‘We will not be deterred in our efforts to get on to that site and retrieve the bodies of Australians…

The success of Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop in handling the aftermath of the ghastly events in Ukraine has been…

You lookin’ for Joe?’ asked the road-worker, probably one of Joe’s constituents, as I parked and cast around for the…

Like Ray Charles and nearly as short-sighted, a couple of years ago I moved to the outskirts of town. I’m…

Hugo Weaving is scarily good in Sydney Theatre Company’s innovative reworking of Macbeth

It’s time to tap into our rich comic-book heritage and make some movies, starting with The Southern Squadron

Conservative revisionists and Liberal partisans can’t accept that Sir Robert Menzies was an empire man

Once again, Bill Shorten lets down the true believers

Individualism is dead: we have succumbed to the lure of the crowd

This lynch-mob mentality has been building for years

My country has worked hard to come to terms with the second world war. That seems to have meant ignoring the first

Society's anxiety about online porn has been so focused on the young that its impact on the older generation has gone largely unnoticed

Some of the most important creative steps forward begin simply as misunderstandings

A toxic mixture of cost-cutting and ideology seems to have put a limit on tea and sympathy

This week's other great historical anniversary: the Hanoverian accession

At the home of this year's Ryder Cup, each green is a riddle

Other countries manage to implement sensible systems without being rebuked by the EU. It's time we learnt from them

Home Britain is to halve to three months the time that EU migrants without realistic job prospects can claim benefits,…

Sir Richard Evans should know that many great teachers are natural talents

Plus: Notable restaurant bills, and the argument over migrants and money

Either you must dominate completely, the emperor found, or give people their freedom. And we can only afford the second option

Nepotism rules Sir: Julie Burchill’s piece ‘Born to be famous’ (26 July) was very strong and as, like her, I’m…

Once the Scottish referendum is over, the party leaders face a battle for which none seems fully prepared

Plus: Remembering Philip Jebb

Another week of witless moral relativism at its most deluding

Clare’s poetry is strange, intense, wonderfully sensuous – and magical

Plus: What should be in bankers’ version of the Hippocratic Oath?

A review of Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900-1941, by John C.G. Röhl, translated by Sheila de Bellaigue and Roy Bridge. The anachro­nistic, racist and militaristic German monarch hastened his country’s self-destruction

A review of Empty Mansions, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr, a materialistic, yet hypnotic bestseller about W.A. Clark, one of the most ruth­less accumulators of wealth in American history

A review of Dusty: An Intimate Portrait, by Karen Bartlett. The sexually repressed and mentally unstable singer’s rise to stardom was as meteoric as her fall

A review of The Birdcage, by Clive Aslet. This Ripping Yarns version of British trench warfare makes for an entertaining – if not entirely serious - read

A review of Britannia and the Bear, by Victor Madeira. This survey of interwar Soviet spying offers many lessons on how we deal with Putin’s Russia

Peggy Angus: Designer, Teacher, Painter, by James Russell. Angus’s playful, naïve designs were rich and strange, as were her politics

A review of four very readable new thrillers: Research by Philip Kerr, Remember Me This Way by Sabine Durrant, The Final Silence by Stuart Neville and Cobra by Deon Meyer.

A review of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream, by Dan Washburn. A book about money, power and whim that tells you everything you need to know about modern China

A review of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel. It’s impressive that such a brilliant myth emerges from such unspectacular ingredients

Growing up is hard enough at any time; coping with additional cross-currents of race and religion is a whole new…

The ambitious new series, Home Front, will run from 2014 and 2018, creating ‘a patchwork of impressionistic stories from the war’

The Tate’s new show of Brobdingnagian shop signs, evocative stitchery, glorious figureheads from ships and collaged pictures is both timely and hideously overdue

Some of my most enjoyable evenings, when I reviewed opera weekly for The Spectator, were spent at the Royal College…

Plus: a preview of two strongly contrasting works by John Tavener that will premiere at the Proms

But the music and singing win out in Theater Freiburg’s new production

Plus: a summer festival offering from the Arcola that, despite being aimed at the lumpen trustafariat, high on MDMA, is pretty good

How much you enjoy Michel Gondry’s film all depends on your tolerance for visual whimsy

Plus: Andrew Graham-Dixon uncovers a 3,000-year-old depiction of the Tiger Mother in The Art of China

Plus: a Radio 2 music drama that gets lost in translation moving to Radio 4

An English Heritage exhibition atop Wellington Arch explores six London memorials

I'd hate to leave good old Helvetia. But if things keep on like this, I'll do it with a smile on my face

All the old jokes are there. But he seems kinder and milder – even when heckled

I answer most questions far too frankly. You know that. But ask me if I floss...

Self-deprecation can work for a politician. But only one whose faults are charming

The brilliant American bridge writer and former world champion Eddie Kantar once overheard two wives in his bridge class arguing…

As I write, young Jonathan Hawkins has stormed into the lead in the British Championship in Aberystwyth with the tremendous…

White to play. This position is from Rogers-Milos, Manila Olympiad 1992. White is a mass of material down but the…

In Competition No. 2858 you were invited to imagine that a well-known figure from 20th-century history was a secret poet…

The unclued lights are of a specific kind.   Across   11    Top flier backs help for sloth (6)…

The unclued lights are the titles of the six movements of Nuits d’Eté (Summer Nights in translation) by Hector Berlioz:…

'Jemima, Otis and Cooper,' said the walkie-talkie, 'it's time for you to go to bed'

In the age of the Kindle, holiday reading is a simpler question. But there’s a new packing dilemma in its place

Plus: Avoiding kisses from visitors, and resolving a family double-booking

Via a half-bottle of Yquem '99

Newspapers shouldn't let politicians be the only people with honorifics