It’s been only three months since Tony Abbott’s decisive victory on 7 September, and already the critics are baying for…

Hal Colebatch — lawyer, historian, poet, novelist — tells the story that, when speaking a few years ago to a…

There must be few cases in Australia or any other country where an incoming government and its ministers have been…

The editor rings in a sweat. Tony Abbott was to have written this diary but dashed off to South Africa…

One of the drawbacks of writing for a magazine as esteemed as the Spectator Australia is that you are assumed…

Much more than cricket fascinates this Englishman about Australia

It was the second session of the 27th parliament, 3 March 1970. The House was sitting for the first time…

The Tasmanian conservative was the most important and sophisticated novelist Australia has produced

The game has to stop reinventing itself  to survive in a crowded sports market

On Syria, as so often, he's running rings round Obama and Cameron

He’d like to present you with single-party government and lower tax rates, among other things

Plus: The beauties of recovery, and the benefits of drawing

Plus: John Lloyd's stand-up return, and why a listener sent a photo of gingerbread to In Our Time

Answers from Justin Welby, Joan Bakewell, Giles Coren, Jonathan Sumption, James Rhodes and many more...

Remembering the gentlemanly world of Lord Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion

They were the 20th century's Turner and Constable

This pheasant stew is so much easier - and nicer - than roasting a big bird

Why won't the West stand up for the most persecuted minority?

The great contrarian on 'fascist voices' around Thatcher, the fate of the public schools, and why he swore on TV

Plus: Hanging out with Christo, Tim Berners-Lee and Kevin Spacey

For Italians it's romantic arias. For Germans, lieder. Give me Isaac Watts, John Bunyan and Edward Elgar

And why you shouldn't bet on any of them

My heart stopped. Then I really started to live

Plus: British television has turned into a poor cousin of America's

Europe's leaders in 1914 - and 1919 - have a great deal to answer for

There is no finer city in which to hear music than Vienna. Or, to put it more felicitously, there is…

The Spectator's Christmas short story, with illustrations by Kate Baylay

A new short story by William Boyd, illustrated by Castro

Test your wits against Christopher Howse. With illustrations by Castro

Says who? 1. David Cameron. 2. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby. 3. Nick Clegg. 4. Prince…

The world's still getting better - here's the proof

Your condensed guide to the year's events, great and small

I'm sitting with field marshals, historians and former defence secretaries - and what we're planning isn't what you think

Whose year is it anyway? Some things which 2014 has been declared to be the year of: — Year of…

If you want to understand the worlds of Homer and the Bible, you must start with farming

A net gain Sir: Jamie Bartlett tries to balance plus and minus, and ends with zero (‘Little Brothers are watching…

Cruelty to turkeys in 1880, winter strawberries in 1913, artificial Christmas trees in 1995

Plus: What Thatcher really thought about Mandela, and the incredible growing Christmas holiday

The big parties have no answer either to the SNP or to Ukip. The consequences could be dramatic

The old bruiser has left only a warning: our politicians must now at least pretend to be human

Funny how Euroscepticism and a faith in hard money go together

If you can handle your drink, why should your self-control desert you with other drugs?

I promised the producers I wouldn't tell you what happened. But still, dear God...

Plus: How much money you need to be happy, and when risk-taking is the safest thing

He remade the art world - and made a fortune in the process. Rachel Cohen's new biography shows the talent, hard work and compromises that took

Catherine Merridale's Red Fortress gets behind the facade of Russia's most famous building

The first historian has taken much criticism from his successors. As Tom Holland's translation shows, he deserves better

1. Cat Honour Hot Tin Roof 2. Frank Hen Stein 3. Ark A Deer 4. Hammer Day S 5. Hiss…

James Andrew Taylor's Walking Wounded: the Life and Poetry of Vernon Scannell does justice to a contradictory character

It wasn't brains, and it certainly wasn't integrity, as Philip Short's biography reveals

What messages are threaded through Alistair Moffat's Great Tapestry of Scotland - and Alexander McCall Smith's commentary?

