Nearly a fortnight into this marathon election campaign, there are worrying signs for all of us wanting a return of…

We owe the New York Times a debt of enormous gratitude for exposing Donald Trump as the misogynist and woman…

I landed back into Canberra at the end of Budget week after a month travelling the Mediterranean with my mother,…

‘Once upon a time there was a kingdom where people of all races and nationalities got along in perfect peace…

Rabbits, hats and a poke in the eye It is bad enough that the 2016-17 Budget contained so little of…

Free speech is struggling in the battle against ‘conventional wisdom’ and ‘political correctness’

The superannuation changes are clearly retrospective

The Australian Left must learn from British Labour’s antisemitism scandal

How class warfare politics hurts the lower class

How class warfare politics hurts the lower class

The second President Clinton will be dull. That doesn’t mean she’ll be restful

A sporting Jeeves story, with apologies to P.G. Wodehouse

The country’s politics are far more complex – and less right-wing – than outsiders make out

The impulse to deride patriotism reflects the party’s distance from many core voters

These places aim to create a miniature executive class out of their small pupils

Ipanema Notebook: as the Olympics loom large and the first female president is impeached, women are sidelined everywhere

Drug-taking is less glamorous when you know how the trade really works

They are simple, and need not affect your post-opera supper

George Osborne has felt the need to concoct figures in a way that would embarrass even Gordon Brown

Plus: Boris Johnson provokes ‘Hitler’ Brexit row, Old Trafford evacuated as fake bomb is found, Ukrain wins Eurovision

Also in her Spectator diary: the great Twitter puddle fight, the glories of Peru, and power packing

Name check 306 business people signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph saying that Britain would be better off outside…

Londoners may find parts of imperial policy rather familiar

From the archive, 1916: It is hard for a man in uniform to do wrong at present

Corruption Tango Sir: David Cameron may need reminding that it takes two to tango and corruption involves the corruptor and…

And the next Conservative government is likely to campaign for Brexit

Now I have a chance to apologise for daring to suggest that any Muslim, anywhere, could ever be accused of anti-Semitism

The logic of trans bathroom rights is driving us towards unisex facilities. Which would be a great pity

When you’re the odds-on favourite with the weight of the global elite behind you, you ought to be magnanimous

Also in Any Other Business: oil prices, the remaking of Icap and the fate of the Filofax

Before the Nuremberg Trials, neither genocide nor crimes against humanity were recognised concepts. In his moving East West Street, Philippe Sands describes their origins (within his own family) and their inspiration

Witchcraft, murder and some unusually grotesque monsters are on offer — from Martin Stewart, Kenneth Oppel, Francesca Simon, Robin Stevens and others

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey sees the spread of liberal ideas as responsible for the world’s increasing riches. So how does China fit the theory?

Dante’s wife Gemma was not the shrew of legend, and may even have been the recipient of one of his most moving Canzone, according to Marco Santagata’s indispensible biography of the poet

Far from being a mere sex manual, its devious strategies for seduction are rooted in politics and spirituality, according to Wendy Doniger

Zero K, his novel of euthanasia, cryonics and eternal life on earth, looks less like science fiction by the hour

Most soldiers are addicts, according to Lukasz Kamienski: even first world war combatants were permanently high on cocaine

In a striking portrait of Elizabeth in her later years, John Guy shows that, even before the Armada, the Queen was beginning to lose her grip and her popularity

Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s delightful pastiche of Pride and Prejudice set in contemporary Cincinnati, is this summer’s undoubted blockbuster

Mount’s admirably wide-ranging essays, covering 30 years of non-fiction reviewing, will save you the trouble of reading some very weighty books

Her memoir of 1918, describing her arduous journey to the Black Sea in flight from the Bolsheviks, is both thrilling and darkly comic

In a cancer memoir with an unusually happy ending, the guitarist Wilko Johnson confounds medical opinion to survive his apparently terminal illness

Servants acted as human bed-warmers and in amateur theatricals — but were otherwise ‘just for show’, according to Patricia McCarthy’s history of those eccentric pre-famine days

But why use Important Poets as opera librettists? The results, such as in Mark Simpson's Pleasure at Opera North, are usually terrible. That said, Iain Bell's In Parenthesis for WNO somehow works

The best of postmodernism – and no, that’s not an oxymoron – should be preserved from philistine politicians, developers and architects

'I am trying to understand why otherwise good artists porduced poor late works... and how can I go against that?' Martin Gayford meets Baselitz at White Cube Bermondsey

Plus: a new exhibition at the Fine Art Society counters the notion that the story of British art was an insistent 'journey towards abstraction'

Marisol Escobar, who Warhol hailed as the 'first girl artist with glamour', died last month after decades of neglect. Claudia Massie thinks a revival is long overdue

Liam Scarlett's Frankenstein is yet another luxurious but botched dramatic ballet. To prevent another expensive cock-up, they should look to the Rambert's triple bill at Sadler's Wells

Plus: in Science Stories, Naomi Alderman claims Florence Nightingale was 'a shocking nurse', driven by ambition. And how many of you, like me, have had enough of the Archers?

Plus: a hugely impressive new Zimbabwean drama at the Arcola Theatre that takes a refreshingly balanced approach to land reclamation

Plus: BBC1's Love, Nina is stripped of the most appealing part of Nina Stibbe's memoir – the high-class gossip

Laurie Anderson's dreamy cine-poem to her rat terrier follows no linear logic – it goes where it goes, drifts where it drifts, sniffs where it sniffs

It was a big week for art auctions; Sotheby’s grossed $14.2 million over May10 & 11, their best result since…

The lurid anti-Donald propaganda from the phonies in the media is having the opposite effect

If someone was sitting astride a machine, the gym instructor kissed them and I followed suit

My thoroughbred Darcy is descended from the original Godolphin Arabian; with that heritage, no wonder she acts up

My friend’s kidnappers hadn’t heard of Brexit. ‘What is this “Breaks it”?’ they asked

Sometimes Janet teases me that this should be called the David Gold Column, as I mention his name so frequently.…

I think I hold the world record for the greatest number of chess books written (or co-written) and published. At…

White to play. This position is from Dubov-Yandemirov, Russian Team Championship, Sochi 2016. How can White exploit the unfortunate placing…

In Competition No. 2948 you were invited to step into the skin of a species of your choice and provide…

Six unclued lights are examples of ‘3/4/18’ (four words in total, ignore an apostrophe), a quotation (in ODQ) whose author’s…

The perimeter quotation is from L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, in which Leo, Marian and Ted are the main characters. First…

No sandwich, leg of ham, Flake 99, loaf of bread or tub of butter is safe from his marauding instincts

Downplaying the role of unconscious mental processes is wrong – and worse, kind of French

Plus: an unexpected invoice; visitors who fall asleep in the car

We must hope that the tweeting – if not the dieting – keeps up

Even the latest and least prescriptive edition of Fowler advises caution