One problem of being Opposition leader is getting air time. They yearn for cut-through moments when the full focus of…

It’s not the kindly principle, it’s the money

The first time I met the Queen, I was eight years old and she was visiting my school, in Brentwood,…

Tony Abbott’s best chance of winning the next election is the person the PM’s supporters are so keen to destroy

Heston Blumenthal chances his hand down under

The NSW smoking ban is an Inglorious revolution

Advocates of same sex marriage are disingenuous in their calls for open debate

Thuggery on Australia’s waterfronts has a long and, er, proud history

Fear of Isis is leading the Arab states to lend support to the lesser of two evils

Despite the sadness, it feels very safe here. Even the riot police are relaxed, cheerfully feeding the birds

An Ethiopian called Ghermay Ermias is the dangerous and elusive criminal behind Europe’s migrant crisis

Justin Welby wants to focus on growth – and has City high-flyers on hand to help him do it. Can he take his fractious Church with him?

The fad for owning animals from films is a reflection of humans’ disrespect for nature

Christopher Lee never exactly lied about his creditable wartime record, but he encouraged its embellishment. It’s a surprisingly common story

Stephen Crabb, the working-class Welsh Secretary with a fondness for Margaret Thatcher

Some signatures are ten a penny – others will fetch serious money

This is an awful plan, but it’s the best option we’ve got

Home The government postponed a Commons vote on relaxing the Hunting Act in England and Wales after the Scottish National…

Plus: the gleaming new Laidlaw Library; the BBC and the arts; and a meeting with my old teacher

Plus: the colour of Christians, the tax on sugar, the cost of public inquiries

Hurrah for the Wimbledon men’s finalists, who played without emitting revolting gasps

From ‘Education and Honour’, The Spectator, 17 July 1915: The young man who has been to a Public School or…

Greek cowboys Sir: In the leading article in The Spectator Australia of 11 July 2015, the editor says: “Like the…

If he becomes Labour leader, the party will move further leftwards

There’s plenty I can find to do out there, and if I don’t like it I’ll just come back

If all goes according to plan, the next 50 years will pass much more smoothly

Plus: a woman for Barclays? And a new comedy of confusion for our times

Harper Lee’s publishers are much to blame for resurrecting this piece of confused juvenilia. It should have remained where it belongs — in the bottom drawer

The Mistresses of Cliveden by Natalie Livingstone explores the great house’s exotic history, ending with Christine Keeler, the swimming pool and the Profumo Affair

A searing satire set in a dystopic future,Victor Pelevin’s 2011 S.N.U.F.F. — now brilliantly translated into English — has been hailed as a prescient warning of Russia’s intentions in Ukraine

Wednesday Martin’s Primates of Park Avenue mocks New York’s high-maintenance ‘mommies’ who worry sleeplessly over money, infidelity and dieting. But they are a much stranger breed than this memoir makes out

Tension mounts in Saul David’s compulsive chronicle of hijacked Air France Flight 139 and the rush to save the hostages in Entebbe 40 years ago

The more inconvenient, bloodstained événements of French history are dismissed as ‘aberrations’, organised by ‘enemies of the fatherland’, according to Jonathan Fenby’s latest History of Modern France

In his survey of the world’s most ludicrous and best-forgotten sports, Edward Brooke-Hitching reveals the extraordinary cruelty and inventiveness of mankind at play

Columbus’s discovery of America led to a glorious literary and artistic flowering in early modern Spain, according to Robert Goodwin’s Spain: The Centre of the World, 1519–1682

According to Zero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano and Dreamland by Sam Quinones, the flow of Class A drugs around the world is now unstoppable, and traffickers have grown increasingly violent. If only the trade were regulated, all this could change

What are the odds that one of the world’s best political commentators happens to be an expert on the songs…

It’s easy to tag the terrain of the capital city by writer. But what might a map of its music look like?, wonders Philip Clark

Plus: knives and nudity from Wendy Whelan and Edward Watson at the Linbury Studio Theatre

Lucas Debargue, the 24-year-old French pianist with a riveting backstory, is the only competitor anyone is talking about

It’s just two charmless, boring men sitting across the table from each other being charmless and boring

Plus: Soundscapes at the National Gallery reviewed: Martin Gayford reckons that soundtracks are best left inside the artist’s head

Plus: there’s a thrilling Verdi rarity, Giovanna d’Arco, at Buxton but Lucia di Lammermoor is not an essential night at the opera

Plus: Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier square up to each other at Southwark Playhouse in a play that is almost a triumph

Plus: Radio 3’s The Last Moor reviewed: ‘The least important thing about Othello is the colour of his skin’

Plus: Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is the interior design equivalent of the Greek economy

It was a sparkling winter morning when the Art Gallery of NSW revealed the 47 finalists for the Archibald Prize…

Or are we so cowardly that we cannot call a spade a spade?

But Sharon, who had been leaping from one man to the next like a chamois, was arrested

The menopause has turned me into a major risk to public health and safety

If everyone realised how nasty it is it might become very popular again

We are building fences against people who are dedicated to burglary and malicious damage 24 hours a day

Omar Sharif did so much for bridge. He inspired countless others through his own devotion to the game (‘Acting is…

Fabiano Caruana notched the result of his life at the Sinquefield Trophy in St Louis last year. Since then he…

Black to play. This position is a variation from Kramnik-Naiditsch, Dortmund 2015. How can Black make a decisive material gain?…

In Competition No. 2906 you were invited to write a poem about an encounter in an airport. Craig Raine’s poem…

Unclued lights (two hyphened) are words (all but one of which are in ODQ) from a poem whose title appears…

The poem was Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats. 1A, 16, 21A, 30, 38, 8, 13, 27, 29…

Suggestions on a postcard: we need to solve this scourge of our cities

Decision-making could be so much easier if information was presented differently

Plus: our friend who licks his knife; and how to stop your children from getting tattoos

A Rothschild wine tasting

There’s more life out there than words to name