In the digital age, weekly print magazines are not supposed to break stories, especially before the actual events have taken…

I wonder if you have noticed that the public response here and overseas to the current Middle Eastern crisis has…

Forget about a double dissolution. Tony Abbott knows it would not only help Clive Palmer. It would help Billy Shorten…

Australia is a long way from the US. I left Washington on 4 July of all dates for Melbourne, there…

Most of my dealings with the mafia — to the best of my knowledge — have been pleasant ones. Visiting…

Our own Robert Dickerson, now aged 90, will go down as one of the world’s leading painters

Why should tax payers have subsidised the Soccer World Cup in Brazil?

Go bush young man! Remote towns are more relaxed and comfortable than the inner cities

The PM doesn’t want the new women in his cabinet to do anything but look nice

But there is still a quiet minority for whom this is all very difficult

The anti-Semitic West almost seems to want Israelis to suffer

As long as Gaza feels ignored, isolated and abandoned, Hamas will continue to draw support

A story that has become the stuff of legend in Kenya

The lust that dare not speak its name

After 23 years, The Spectator’s brilliant and much-loved arts editor is leaving

A playful city, and above all, a writer’s city.

Demoting Michael Gove meant putting party before pupils.

Home In a ministerial reshuffle, William Hague, who promised to leave Parliament at the election, was made Leader of the…

I’ve written a comedy about Iraq. Theatre producers please form an orderly queue

Fomenting revolution since 411 BC

They can’t play cricket. And some of them aren't very good in bed

Plus: was T.S. Eliot the first poet of Britishness?

If the Tories win the election, the reshuffle gamble will have paid off

Cameron has punished the ministers who were brave and active, and target-bombed his party’s natural supporters

This moronic stuffed simian is being used to instill PC propaganda in children’s tender minds

Frontline paramedic staff are leaving their jobs in droves

On the edge of the desert, the drugs began to take hold

Plus: good and bad encounters with the public sector

A review of Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter, by Richard Barrios, whose commitment to musical cinema you can’t knock, but whose prose style you should

A review of Margot Asquith’s Great War Diary, 1914–1916: The View from Downing Street, edited by Michael and Eleanor Brock. As you’d expect, the cast of characters is worthy of a Shakespearian history play

A review of A Dog’s Life, by Michael Holroyd. This thinly veiled portrait of Holroyd's family is more an exercise in self-chastisement than vanity

A review of World Without End: The Global Empire of Philip II, by Hugh Thomas. This history of the Spanish Empire seems more interested in the conquerors than the conquered but still makes its argument well

A review of Cornwall, by Peter Beacham and Nikolaus Pevsner. Uniting two classic guides by Pevsner and John Betjeman, Beacham has left no fernbanked lane or secret drive unexplored

A review of Prisoners, Lovers and Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to al-Qa’eda, by Kristie Macrakis. The ancients hid their intel in hares' bellies; today, jihadis use porn

A review of The Man Who Was Norris: The life of Gerald Hamilton, by Tom Cullen. The great thing about this book is that Cullen rarely makes the mistake of taking Hamilton (once described as ‘the wickedest man in Europe’) at his own word

A review of Subtly Worded, by Teffi. Her remarkable short stories, full of characters that teeter on the edge of an abyss, deserve to be better known

The thesis of this book is that there is something wrong with politics in Australia. Bryant is right, but not…

Vermeers, Rembrandts and Holbeins are among the star attractions in The Hague’s newly refurbished Mauritshaus

Baroque scholar Michael Marissen thinks so, but Damian Thompson doesn’t buy it

Plus: the Royal Academy’s Radical Geometry show offers a bit of Op, a bit of clever interior design and a bit of Blue Peter

Olivia Cole attempts to get the one part Princeton professor, two parts ageing rocker, to dish on his tricks

The musical basics of The Jacobin and Orfeo ed Euridice are worth your while

Plus: a new play at the Bush about religious extremism that could have been a popular hit if it had tacked more towards the middle ground

Finding Vivian Maier does not find Vivian Maier conclusively, but it still keeps you drilled to your seat

Ignore the touches of hyperbole and the feminist politicking, BBC4’s The Joy of the Guitar Riff rescued Friday night TV

Plus: five short essays on Scottishness, full of detail and absurdity, by A.L Kennedy

Since spring this year, art venues across Scotland have been dedicating themselves to a gigantic project called Generation. Involving more…

As a young man, I was never warned that when I was old my heart would still break regularly

And I know I'm not going to feel this good again for a while

The thin red line that costs you a packet

Yet archbishops are lining up to support Lord Falconer's bill

It was a wonderful rite of passage for her entire class

The recent Open European Championship was won by Israel — but right up to the end, Monaco and England were…

I am very sorry to report the death of International Master Andrew Whiteley, a friend of mine for half a…

Black to play. This is from Litsberger-Whiteley, Harrachov 1967. This position also emanated from the Dragon Variation. What was Black’s…

In Competition No. 2856 you were invited to recruit a well-known author of your choice to give Phil Neville a…

Seven identical two-by-two squares in the completed grid must be highlighted to depict the unclued entries, each of two words.…

Initial letters of superfluous words in clues give nightingale, quail and cuckoo, specimens of AVIFAUNA (5) represented by FLUTE (43),…

I am shocked to see the Education Secretary go, but in the Prime Minister's shoes I might have done the same

The smoking ban is an example of legislation that worked by changing behaviour

He must be made to learn there is no point in yelling his lungs out

There are clubs within clubs: ours is called ‘the odd bottles’

It has nothing to do with rivers or the House of Commons