Here we go again. Almost twenty years after it almost brought down John Howard in the 1998 election, the Great…

Some months back, head of government duties meant that I had to decline an invitation to give the Thatcher lecture…

Changes are not necessarily genuine reform

Notes on Turnbull’s treachery and Whitlam being ‘wronged’

The Pope, the Paris conference and anti-coal actvists appear happy to condemn the third world to energy poverty

Stephen Harper trod a fine line of pragmatism on climate change

How Generation Whinge are thieving from their elders

Maybe it’s time to start liking the Russians

A country not much bigger than Wales has seen its population increase by a third

The Health Secretary’s quest for a ‘seven-day-a-week NHS’ is fundamentally misconceived

Jeremy Hunt’s reforms will penalise those who make the NHS run out of hours – and put doctors off key specialisms

The downing of the Russian airliner shows its potential to cause havoc on a global scale

Teachers’ growing addiction to acronyms alienates parents and pushes complex questions into ready-made pigeonholes

The average pensioner still has an income 25 per cent below the average worker. You wouldn’t guess that from the media

Prized polo ponies are already being reborn. It won’t be long before this is mass-market technology

Steer clear of the expensive Alpine mega-resorts to find hidden gems with the ski-runs less travelled

The Investigatory Powers Bill is troubling, not because of the powers it grants, but because of the lack of restrictions on how they’re used

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, outlined four changes he sought in Britain’s membership of the EU. He wanted to…

I still hope Labour wins the argument. But I’m happy to be listening to the Today programme, not speaking on it

Plus: police cameras and road deaths; commuting and happiness; football shares

Does a ruler’s weakness matter if he has the right advisers? Maybe not at first…

Returning soldiers will never be satisfied by humdrum urban occupations

Plus: Ukraine is not our war; unconventional threats to come; creativity, luvvies and vulgarians

My old friend’s father might find the state of his beloved party a little confusing. He wouldn’t be alone

Also: international sporting bodies; TV Licensing; drinks before dinner; Norman Moore

Let’s not forget that when we bid for the World Cup, we indulged in our own little bit of bribery too

It is a cultural meme that public service workers have a calling rather than just a job, and that money shouldn’t loom large

They won’t shift Jeremy Corbyn and know that almost everybody in Britain who might vote for him already has

Plus: the changing world of money-broking; readers’ experiences of small business banking; bitcoin

Among regular reviewers choosing their favourite books are Ferdinand Mount, Jan Morris, A.N. Wilson, Paul Johnson, Mary Beard, Jonathan Sumption and A.S. Byatt

Alexander Masters argues that knowing an author is a positive advantage when it comes to book reviewing

The third (and weirdest) Inkling, the subject of Grevel Lindop’s biography, became a Thirties cult phenomenon, championed by T.S. Eliot as well as by Tolkein and C.S. Lewis

According to her memoir M Train, the high priestess of punk now lives a quiet life, watching ITV3 and feeding the cat

The hero of Craig Ryan’s biography not only pioneered manned space flight but also the compulsory use of seatbelts, saving more lives than anyone in history

Stephen Bayley celebrates the Second Cocktail Age with three sumptuous new books on the best way to mix spirits

Number 11 is a bitter exposé of modern materialistic Britain — glued to sadistic reality TV in luxury basement conversions

Patrick Skene Catling recalls blissful supersonic flights—before the age of terrorism, and when newspapers still paid travel expenses

Two books on loss and ruins by James Crawford and Robert Harbison make for evocative and poignant reading

Rose Prince explores the cuisines of Ukraine, Scandinavia, China and New York — and ends up with the simple egg

A vast number emigrated during de Valera’s rigid theocracy, which lasted over half a century — a fact he barely acknowledged, according to Ronan Flanning’s biography,

The supremely gifted, but tragically short-lived, artist looks set for a much-deserved revival with the publication of two handsome new anthologies of his work

The ‘veteran’ Millar’s latest harrowing memoir describes a cycle of constant pain as he grows old in the saddle, aged 36

Edna O’Brien’s Little Red Shoes transports Radovan Karadizic (or ‘Vlad’) to fictional Cloonoila — in gushing, sub-Hemingway style

Julie Burchill is not impressed by the latest batch of celebrity autobiographies — though she does recommend buying two copies of Alan Sugar’s Unscripted

Peter Hoskin celebrates 100 years of a revolutionary process that gave birth to some of the greatest films ever made

Plus: Wolf-Ferrari’s Le donne curiose is so good-natured as to be almost insipid, but this Guidhall School of Music and Drama production saves it

Calder's mobiles at Tate Modern are delightful, beautiful, hypnotic, but for Martin Gayford there's still something missing

Danny Boyle’s biopic is well made and the performances are ace but the film doesn’t know what it wants to say about the Apple CEO

Plus: if you can digest three hours of literary froth, you’ll find plenty to enjoy in the Olivier’s new As You Like It

Plus: The Last Kingdom doesn’t have nearly enough dragons or tits, and why I love BBC2’s The Great British Pottery Throw Down

Plus: why are so many podcasts American? Is it because of the stranglehold that Radio 4 has on the British market?

James Bond as played by Daniel Craig in the new movie Spectre might have been surprised to find himself sharing…

What kind of person needs to tell another what he or she is thinking all of the time?

An opportunity to voice the most extreme opinions — of the left or right — that I can think of

Unsurprisingly, the World Horse Welfare was having second thoughts about booking me to address its conference

Plagiarism is an unpardonable offence in America; inventing a life story isn’t

But if you missed out this time round, here are my top choices for next year

The EBU’s Premier League takes place over three weekends and decides who will represent England in next year’s Camrose (home…

I was not quite sure whether to be annoyed or relieved about the recent High Court decision not to recognise…

White to play. This position is a variation from A.Muzychuk-Dzagnidze, Monaco 2015. How can White finish off with a classic…

In Competition No. 2923 you were invited to describe an everyday object, in verse, from the point of view of…

One unclued light is a publication (two words). The others are relevant figures (all in Chambers) who appear in a…

MARCOBRUNNER (11) is composed of words whose definitions are 1D, 24, 32; 13, 17, 35; and 9, 29A, 38. First…

Yes, we’ve got a dog – and he’s more trouble than a newborn baby

Killing the messenger was never the best policy and now he needs all his determination and discipline to get this straightened out

....and clever tactics for dealing with nuisance callers

45 Jermyn St removes the flounces of The Fountain, but retains its soft-faced super-rich diners

Students seem not to think so