The Coalition has been right to oppose both Julia Gillard’s carbon tax and Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. But Tony…

 London Here, you can scarcely avoid the looming presence of the European Community. It seems that, every day, news arrives…

Anyone who believes Kevin Rudd has changed will believe anything. So says the great cartoonist Bill Leak, unloading during the…

 Nottingham, UK When I previewed the Ashes series in England in these pages two weeks ago I erred on the…

Gather round for my explosive Kevin Rudd revelations

Men from the Commonwealth – and they are men – are taking over the British establishment’s positions of power

The little signs of a service being pared away

An attempt to break the taboo on mortality with the aid of coffee and biscuits

What happens when talk of ‘exploratory drilling’ comes to a pretty corner of West Sussex

She’s loathed by topless German neo-feminists. But isn’t it time to cut her some slack?

The demotic decline of the most celebrated of all sports programmes

There are some, I know, who for whom Normandy means the three Cs — cider, cream and calvados. But if,…

According to popular wisdom on the left — and even among some in the Conservative party — this ought to have been…

Home Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, put into ‘special measures’ 11 hospitals among the 14 with the worst death rates…

Next time I’m in a sauna I’m going to say: ‘It’s like a school sports hall on prize day in…

Running scared Three participants were gored at the Pamplona bull run. The event has reputation for danger, but how risky…

Wild weather Sir: Weather and climate science is not an emotional or political issue — even though emotions and politics run…

No one seems to know, or is willing to say, whether the Egyptian army’s intervention in Egyptian democracy was legal…

The Prime Minister recently professed himself shocked at waste in the European Union. In particular, he was incensed by an…

Attending the funeral of Margaret Thatcher in April, the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was much impressed by the bit in…

I wonder what possessed the jury in the Trayvon Martin case to return two not guilty verdicts when they knew…

What a glorious sporting summer it has been so far. For some the highlight will have been Andy Murray at…

Topless men. What does that mean, then? I was opposite one on the tube the other day, heading north from…

Here’s a competition for you: ‘The most irritating discussion on Radio 4 in the past month.’ Answers in not more…

Conductors love telling stories, especially stories about other conductors, and every chapter of this otherwise determinedly pragmatic book begins with…

Philip Hensher says that Churchill’s engagement with the empire does not reveal him at his finest hour

Mark Mills is known for his historical and literary crime novels, including The Savage Garden, The Information Officer and House…

For Stuart Maconie fans, this book might sound as if it’ll be his masterpiece. In his earlier memoirs and travelogues,…

‘Value and worth in any of the arts has always been about timing,’ writes British director Nicolas Roeg at the…

During the civil war, the Puritan iconoclast William Dowsing recorded with satisfaction his destructive visit in 1644 to the parish…

This year marks the fourth Granta ‘Best of Young British novelists’, begun in 1983, but it is the first time…

Ruby Wax, who is best known as a comedian, dedicates this book ‘to my mind, which at one point left…

The esteemed literary critic, serial academic and one-time Marxist firebrand Terry Eagleton is, at 70, still producing books at an…

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was determined to get the measure of Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, and of Britain’s chances…

Here is how you make a conspiracy theory: take a couple of facts, stir in a few assumptions, then add…

‘Consider, too, the world’s fisheries.’ This line more or less sums up the tone of Destroying the Joint: Why Women…

Michael Prodger finds that new technology is transforming how we experience art – in galleries, on computers and on smartphones too

The Ladykillers is back. Sean Foley’s adaptation of the classic Ealing comedy introduces us to a crew of villains who…

This exhibition was dreamt up by David Boyd Haycock, a freelance writer and curator, following the success of a book…

There are no two ways about it: Wagner’s Ring cycle, the biggest challenge that any opera company can face, has…

Wadjda is the first feature-length film to come out of Saudi Arabia, and was shot by the country’s first female…

I sincerely hope you’re not watching television. With the glorious summer sun we’re having, you should be having picnics and…

It had begun to look as if Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime had been taken over by the zealous publicity-hungry…

Shaftesbury Avenue might not be traditional bear-hunting territory, but young adventure-seekers would be well advised to beat a path this…

I am about to leave for karate camp in Thun, Switzerland, four days of double sessions lasting one hour and…

We were watching Top Gear. I was sitting on a wobbly fold-up chair at a rickety garden table in a…

You know you’re in bad shape when you need to make a list before you go to the GP. Admittedly,…

The government has done a puzzling U-turn over its plan to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. It had seemed determined…

Clive Cox, once a conditional jockey in Lambourn, fell at the first fence one year in the Grand National. ‘Mind…

There was a particularly juicy deal during the recent European Open Mixed Teams in Ostend, which led to many pairs…

Although he has never won the World Championship, Vassily Ivanchuk is the scourge of the world’s elite. In his day…

White to play. This position is from Ivanchuk-Kramnik, Moscow Blitz 2007. What is the most accurate way for White to…

In Competition 2806 you were invited to submit alternative endings for well-known novels or poems.   A Farewell to Arms,…

The nine unclued lights (including two of two words) form three groups of three: two of the three groups each…

The full quotation was ‘Mother, GIVE ME THE SUN’ (14/7) from Ghosts by HENRIK IBSEN (29/1D). Remaining unclued lights give…

‘Another opening, another show,’ sang five-year-old Charlie on his way to school this morning — and then proceeded to belt…

Now that most taxi drivers use satnavs, should ‘the Knowledge’ be abolished? Shouldn’t we ditch the requirement that all London…

Q. Regarding the writing of ‘no presents’ on an invitation (Dear Mary, 6 July), my own experience is that many…

Which is the greatest novel in the English language? Let us review the candidates: Clarissa, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, The…

‘Planes don’t run off batteries,’ declared my husband, his finger unerringly on the pulse of technology as ever. I had…