing an argument, they nitpick until it looks as if they’ve won

If we believe marriage is a social good, we must act on that belief

If you have seen your fair share of dead people, you’ll know what a relief it is to have the corpse removed

The European Arrest Warrant is incompatible with our traditions. If the only way to abolish it is to leave the EU, let’s leave

Napoleon’s decisive defeat? Nonsense! It was a moral victory. Or at least a score draw…

Just so you don’t get it confused with the City That Never Sleeps, Tel Aviv — my favovurite place on…

He has two jobs: to keep his party together, and to get the best possible deal. He just stumbled on both

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said of the EU referendum: ‘If you want to be part of the government,…

Plus: bird-watching in middle-age; Cornwall’s topless scythers; and what Labour can learn from the Ivy

Plus: What hard-pressed MPs do to make ends meet; the corruption world cup

Like Nero's terrified senators, Sepp Blatter's courtiers know how the game is played

From ‘The Essential Need’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915: Just as wages must be ‘stabilised’ for the men at existing rates,…

Plus: Crazy presidential candidates, the imperial hubris of Brussels, and the mystery of Dear Mary’s blouse

On election night, he wrote – and even delivered – his resignation speech. He’s not been quite the same since

Plus: David Cameron for foreign secretary; the cant of the Living Wage; and growing centralisation in Scotland

Why should Jon Snow be the only man to join in?

Blair succeeded not just because of his policies but because he didn’t look like a Labour leader. We’ve not elected a proper one since Wilson

As Blair was to Iraq, Cameron is to Libya

Plus: Remembering Alan Bond; and high-frequency trading over the Battle of Waterloo

The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets is a rich but extremely politically correct confection

Simon & Schuster should be ashamed to have published Bob and Brian Tovey’s The Last English Poachers. There is nothing romantic about stealing from the rich — it’s a crime like any other

There are too many wrong notes in Colouring In, Angela Huth’s latest novel about a woman who tries to have it all

Two new books claim equal significance for their chosen subject as the driving force of civilisation

Raghu Karnad’s moving memoir Farthest Field makes triumphant redress for the injustices suffered by his fellow Indians in the Burma Campaign

As Xinran’s Buy Me the Sky reveals, China’s one-child policy has resulted in a grotesquely distorted population tortured by guilt

But why has such a boringly perfect tennis player inspired so many writers, wonders Edmund Gordon (worried by his own fascination with Andy Murray)

We 1990 record executives didn’t know what was about to hit us. Stephen Witt’s How Music Got Free explains it all

Lucy Beresford’s heroine investigates her husband’s death while uncovering the truth about India’s missing millions in her compelling novel Invisible Threads

There have been conflicting plans for this wilderness, going back to the 18th century, as Matthew Kelly’s Quartz and Feldspar reveals

Martin Gayford talks to the pioneering light artist about his resplendent new show at Houghton Hall

Why Marcus Berkmann feels relief and a certain reluctant respect for the folk band’s shift to stadium rock

Plus: John Fulljames new Cosi fan tutte for Garsington Opera feels like it’s been put together by someone with a very busy in-tray

Plus: Stop - The Play at the Trafalgar Studios offers you the chance to watch luvvies loving luvvies being luvvies

Another jaw-dropping documentary about the Indonesian genocide from the director of the Oscar-winning The Act of Killing

Doesn’t everyone know that Napoleon was the most brilliant and inspirational generals ever?

Plus: the council being forced to cut nearly 4,000 jobs and Britain’s oldest salesman

Michael Tanner says the ubiquitous German baritone turned brief songs into ‘meaningful’ slogs

Bill Dobell is back in town. At least an aspect of his output, titled Painter in Paradise: William Dobell in…

But instead of Hercules we’ve got a midget yob at the helm

I can stop worrying about the future for a kick-off

My GP misdiagnosed a blocked nose as schizophrenia, which cured my menopausal symptoms

Evening dress is a great social leveller

There was razamatazz as always but this year’s Derby was all about the racing

Andrew (Bertie) Black started his bridge life many moons ago but stopped to found Betfair, which became the world’s largest…

This week I conclude my coverage of the Fidé (World Chess Federation) Grand Prix which finished last month in Khanty-Mansiysk.…

Black to play. This is from Rodriguez-Xiong, California 2012. How does Black finish off? Answers to me at The Spectator…

In Competition No. 2901 you were invited to write a poem in praise of a modern-day blot on the landscape.…

The unclued lights (one hyphened and another a novel which is listed in Chambers Crossword Dictionary) display a similar feature…

The unclued Across lights (15, 23/21, 38 and 39) are LITERAL anagrams of the unclued Down lights (3, 19, 32/37,…

Michael Ignatieff showed a political cack-handedness that was at odds with his reputation as a brilliant intellectual

Other cricketers’ behaviour is disgraceful by comparison

The skinny on visitors’ books,  children’s choc ices and faddist-friendly cheese and biscuits

Here is everything the less mad of the very rich might want to eat between 7 a.m. and midnight

As a mature woman I am angry at the childish passive-aggressive mentality of the Columbia Four