Several recent events highlight the fragile faultlines between jingoism, patriotism and national security; a fissure that the Left are desperate…

Since arriving in the Senate on July 1, there are two things I have learned. First, lots of people want…

The transgender community have become masters (er, mistresses?) of intolerance and offence-taking

ABC news anchors and presenters are abusing journalistic standards

Many in the West misunderstand the linkages and rivalries between the plethora of jihadist brand names

Political correctness is playing havoc with our opera

Preening parents and the art of being perfect

Preening parents and the art of being perfect

Competition – and ideology – isn't working

Or does he just want more people talking about Jonathan Powell?

History is never far away, even on the Platinum Coast

Home Checks began at British airports for passengers who might have come from west Africa with Ebola fever (even though…

Plus: The best places to complain to Google, and the worst places to commit bestiality

Classical precedents suggest their conquests are unlikely to last

Nothing to fear Sir: So long as we are not breaking any law, we have nothing to fear from the…

A review of Deep Down Dark, by Hector Tobar. The Chilean miners thought they were screwed trapped underground – but they were even more screwed when they got out

A review of My Life in Houses, by Margaret Forster. It’s a book that feels like it’s being told over a cup of tea

A review of The Most of Nora Ephron, by Nora Ephron. A greatest hits album that includes several masterpieces of comic construction

A review of Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov, translated by Stephen Pearl. But like many apparent idlers, Oblomov isn’t really lazy – he just spends a lot of time in bed

Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, Kim Beazley, still quips that John Winston Howard is his nemesis. This does not…

William Cook finds a German extraterrestrial, Sigmar Polke, exhibiting at the Tate

The disastrous first performance of Rachmaninov’s First Symphony has cast a long shadow over the work

Plus: a Traviata intoxicated by modernity and swimming in bacteria

Plus: to call Notes from Underground an artistic catastrophe would be to praise it too highly

Compared to The Best of Me, Northern Soul may be a masterpiece - which is not saying much

No one does style, exuberance and razmatazz like the Parisians (and the Qataris)

The EBU’s Premier League is upon us again, the pain of relegation ever-present as my team battles it out in…

Tigran Petrosian seized the world championship from Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963, defended the title against Boris Spassky in 1966 and…

White to play. This is from Petrosian-Rosetto, Portoroz 1958. White’s knight is threatened and appears to lack a safe escape…

In Competition No. 2869 you were invited to submit a poem on any theme as it might have been written…

Nine unclued lights each contain a different 20 from the same source. The title suggests a further such 20. Elsewhere,…

The END (19) of Rameau, a great COMPOSER (1A) of OPERAS (6) and for the CLAVECIN (1D), occurred in PARIS…