Remember Kim Carr’s dire warning: ‘The government has effectively signed the death warrant on Australia’s last fresh-fruit cannery, ensuring the…

I don’t want to harp about the ABC and I hope this will be my last contribution on that subject,…

An Aborigine, an Arab and a Jew enter a public bar. They look more worried than angry as they bear…

The Greeks may fear and loathe Frankfurt as a crass citadel of German capitalism. Not me. It’s Germany’s aviation and…

Those who like the public broadcaster should be the ones to fund it

Don’t assume China’s aggressive territorial claims will lead to an all-out war in east Asia

It is welcome news that the government might consider tightening the means test around the seniors’ health card. The card…

The scare campaigns on race should not deter Tony Abbott over Section 18C

My fellow children’s writers hate the Education Secretary. Now I finally understand why

There’s an increasing amount of evidence about how we learn.But you won’t hear about it at teacher training college

And free schools are doing that

Travels in the Millwall of the Middle East

Councils are banning dogs from places they’ve been walked for generations. Here’s how owners are fighting back

Where the men with unmarked uniforms walk the streets, rebellion is stirring

No city really multitasks like Paris, shorthand for romance, culture, fashion, gastronomy and the kind of street life you find…

It's his last chance for a game-changing reform. He should focus on childcare

Home Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, promised that, if elected, his administration would hold a referendum on…

Plus: India, the reading champions of the world

Plus: What to buy with your bitcoin before it’s too late

Russia’s approach to international affairs is rather Roman right now

If the Tories can’t stop squabbling among themselves, they are doomed to election defeat

How many illnesses of modern childhood are excuses for bad behaviour, stupidity or parental neurosis?

The Prime Minister's 'happy place' has become very unhappy indeed

Come back Sarah Palin, all is forgiven

Plus: The Co-op’s latest crisis, and HMRC’s demon eyes

A review of Rana Dasgupta's Capital: A Portrait of 21st-century Delhi. The upper crust and underbelly of India's capital

A review of Tim Harris's Rebellion. He tries bravely, but in the end, no

A review of Edmund White's Inside a Pearl. An X-rated memoir of the gay author's 15-year exile in Paris

A review of Fred D’Aguiar's Children of Paradise. A fictional retelling of the Jonestown massacre makes you wonder who'd fall for Jim Jones

A review of Jonathon Green's Odd Job Man. This memoir of a slang lexicographer is well nang

A review of Alex Monroe's Two Turtle Doves: A Memoir of Making Things. Punk, procrastination and ping pong: this jeweller's autobiography is full of gems

A review of Yvonne M. Ward's Censoring Queen Victoria: How Two Gentlemen Edited a Queen and Created an Icon. The gay old Etonians who made sure that Victoria's letters didn't tell the messy truth

A review of Andrew Sachs' I Know Nothing! Faulty Towers' punchline of a waiter – and Russell Brand's favoured target – endured much greater sorrows with style

A review of Jack Kerouac's The Haunted Life: The Lost Novella. Gaucheness and inexperience mark this early work

A review of Rebecca Mead's The Road to Middlemarch: My Life with George Eliot. Too much 'my life', not enough George Eliot

A review of Kate Colquhoun's Did She Kill Him?: A Victorian Tale of Deception, Adultery and Arsenic. An expert non-fiction thriller – as long as you don't mind a little speculation

What's it like to be a dance demigod? Giannandrea Poesio meets two of them

Mark Twain's chair, Louisa May Alcott's pillows, Robert Frost's many houses and the empty home of Edgar Allen Poe

No room for morals in Mariusz Trelinski's bleak new production of Henze's Boulevard Solitude for WNO; plenty of room for levity in Royal Opera's La Fille du regiment

Otherwise, you might prefer the feelgood story of The Rocket

Richard Deacon's new show at Tate Britain will appeal to single men of a certain age, while Richard Hamilton's latest Tate Modern retrospective might not appeal to anyone

The A-Z of Mrs P fails to make a hero out of Phyllis Pearsall. But Visitors and Good People deliver great theatre with high risk strategies

What the channel has to offer in its last days on Freeview

Plus: Nitin Sawhney returns to Radio 2 and reminisces about his interview with Nelson Mandela

Shot in the dying days of the war, Roberto Rossellini's celebrated film burns with anger

The winters are better now than they were 60 years ago

After dark, it's like Romford market on a Saturday morning

How could he do this to me? How?

Oh, to be as active as Placido Domingo, or as peaceful at the end as Pavarotti

The Night of the Stars charity bridge event, held in West London a couple of weeks ago, was every bit…

It is a little known fact that Emanuel Lasker, the German world chess champion, who reigned from 1894 to 1921,…

White to play. This position is from Teichmann-NN, Simultaneous Display, Berlin 1914. Can you spot White’s fine finish? Answers to…

In Competition 2838 you were invited to submit a short story entitled Fifty Shades of whatever you chose. It was…

Each of thirteen clues contains one misprinted letter in the definition part. Corrections of misprints spell a phrase involving a…

‘To fill the hour — that is happiness’ (given by initial letters of superfluous words in clues, and 3 4A)…

The left’s sudden sanctimony about Bob Crow was proof of that

We have two ways of thinking, teaches Daniel Kahneman. With the aid of computers, it’s become three

Plus: A better alternative to ‘partner’

Soviet power is not good for one's spirits

It was partly our fault