On Nina Stibbe's Love, Nina and Katherine Holden's Nanny Knows Best

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism tells us little new about the progressive era

Martin Gayford's Michelangelo: an Epic Life bucks the trend for micro-history in compelling style

Robert Gore-Langton's Journey's End: the Classic War Play Explored considers R.C. Sherriff's continuing power to move - and to upset

Philip Dwyer's Citizen Emperor demonstrates that Bonaparte's myth was very far from self-made

Read Eric Schlosser's Command and Control, and you'll be astonished we've survived the atomic age - so far...

It's a river that runs through centuries of pain, warfare and achievement - and Nick Thorpe has found a new way to navigate its history

The Men Who United the States is a mystifying series of tenuous connections

The writer Ian Fleming invented, and his literary influences

We asked friends to tell us what they enjoyed reading in 2013

'We don't realise how incredible life is,' says Patrick Reyntiens, whose work for churches up and down the country has finally been documented in a magisterial book

Why do carols move us? Because they speak to us of innocence, and childhood. Here's my favourite carol...

DO leave your bourgeois ideas at home, DO buy a toy, DON'T forget to feed them — and DO prepare for trips to the loo

Forget Hamleys, it's full of saccharine tat — here's a present that will help your child understand nature, play, and everything else

Birgitte Hjort Sorenson seems trained in the diplomatic art of giving answers that are balanced, nicely phrased — and short on substance

Plus: Playing in a football league composed of Tranny United, Lesbian Rovers, Man City and Barely Athletic

It was a year of musical retrenchment where I only bought 25 CDS — so let me go back further in time

Stanley Spencer infused his war paintings with images of resurrection, as the exhibition Heaven in a Hell of War shows

Turner & the Sea shows the full force of the artist's powers and how he expanded the frontiers of painting

The ROH's musical account is inadequate and only one performer makes a deep impression. The others don't care about each other

Forget music of triumph over suffering, or Mahler's neurotic pain — here's a Beethoven piece of beauty without consolation

So I’m looking at the seasonal TV schedules trying to find something — anything — to watch. Britain and the…

Is it time to scrap the licence fee? That’s a question we’re going to hear more and more about in…

If, like me, you are allergic to pantomime (‘Oh, no you’re not!’; ‘Oh, yes I am!’) then help is at…

This Christmas our thoughts need to be with our fellow Christians who are being threatened in the Bible lands. No…

Christmas shopping in Waterstones, I came across a memory card game called We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. I snatched…

A very cross letter arrives from someone who wants to tell me I’m a ‘silly woman’. ‘You are a silly…

This is the season of goodwill when one should think about people less fortunate than oneself and wish them better…

Laikipia In the cattle rustlers’ camp, I know as I write this that the warriors are sharpening their blades, staring…

You don’t realise how much your pleasures mean until you are denied them. It was wonderful to get back on…

Autumn 2013 has been the single worst season of my bridge career. Actually, do I have a bridge career? Doesn’t…

Test your wits against Christopher Howse. With illustrations by Castro

Says who? 1. David Cameron. 2. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby. 3. Nick Clegg. 4. Prince…

This year’s London Classic tournament is still in progress and features Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, reigning British champion Gawain Jones,…

White to play. This position is from King-Howell, Staunton Memorial, London 2003. Can you spot White’s fine finish to the…

In Competition 2827 you were invited to submit a Christmas list, in verse, in the style of the poet of…

Five Christmas carols (5, 6, 5, 3 and 4 words respectively) have been re-arranged, and re-titled at 23/38 (4 words),…

The hero is Father Brown, appearing in column 3. ‘The Innocence (22) / Wisdom (15) / Secret (6D) / Scandal…

Politics, like so much of life, could do with a bit more lateral thinking

Decades of boys' Christmas lunches have taken us from aggression to acceptance

The Sports Personality of the Year shortlist could easily be twice as long

Every possible Christmas, experience, theme, idea, memory or possibility is squelched into a sorry corner of Hyde Park

But at least a run of bad vintages might start to bring some sanity back to the prices

Our agony aunt's annual celebrity special

Blame Widow Twankey. And the Beggar's Opera. And J.R.R. Tolkien