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The Spectator

22 March 2014 Aus

Cash for class

What money can buy in the modern British establishment

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Australia

Leading article Australia

The Bolt crucible

Yes to free speech, no to racism. It should be a pretty simple formula but, of course, the devil is…

Australian Columnists

Australian Notes

Australian notes

Cheers all round for Andrew Bolt who extracted an apology, however grudging, from the ABC for broadcasting false and defamatory…

Brown Study

Brown study

The next step has been taken in Victorian barristers’ consideration of changing their titles from the rather anodyne Senior Counsel…

Diary Australia

Diary

I don’t normally put a great deal of thought into my tweets. Chatting idly on Twitter one night I had…

Australian Features

Features Australia

The devilish problem of Tasmania

Trace the rot in the island state to Canberra’s interventionism in the early 1980s

Australian Viewpoint

On the contrary

I was on the edge of a rather hairy deadline when disaster struck. Tired of being cooped up in an…

Features Australia

Under the house with Hergé

Could my signed copy of a famous adventure comic book be worth a king’s ransom?

Features Australia

Stop ringing me!

How does Australia benefit from foreign call centres using Australia as a source of income totalling billions?

Features

Features

Cash for class

Money isn't quite everything. But it's getting there

Features

Putin’s winning hand

For all the anti-Russian rhetoric, we've been exposed as posturing, weak and divided

Features

Hard times for Hamas

With Egypt closing the tunnels, its economy is in trouble

Features

The joy of less sex

I used to think nothing would ever be more important. I was wrong

Features

How was it for you?

Why are customer satisfaction surveys always for the wrong thing?

Features

The wrong kind of granny

Working-class people do grandparenting right. Middle-class ones, increasingly, don't

Features

Investment: Confessions of a share tipper

The confessions of a newspaper stock tipster

Features

Investment: Ageing bull

Share prices have had a long rise, yes – but not an exceptionally steep one

Features

Investment: Be tech savvy

Technology investing has come a long way since the dotcom bust

Marte Armitage's ‘Cobweb’ in turquoise and taupe, available at Hamilton Weston

Notes on...

Notes on… Wallpaper

These hand-printed patterns aren't just charming or even lovely – they're magical

The Week

Leading article

Pensions revolution

Plus: How the press is staying free

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week

Home In the Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the economy was working but the job…

Diary

Diary

Plus: Working with Donald Whately, and why I love my drummer

Barometer

Barometer

Plus: The cheapest countries for childcare, and the state of Britain's squirrels

Ancient and modern

Good teachers

Classical education advice appears to accord with the evidence

Letters

Letters

That’s not entertainment Sir: How very disappointing — and quite shocking — to see The Spectator Australia (15 February) featuring…

Columnists

World Politics

Osborne sticks to his guns

Success for the Chancellor fuels the Tories' in-house conspiracy theorists

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

Plus: R.S. Surtees, and the first person to give Archduke Franz Ferdinand both barrels

Rod Liddle

Damn. I should have seized my chance to appear on BBC3

I had good reasons for turning down BBC3's Free Speech. But now I really wish I hadn't

Matthew Parris

Why it’s right to criticise the newly dead

The convention to speak only good of the dead should not be applied to politicians

Hugo Rifkind

Must every quality TV show begin with a young woman’s corpse?

Must every series begin with the naked, lifeless body of a young woman?

The Speculator

Man vs machine

The secrets of battling betting algorithms

Books

Lead book review

‘Tell it not in the future’

A review of Michael Scott’s Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World. It's a fascinating mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped up in unfortunate academic jargon

Books

Who knows wins

A review of Chapman Pincher’s Dangerous to Know. At 100, the Daily Express's veteran spycatcher isn't giving up his obsessions – but he still got most of the big stories right

Books

In Fleet Street’s fast lane

A review of Mary Kenny’s Something of Myself and Others. Life lived to the hilt

Books

Round and round the garden, again

A review of Sarah Raven’s Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst: The Creation of a Garden. Haven't we had enough cuttings from Vita Sackville-West by now?

Books

Those little grey cells in operation

A review of Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery. Cutting people’s heads open, it turns out, really does your head in

Books

The mask of truth

junkie hard place
A review of Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World. This novel's artspeak may be a headache but the tenderness and generosity of the storytelling is unbeatable.

