Five weeks ago, amid the tempestuous climes of mid-January, we threw down the gauntlet for our Prime Minister to prove…

This is the last reshuffle before the election, we promise. No more resignations, no more scandals, no more inter-party warfare.…

The distinguished Australian historian John Hirst has sadly died at age 73. Those who knew him at La Trobe University…

Greed prepares to replace fear at the Stock Exchange

Or ‘How Human Rights have become Legal Wrongs’

Conservatives should stop holding their noses at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency

When it comes to tackling union corruption, Bill Shorten should take a leaf out of the Kennedy playbook

Waving their magic wand, a tenacious group of activists are manipulating our school children

This time he’s taking on Turkey’s President Erdogan, a ruler as ruthless as he is

Sixteen years ago I wrote Donald Trump’s inaugural address, as a joke. It’s not a joke any more

Super-rich parents love the prestige they bring. The teachers who work for them are much less enthusiastic

The average Trump voter doesn’t like Congress, but would hate an expensive international parliament even more

I used to scorn them. Now I just feel sorry for the poor things

It’s not church doctrine on marriage that needs to change. It’s almost everything else

The province where I grew up is just one scene from a nature documentary after another

Generous welfare policies and open borders inevitably end in a nasty collision

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, spent time in Brussels before a meeting of the European Council to see what…

Also in Amol Rajan’s diary: the future of news is free; the indy100 lives on; the Indy’s indomitable spirit; let’s call it Bombay

Also in our Barometer column: British creationists; alcohol levels in dead drivers; adults living with their parents

Elagabalus wouldn’t have palmed you off with a trip to a winery – unless it was part of a bigger joke

From ‘War the leveller’, The Spectator, 12 February 1916: Strange as it may appear to the pacificist, war has levelled up,…

Inebriated Sir: Dr Tanveer Ahmed’s intemperate rush to make refugee advocates the main culprit for the plight of people in…

Keeping the Tories together after an EU referendum was once seen as a ‘good’ problem for the party. Not any more...

Also in The Spectator’s Notes: Panorama, the ‘remain’ campaign, Prince William’s speech

Of all the things that strike men when they pass 50, love for the Russian president is the strangest

It’s not that their case is similarly weak. It’s the anger, resentment and obsession that put me off

Once, every glance, every experience, gave you an aftertaste of guilt. In fairness, most still do

Also in Any Other Business: Central bankers really are getting shorter; keeping power plants alive

We should be more down-to-earth about the landscape and less beguiled by the picturesque, according to Anna Pavord

Clare Morrall’s dystopian vision of the future sees an isolated community — bombarded by drones and directives — barely surviving Birmingham’s flood waters

A bit of silly affectation is part of growing up — and it’s less pernicious than weary cynicism, according to Dan Fox

Rosa Prince gives us Corbyn’s modest, decent past but shies away from speculating about a mind-boggling future

The peculiarly British tendency to glorify disaster certainly doesn’t stem from guilt about the empire, as Stephanie Barczewski insists

‘Once upon a time’ — as Graham Swift’s novel opens — on Mothering Sunday 1924, a powerful and moving story was about to unfold

Having flattened Germany in the second world war, the Allies set about rebuilding it — with the help of Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell and Stephen Spender, according to Lara Feigel

The celebrated novelist moves from New York to Italy, undergoes a ‘trial by fire’ — or linguistic odyssey — and finally produces (in Italian) a passionate account of the experience

Meg Rosoff’s unhappy hero, adrift in the city, eventually finds a purpose — and possibly a partner— in life thanks mainly to his two dogs

In his brilliant (and slightly bonkers) memoir Being a Beast, Foster explains how a deep understanding of wild animals has helped him thrive as a human being

The Berlin Film Festival used to be a place that shunned the mainstream and went instead for the tough and controversial. Today it’s become a star-studded mega-machine

This small, captivating show at Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh is made up of ten melancholic paintings of great textural richness

The golden boy is weedy with the dresses - swish, swish - and laughable with the sex. And Mark-Anthony Turnage’s score is unmemorable and prescriptive

Where’s the charm and tenderness in Rossini’s comedy? And why on earth does David Pountney think it’s got anything to do with Downton Abbey?

Plus: anyone wanting a memorably gruesome night should buy a ticket to David Lindsay-Abaire’s The End of Longing at Hampstead Theatre

A pitiless, hatchet-faced film about the care industry that, in its final scenes, offers a grim reward for the foregoing 90 minutes

Plus: a new series of Ramblings with Clare Balding and two competitions seeking to encourage young people to listen instead of watch

The Scorsese tropes flow thick and fast: drugs, beatings, voiceovers. Still, he manages to make you admire the lurid excess of the Seventies, which is quite an achievement

Conde Nast was the publisher of Vogue Australia in 1965. That was the year I started with Vogue but, much…

There would be no austerity there if the fools stopped paying the thieves

I was desperate to ask Maurice, my guide, how many people he’d killed but his quiet modesty stopped me

My upstairs neighbours have unleashed a monster: I am considering a move to Montana

It was hairy at times but the excitement of those early days is something those involved will never forget

Why Neil King abandoned Newmarket for the Marlborough Downs

Pierre Zimmermann, Monaco’s uber-sponsor, has put another unmissable, thrilling tournament in the calendar. The first European Winter Games gave those…

The 14th Tradewise tournament at Gibraltar ended in a triumph for the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Naka, as he is…

White to play. This position is from Anna Muzychuk-Salem, Gibraltar Masters 2016. How did White conjure up a decisive material…

In Competition No. 2935 you were invited to submit a Valentine’s triolet. A famous example of the triolet is Frances…

In the clues, the 9 stars represent omitted words (one of which is a dialect variant of another). Those 9…

Corrections of misprints give A GRECIAN URN. The POET (23) reporting its message (perimeter + 4 30) is KEATS (42). First…

She flaunts her membership of the liberal intelligentsia by bashing Britain

Plus the awful guff written about Leicester City and what Sergio ­Parisse must not get away with

Plus: The American Way of Eating

I like my Italian food savage, not polite; still, this is a good restaurant that couldn’t exist anywhere else

Vocal fry is a feminine characteristic by a proportion of two to one