First, let’s list the obscenities, of which there have been so many (not including, of course, the Parisian atrocities themselves).…

I have a modest proposal to help combat the appeal to ordinary or ‘moderate’ Muslims, especially the young, of what…

Behind Free Trade Agreements lies hidden agenda

Earlier in the week I’d been in London, Oxford, Dublin and Brussels for a series of meetings and speaking commitments.…

Our best defence against jihadism? Abbott Until those acts of appallingly primitive barbarism in Paris, the events surrounding Prince Charles’…

In the wake of Paris, the United Nation’s corrupt moralising is even more disgusting than normal

Should Australian conservative Liberals simply lie back and think of Wentworth?

Hold the front page - the GG’s just resigned

The legendary ‘Paris of the East’ became the ‘last chance saloon’ for Jews fleeing the Holocaust, many of whom ended up in Australia

...and the struggle facing Europe

The aftermath of the Paris terror attacks is looking ominously good for the Front National

And his inability to state his true beliefs defines his leadership of the Labour party

The attack on the Stade de France – and the Wembley friendly that followed – reminded us of sport’s true glory and beauty

Isis bombs have exiled Canon Andrew White to Hampshire, but he's itching to get back to the Middle East

How a dyslexic man with no legal knowledge ended up defending himself on a charge of attempted murder

There is a huge industry with a vested interest in keeping people’s anxiety levels high

It’s still possible to enjoy Naples, Pompeii and Florence like a 17th-century aristocrat

For a country to tolerate Britain’s level of immigration with no far-right backlash is nothing short of extraordinary

Home After the killings in Paris, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that seven terrorist attacks on Britain had been…

Plus: three generations of remembrance; and the Ottawa bar that always features on my tour schedule

Plus: Cynthia Payne’s demographic; how armed are British police?; and double-decker trains

The ancients were so used to constant death and disaster they grew worried when things went too well

From ‘The Example of France’, The Spectator, 20 November 1915: France is an example to the world and to posterity…

Plus: whom the young resent, Judy Garland, the philistinism of Ken Livingstone, boarding school ‘extras’

Determined to avoid repeating the mistakes of George W. Bush, he is making mistakes of his own that will have terrible consequences for decades to come

The Paris atrocities, BBC rolling news, the right to criticise Islam, President Rouhani’s French dinner

They don’t do humour, the Stepford Students. So I’d give it to them straight

Plus: Is Dublin overheating again?

Among regular reviewers choosing their favourite books are Craig Raine, Graham Robb, Hilary Spurling, Nicky Haslam, David Crane, Frances Wilson and Matthew Parris

Peter Hennessy and James Jinks disclose facts about the Royal Navy Submarine Service that might once have landed them in the dock

William Vaughan’s biography shows how the idealistic painter of Arcadia became an established artist with a strong commercial sense

Coventry was Hitler’s test case for a new kind of war — one of total destruction — and Frederick Taylor’s book makes for painful reading

Ursula Buchan’s choice of gardening books: Paradise and Plenty, The Book of Pears, Grow for Flavour, 365 Days of Colour in Your Garden, Oxford College Gardens, and Norwegian Wood

According to Michael Jago’s The Best Prime Minister We Never Had, the gifted, intellectual Butler effectively sabotaged his own career in the ‘stupid’ party

Simpson’s slender volume of nine short stories focuses rigorously on middle-aged women — in the ‘August’ years of life

A sumptuous volume accompanies the Hergé exhibition at Somerset House (until 31 January 2016) celebrating the intrepid young reporter who never seems to file a story

The best of this year’s stocking-fillers are historically inclined —and surprisingly enjoyable and informative

When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow — the novel that no one dared publish — looks set to become a comic classic

Sax Rohmer’s lurid novels thrilled Edwardian Britain with their opium dens, thugees and moustachioed super-villain

Ruskin dismissed her early photographs as untrue. But the same could be said of any picture, says Martin Gayford

Her reputation has been in the doldrums for too long, undermined by ubiquity, then neglect. Djanogly Gallery's new show hopes to set the record straight

The rituals that followed the death of a French king included the complete dismembering of the body, as this new exhibition at Versailles shows

This small Whitworth Gallery show of works by Gillian Ayres, Bryan Wynter and Roger Hilton is a good start

Heatherwick's designs might work for tax-avoiding corporations and states built on slave labour, but they don't work for 21st-century London

Craftsmanship can be dangerous for composers. It undermines Mendelssohn's claim to greatness. And it's become the curse of modern classical music

Plus: a fruitfully refined return of Scottish Ballet's Elsa Canasta by Javier de Frutos at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre

My Nazi Legacy follows two men across Europe, both sons of prominent Nazis, one of whom tries to confront his father’s crimes, the other who denies anything ever happened

And his Terrence Rattigan double bill, also at the Garrick Theatre, is also worth shelving out for

Ignore this Royal Opera House world premiere. Save your money. And invest it instead in a lively new work, Biedermann and the Arsonists, at the Lilian Baylis Studio

Plus: the tragic tale of Jim Ellis, the wannabe crooner who was ensnared in a media construct more exploitative than any conjured up by Simon Cowell

Plus: the experiences of three generations of immigrant women. How settled do they feel?

The first performance of King Lear took place in 1606 barely three years after James IV of Scotland had inherited…

See ya in court, suckers

I encountered a single inoffensive pothole between Roscoff and Brignoles — around about the time Tennessee Williams finally lost his virginity

My first words to my Aussie airbnb customers were: ‘It is really really important that you do not get on a bus.’

It may be quintessentially English but John Christie’s opera festival was the creation of Germanic immigrants

The insects are quiet. What are they waiting for?

Bravissimo! The Italians have won gold yet again at the European Champions Cup. The event was launched in 2002, and…

It is said that more books have been written about chess than about any other game, sport or pastime. I…

Black to play. This is from Sursock–Larsen, Siegen 1970. How can Black win material? Answers to me at The Spectator…

In Competition No. 2924 you were invited to submit a ‘love scene’ from a novel that dampens rather than boosts…

The title suggests a pair of unclued lights which identify the common feature of the others. Solvers must shade the…

The quotation was ‘IS THIS A [DAGGER] WHICH I SEE BEFORE ME’ (1/44) (Macbeth).18, 22, 2, 27, 29 and 30D…

Enlightenment values have proved to be thin gruel next to the heady cocktail of anti-western ideology and a brutally literal interpretation of the Quran

Butterfield’s Law: for something to be called truly innovative, it must markedly change human behaviour

Plus: How to avoid offending people you don’t recognise during Christmas party season

The puritanical strain of their Catholicism has helped the Irish endure austery for far longer than the UK

A century ago this currently modish phrase had an entirely different meaning