Books

Small wars in academe

A review of John Carey’s The Unexpected Professor. This reader and reformer was the perfect don for his time – which, of course, meant hating dons

Books

In deep water

A review of Boyhood Island, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. Childhood mundanities are made universal in the Norwegian author’s account of his childhood

'Marcia painting her self-portrait’; detail from Boccaccio’s On Famous Women (1402)

Books

They do it with mirrors

A review of James Hall’s The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History. This wonderful survey has brilliant timing – but not nearly enough illustrations

Bookends

Cracking up

Every page of David Henry and Joe Henry’s biography Furious Cool carries something either appalling or amusing

Arts

Julian Mitchell with Rob Callender rehearsing ‘Another Country’

Arts feature

Old school ties

Robert Gore-Langton talks to Julian Mitchell about the painful roots of his hit play

Music

The Menuhin test

The world’s toughest violin competition is jam-packed with Asians – and this year,  not a single Brit

‘Hercules Killing Cacus’, 1588, by Hendrik Goltzius

Exhibitions

German giants

The British Museum's immaculately presented 'Germany Divided' shows the strength of its headline act. Plus two more German shows - Renaissance Impressions at the Royal Academy and Strange Beauty at the National Gallery

Fernand Léger ‘s ‘The City’, 1919

Exhibitions

Senses working overtime

As a new Venetian exhibition shows, the Cubist was a pioneer in poster design and experimental film as well as a painter

Opera

Dream team

Conductor and cast deliver near ideal performances but the staging needed more focus

Dance

The third way

The spectacle-oriented 70s dance company Pilobolus bring their mesmerising shadow play to London

Theatre

Male order

Sharmila Chauhan's The Husbands is a great idea that should have been written by a chap. But seeing I'd Rather Goya Robbed Me of My Sleep Than Some Other Arsehole is an act of charity

Will she jump? Imogen Poots as Jess, the daughter of a politician

Cinema

Height but no depth

A Long Way Down is so poorly written, so lacking in insight or sympathy, that you just want the characters to jump

Television

Brothers under the skin

CBBC’s new documentary gives the school the best PR it could ever wish for 

Radio

The lives of others

Plus: legendary interviewer Lynn Barber lets us in on her secrets

Culture notes

Lost in translation

It must have seemed a great idea to take Jeremy Deller’s aggressive look at contemporary Britain to the William Morris gallery. But it doesn't fit there

Life

High life

High life

A solo yachtsman from a family of heroes

Low life

Low life

An afternoon with my brother and his dogs

Real life

Real life

I bet she isn't alone

Long life

Long life

What really happens on foxhunts nowadays is a mystery, but it must be pretty exciting to command such enthusiasm

The turf

A Cheltenham of contrasts

The stories that kept the crowd entranced

Bridge

Bridge

A number of young Israelis are taking the International bridge world by storm. All in their twenties, their achievements so…

Chess

True Blue

The Oxford v. Cambridge Varsity Match held at the Royal Automobile Club two weeks ago ended in a draw. This…

Chess puzzle

No. 306

Black to play. This position is from Miles-Hodgson, Zaragoza 1993. Black has a powerful build-up on the kingside. How did…

Competition

Art of darkness

In Competition 2839 you were invited to submit a poem about the darker side of spring. There were references in…

Crossword

2154: Clickety click

This puzzle marks the 40 of a 33 29. 16A, 24 and 1D (four words) are three of his works.…

Crossword solution

Solution to 2151: Sources

The three theme words are CHAMBERS (12A, 16A, 40A), OXFORD (colleges) (24A, 4D, 8D), and (works by Wilkie) COLLINS (9D,…

Status anxiety

Defenders of a free press should throw in the towel

Now that Hacked Off has this lot, who could oppose it?

Spectator sport

Whisper it, but could England win the next Rugby World Cup?

Stuart Lancaster is proving to be an impressive leader. But are his replacements good enough?

Dear Mary

Dear Mary

Plus: A definitive ruling on phone etiquette

Food

Lamb rump without the prince

I have been inside his gazebo, and I know

Mind your language

Mandorla

Mobile-less with the mystery of the mandorla