Dinosaurs, disgruntled employees, Chinese spies, Titanic enterprises, JFK rip-offs, unpaid taxes, smacking Senate bottoms, strange circular self-generating taxation schemes and…

Mr Keating cannot help himself. The solemnity and splendour of the Remembrance Day service in a drizzling Canberra was a…

The launch of Twitter on the New York Stock Exchange the other day was a momentous event. I do not…

On my second afternoon in Australia I found myself in the heart of Sydney, strolling past Circular Quay with Baron…

So what is the point of the Commonwealth in this day and age?

The purists are wrong about Twenty20

Costly green measures are behind our rocketing energy bills. But as politicians dither, an even greater crisis awaits

Coming next month to a courtroom near you: victims get the chance to say how bad they feel

Paul Collier says the worst thing about immigration is that it impoverishes the nations that the migrants come from

Plus: Thank you Valentino, Tom Ford, William Boyd et al for making my book-launch party so swell

'If you're not afraid, you should be' — Galloway's tub-thumping makes the government's campaign look like a pussy cat

John Gimlette visits the flats and flophouses of great writers

Jack Wakefield admires the ravishing legacy of a city’s golden age

William Cook finds magic in the alleys of the medina

John Laughland wanders the jardins and boulevards

‘You were at the Fish, I hear,’ a Berlin friend told me. ‘I didn’t know you were an old hippie.’…

Thomas Eaton experiences a Russian immersion

‘Buy on the bullets’ is the cry of the most ruthless stockbrokers — invest just before a war, after the…

Behind American and British optimism over Tehran's nuclear intent lies a startling naivety

Home EDF Energy said it would put up prices by 3.9 per cent. BT Sport spent £897 million on the rights…

'So this is it,' I thought to myself, as I found the Four Seasons Hotel receipt for two in his pocket

Plus: Cameron's relief; who walks in to walk-ins; how Prince Charles is like a million other people

Rod rage Sir: Like most cyclists, who also own a car and pay road tax, I enjoy a pedal along…

Not a natural for the job, Bercow is getting too curt and personal, especially with the Prime Minister

Plus: Cheerio, Charles Letts; I know what to put on the fourth plinth; why Ed Balls should be called '12A'

Those pleading for leniency for Marine A are saying we can't fight properly and comply to the Human Rights Act

'I sat in the front on Dad's knee, bleeding all over his good suit, and he didn't care — which frightened me'

Plus: Osborne must review green levies on flights; a curse prevents me from bidding for the Royal Exchange building

Favourites old and new from Paul Johnson, Roger Lewis, Philip Ziegler, Ferdinand Mount, Michela Wrong, Bevis Hillier, A.N. Wilson, Piers Paul Read and more

John Sutherland isn't known for subtlety, so use his Little History of Literature as a galloping guidebook

The composer sent "I love you"s to just about everyone, as The Leonard Bernstein Letters reveal

In Saints of the Shadow Bible, Ian Rankin's detective is still reliable, but not as robust as he was

Fabian Ware overcame every difficulty to create a colossal memorial, as David Crane recounts in Empires of the Dead

That, and other intriguing facts about integers, can be found in Barnaby Rogerson's Book of Numbers

Fans of Count Arthur Strong (and yes I know he’s so Marmite you could spread him on a cheese sandwich)…

Frances Lincoln's The New English Garden looks at 25 innovative gardens that were born this millennium

Nicholas Shakespeare recounts his aunt's eventful story in Priscilla: The Hidden Life of the Englishwoman in Occupied France

William Cook's dual narrative of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore is forced and deterministic

Alan Connor's Two Girls, One on each Knee (7) is full of stories about the word puzzle — and tips for beginners

Hooman Majd's new book on Iran, The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay, is his best yet

The groupies who lived with Byron and the Shelleys paid a high price, shows Andrew McConnell Stott in The Vampyre Family

For 24 years Andro Linklater, who died aged 68 on 3 November, reviewed books in these pages. Always an enthusiast,…

In many ways, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has become the likeable face of the Australian mining boom, a self-made billionaire without…

Since I know Speccie readers like a bit of a shock, let me oblige: I think Chris Bowen is a…

The market thinks a Basquait is worth that much; art critics disagree. Maybe the market is right

Someone should tell Simon McBurney, who made the Queen of the Night a cripple, that wheelchairs went out in the last millennium

Whistler's paintings of the Thames are allusive and atmospheric, but they also show his skill in drawing

Plus: Watching a version of Sophocles's Ajax set in Afghanistan, I can't wait for a Trojan play set in Trojan times

The actor in Jerusalem and folk composer of Country Mile says he's branched out from his musical roots in west London

The movie is full of cliches and has a sentimental ending you could see coming all the way from Australia

You shouldn't call something a 'world premiere' unless it's very, very good — so luckily The Human Seasons was

Dominic Sandbrook's maddeningly brilliant Cold War Britain showed it's tricky when your enemy is not in plain sight

We must ensure uncomfortable subjects like mental illness are brought out in the open — and not as a freak show

Among the painters whose works are being displayed is the Spectator's art critic Andrew Lambirth

Kennedy was already embroiled in the Southeast Asian nation — and he'd installed Jupiter missiles against the Soviets

Plus: Surveying Boris's battered appendage; the Independent's new editor Amol Rajan hasn't eaten for a week

'How about a bit of tunnelling in the Midlands?' I sometimes say to Patrick McLoughlin, just to be jolly about things

There are many reasons to call 999. Alleging your wife is a werewolf isn't one of them

My farm is my home, and I'm here to stay — I will cover wars and crises no more

My plan this week was to write wittily, but modestly, about our rise from the bowels of relegation after the…

In Kurosawa’s samurai warrior classic Sanjuro, the hero, a wandering Ronin played by Toshiro Mifune, ends the film in a…

White to play. This position is from Anand-Ding Liren, Alekhine Memorial, Paris 2013. White’s next destroyed the already compromised black…

In Competition 2823 you were invited to submit a school essay or poem written at the age of eight by…

Nine unclued lights can be separated into three groups; each group consists of three definitions of one of three words…

Six of the unclued entries contained the Cluedo character surnames; the remaining unclued entries were therefore a murder weapon and…

Let me, ahem, add my congratulations to the floppy-haired MP for his contribution to the education debate

England's test is not only in cricket, but also in rugby and football

Why you must never leave home without a dog lead in your coat pocket

The restaurant is a very feminine place in the very masculine parish of St James's Street

Plus: I do believe there's a link between Ibuleve and I Can't Believe it's not Butter