This was the week when the stark contrast between the relative talents of the top three individuals in the federal…

It was more a rally of old hands recalling the glory days than a standard book launch. The venue was…

By the time the audience hear Lateline’s newly remixed opening song begin to play on Monday night, the show has…

Forget the Islamic State – the real threat comes from Iran

A current court case in Melbourne explores a crime as old as art itself

There can be only one explanation why the Victorian government would ask Canberra to help it out – cowardice

Efforts to either replicate or replace Jeremy Clarkson are bound to fail. And I should know.

Political tips for four-year olds

If a jobs boom also creates demand for immigrants, it is apparently too embarrassing to mention

If Britain really does have a youth mental health crisis, it’s not hard to see why

The ‘rigorous review’ for DFID of private education in poor countries is anything but

Church of England recruitment ads are full of leftism and management speak. Here’s what I’d prefer

In the battle against Isis, two separate spheres of influence are emerging

Well, you could set it an obstacle course. Or serve it up with shallots

A city of dark doorways and guilty secrets, Vienna is beautiful, romantic, but never nice

Plus: The meaning of Benjamin Netanyahu’s election triumph

Home In a Budget intended to have ‘no gimmicks, no giveaways’, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, offered pensioners…

Plus: Escapes to the Highlands; Liberal Democrat spring conference

Plus: petitions to rival Jeremy Clarkson’s; racial discrimination cases; and a cat comparison

A deliciously pagan gesture from St John’s Waterloo

From ‘Unofficial News’, The Spectator, 13 March 1915: The exclusion of war correspondents from the firing line has greatly reduced the…

White Ribbon Sir: Tanveer Ahmed wrote an article in The Spectator Australia (14 March) about the various ramifications of the…

Wednesday’s performance was an example of just how crucial George Osborne’s skill at horse-trading could be to the Conservatives’ future

If you transgress any of a vast array of PC shibboleths, fury will rain down on you

The views expressed by anti-Islamists are hateful towards all Muslims, and to those of us who don’t share their own antipathy

Labour's commitment to the Union is as shallow as the Tories' – which, it is now clear, is saying something

Plus: Greece, Germany and forgiveness; and bankers in need of a little more hellfire

A review of Nightwalking by Matthew Beaumont examines how London at night provided inspiration for some of our greatest classics

In the Family Way by Jane Robinson comprises over 100 heartbreaking personal accounts of illegitimacy in the 20th century

Jill Leovy, author of Ghettoside, embedded herself for two years with the only effective police section on LA’s killing streets

Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed makes for grim but gripping reading

Reading accounts of the New Labour years in Giles Radice’s Odd Couples is rather like touring an abattoir before the cleaners have been in

The ornithologist Mark Cocker is full of admiration for Nick Davies’s Cuckoo — as gripping as any detective story

Jonathan Beckman takes pleasure in Tom McCarthy’s agile thinking, even if Satin Island’s hero is just a tongue-tied initial

Bright bazaars and dark family secrets are temptingly on offer in Aatish Taseer’s The Way Things Were,

Andy Miller finds Johnny Rogan’s biography scrupulously fair,though Ray Davies himself remains an enigma

A review of a biography of Seneca by Emily Wilson shows the Roman empire at its rotten best

It’s all to do with sperm motility in Polly Samson’s The Kindness. You can see it coming, as the actress said to the bishop

What prompted Patrick Gale’s great-grandfather to abandon his English family and up sticks suddenly to Canada? A Place Called Winter provides a convincing (fictional)answer

A review of The Vitamin Complex by Catherine Price points out our basic ignorance about some of the body’s essential nutrients

A review of Naturalists in Paradise by John Hemming describes how the naturalist Russell Wallace helped solve the problem of the origin of the species

Mary Kenny is shocked that the Irish Times, once champion of the British empire, now feels it has to apologise for any Irishman who fought in the Great War

The cult series may have looked great but, as the final season draws to a close, was there really anything to it?

Plus: The Cutting of the Cloth, a new play by Michael Hastings at the Southwark Playhouse that’s untouched by brilliance

The cool, rich, melancholy paintings of this West Coast American hover seductively between realism and abstraction

Slashings in the woods one minute, dancing pink forklifts the next - the film’s tone is all over the place

The William Forsythe, however, makes up for the other two works. Plus there’s a new look to the Northern Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet

The Royal Academy’s Rake’s Progress wins hands down in the war against idle pleasures

Plus: Gotham, a new-ish American drama from Channel 5 that recalls The Godfather, and Channel 4 takes another swipe at Ukip in Britain's Racist Election

Plus: is Radio 3’s Private Passions dumbing down to be more accessible? And why has The Archers become so absurdly false?

The rhymes are inept, the lyrics pretentious and the music unbearable, declares Lloyd Evans

In her memoir Must You Go?, Antonia Fraser records an exchange between her husband Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett in…

The myths about the Fifties and the lost world of womanhood

Where I managed to parier (bet) 50 euros gagnant (to win) on Hercules Noir

Darcy had obviously been listening to every word I said

After all, how often does a vicar buy you a drink, especially a female one?

Coneygree’s victory in the Betfred Gold Cup was the best victory ever in the history of horse-racing

You either love rubber bridge or you hate it. Personally I love it: I love the freedom it gives you…

Last week in a perceptive piece for the Times, Will Pavia animadverted upon the fact that the USA appears to…

White to play. This is from Pillsbury-Tarrasch, Hastings 1895. White has only one move to bring his kingside attack to…

In Competition No. 2889 you were invited to submit an extract from an imaginary novel written from the perspective of…

The unclued lights are of a kind; the ones Across are one theme, and those Down (one of two words)…

The unclued Down lights can be abbreviated as MM, and the unclued Across lights as CC. Together as MMCC, they…

The questions my father asked about meritocracy still don’t have good answers

Plus: England, the Six Nations entertainers

Plus: tree-chopping etiquette; and using a radio to make your husband belt up

The service is kindly and informal; the food is superb

This amiable man had an adventurous vocabulary