It’s sad to say but the Royal Australian Navy is fast becoming a joke, if it isn’t there already. The…

As you know, I have always been at the forefront of the fight against discrimination, especially the evil variety that…

On arrival in Sydney for a stint with the Centre for Independent Studies, I am ensconced in the bourgeois bohemia…

Malcolm Turnbull’s speech notes mysteriously fell into the hands of...

Have you got what it takes to join the latest ‘irrelevant’ conservative political group?

Which is worse: union or business corruption?

The peculiar appointment of Mr Laundy

Australia’s political class want higher taxes, not real reform

All this confected outrage over tax is part of a concerted and sinister attempt to shift the definition of privacy

It’s the only part of the whole deal that’s really worth our while

Did he cunningly sanction Communion for the divorced in a hidden corner of his latest pronouncement? Nope

Ted Cruz’s daughter ruins photocalls by making bunny ears behind her dad’s head and refusing to hug him for the cameras

I should feel sympathetic to the new cult of cleanliness. Instead it repulses me

If beautiful places are to survive when the whole world is affluent, they’ll have to be reserved for a fortunate few

If I can do it for angry strangers from Wisconsin, I can do it for you

Anti-free-speech conspiracy theories are impossible to reconcile with the sorry state of Fleet Street

Plus, teargas fired at migrants trying to escape Greece and the Austrian government seizes Hitler’s birthplace

Plus: The V&A’s knicker exhibition; categories of holidays; John Whittingdale; my shaggy hair problem

Also in our Barometer column: the cost of tax evasion, the lives of farm animals, and aid for tax havens

There was hardly a street corner without a sign about some benefaction or other

An average day in a soldier’s life, April 1916

Burger kings Sir: It’s a truth universally acknowledged that no two countries with Macca’s outlets have ever declared war on…

The Prime Minister aims to hang on until 2019 and be the first Tory leader since 1937 to leave of his own volition

Also in The Spectator’s Notes: Obama’s policy on the Middle East; behaviour of banks; titles for spouses

Better an enraged mob than the enervating national cynicism that prevails in some European countries

The Prime Minister is behaving with conciliation to the point of deference. Plus: MPs’ tax returns

Also in Any Other Business: footballers’ taxes; care homes’ wages; negative interest rates

Lawrence’s vision was betrayed in a shabby colonial carve-up — and the Middle East has been paying the price ever since, according to Neil Faulkner’s biography

The British won many sea battles in the American War of Independence but were defeated by America’s countless rivers, lakes and creeks, according to Sam Willis’s ‘liquid history’

After her partner drowns rescuing their son in the Caribbean, Decca Aitkenhead finds her only hope is to write about it

In an understated gem of a book, Marwa al-Sabouni, an architect from Homs, describes a country ripped apart. Foreign correspondents Janine di Giovanni and Charles Glass do the same.

To make the pilgrimage less grim, avoid the Pyrenees — and your fellow travellers, advises Jean-Christophe Rufin

Robert Colvile’s The Great Acceleration and Charles Duhigg’s Smarter Faster Better offer helpful advice on the pace of modern living

The bizarre story of the guru Sri Ramakrishna and his feuding entourage is full of sly charm and astonishing vitality

Offset by a blood-spattered backdrop, this is just one of many startling images from Grayson’s colourful sketchbooks, dating from the 1980s

In a frank memoir of alcoholism and emotional suppression, Juliet Nicolson finally liberates herself from her formidable forebears

In a series of stories that are both dark and hilarious, David Szalay explores the predicaments of nine tormented men

The Oscar-nominated actor-director explains how Hollywood really works – and how his latest film broke all the rules

The atmosphere is vague and vapid and feels like an excuse to look at women’s pants while being in denial about why we’re looking at women’s pants

Plus: Cyrpus Avenue at the Royal Court is a pointless and partisan exercise

And even if you closed your eyes on Katie Mitchell’s production, you’d still not find it a great evening, with the conductor merely beating time

Conceptual art can be fanciful rubbish but at its best it’s funny, arresting and, in spite of itself, even beautiful

Deborah Ross welcomes this dark remake of the animated classic, especially its lack of icky messages about belonging

Channel 4's What British Muslims Really Think will come as no surprise to the British public, says James Delingpole

Plus: Timothy Garton Ash comes out fighting for free speech on Radio 4

Our grandmothers told that we shouldn’t discuss politics or religion in polite society. Apparently that was not a lesson learned…

But it didn’t elicit any real answers to my questions about such reliable ‘allies’ such as the Saudis and Pakistanis

Given the prevalence of Desperate Dan lookalikes even the French left wouldn’t champion the idea that gender is a matter of choice

Everything that tormented Basil has tormented me since I started taking in paying guests

It’s the centenary of the Anglo-Russian Hospital of St Petersburg, founded by Lady Muriel Paget, my grandmother and a world-class hustler and humanitarian

The winners upset the odds —  and while the race was casualty-free for the fourth year running it lost nothing of its spectacle

Can there be a game more humiliating than Bridge? Last weekend the boys and I went to Warsaw to play…

The year 2016 is the anniversary of a number of significant events in the chess world. In 1946 Alexander Alekhine…

Black to play. This is a position from Carbone–Slipak, Mar del Plata 2016. How can Black conclude? Answers to me…

In Competition No. 2943 you were invited to submit a review of a well-known work of literature that has been…

The unclued lights (three of two words), individually or paired, are of a kind, with 1 Down as a plural.…

FIRST, the ‘starter’ solution at 10 Down, can be linked with the other unclued lights, with it also appearing twice…

From bob-a-job with the Cubs to selling contraband smokes at school, I was a Tory wrong ‘un from the start

Well here’s a thing: we’ve just had the first English bloke to win the Masters. Sure, an Englishman has won…

Plus: make a pre-emptive strike to stop your husband having an office affair

The campaign for this caff might be my last dance with the left

‘Illegitimate’ and ‘legitimate’ have done service in English these six centuries