Under what strange law of nature is it that the more successful a political party is, the further it slumps…

Not your usual welcome. The duty manager at New Delhi’s Taj Palace Hotel greets me on arrival. Two sari-clad and…

Following the G20, Australia finds itself in an unique and desirable position with the world’s two superpowers

Now the Right have set up their own Feminist Club, much like the Left have. Ordinary women need not apply.

Scott Morrison was wrong to pander to the baying feminazis over Julien Blanc

Scott Morrison was wrong to pander to the baying feminazis over Julien Blanc

Student unions’ ‘no platform’ policy is expanding to cover pretty much anyone whose views don’t fit prevailing groupthink

It’s a real problem, but the answer has less to do with bond-buying than with applied psychology

The full cost of the 2012 Olympic Games is still far from clear

The way they treat women is not the catch – it’s the unspoken main attraction

Today’s Republicans talk less about God and more about fighting illegal immigration

An acceptance of these occasions, surely, is a sign you’ve accepted you’re not immortal. It’s death by a thousand lasts

It’s time for those of us with an irrational fear of touchscreens to have a say

Especially those that are stopovers for long-distance drivers rather than destinations in themselves

Anyone listening to the BBC this week could be forgiven for thinking that the musician Bob Geldof had just emerged…

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Red warning lights are once again flashing on the dashboard of the global…

It’s a sort of self-fulfilling nervous tic — a phobia, almost

Plus: The figures on live animal exports, flood spending and Romanian voters in Portsmouth

Solon created a vacancy for the ancient equivalents of the Fake Sheikh

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 21 November 1914: We are glad to learn that the laudable persistence of…

Plus: Leftism is embedded in the establishment; and reasons we listen to Archbishop Welby

Unionists thought the SNP would collapse after a ‘no’ vote. They couldn’t have been more wrong

To judge from X Factor and recent Twitter storms, the nation’s mental age is four, and dropping

You trust yourself first, your family, then your clan and then, slowly and hesitantly, something bigger

Holding the ‘correct’ view on climate change is one thing, but you also have to swallow the official line on GM crops

Plus: The maker of Jaffa Cakes is sold to Turkey while Farrow & Ball heads for Hollywood

Plus choices from Jane Ridley, Marcus Berkmann, Sam Leith, Molly Guinness, Melanie McDonagh, Christopher Howse, Charlotte Moore, Philip Hensher, Lewis Jones, John Preston, Martin Gayford, Susie Dent, Ian Thomson, Piers Paul Read, Mark Mason, Bevis Hillier, Allan Mallinson, Peter Parker, James Walton, James McConnachie, William Leith, Philip Ziegler and Cressida Connolly

A review of The Impossible Exile by George Prochnik. Contemporaries sniped at his success, but for a Jewish novelist in Austria in the 1930s, the possibilities of remaining a comic figure were few

A review of Michael Fry’s A Higher World examines the long 18th century, in which the Union of England and Scotland was consolidated

A review of Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince by Lisa Hilton argues that the queen’s true greatness lay in her inactivity and stalling tactics

Marcus Berkmann’s round-up of the year’s best humorous books includes gems from Michael Frayn, Nora Ephron, QI, Peter Jones, John D. Barrow, Stephen Collins and Peanuts

In a review of Special Deluxe, not much is given away about Neil Young — except that he toured with his band in a souped-up hearse named ‘Mort’

A review of Hope by Richard Zoglin suggests that the ‘entertainer’, who lived to be 100, was a mean womaniser and neglectful father, who was never even very funny

A review of Hacker, Hoaxer Whistleblower, Spy by Gabriella Coleman penetrates the chaotic world of the mysterious non- collective that hacked the Pentagon and the government of Tunisia for starters

In a review of Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère, a one-time poet, now full-blown psychopath, emerges as one of the most controversial characters of contemporary Russia

A review of Behind the Mask by Matthew Dennison reveals that in Vita Sackville-West’s copious writings, she generally cast herself as a man

A round up of the year’s best gardening books takes in Madison Cox’s The Gardener’s Garden, George Plumptre’s The English Country-House Garden, Roy Strong’s The Laskett, Sarah Raven’s Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst, Ursula Buchan’s The Garden Anthology, Charles Dowding’s Gardening Myths and Misconceptions, Thomas J. Mickey’s America’s Romance with the English Garden and Caroline Foley’s Of Cabbages and Kings

The bestseller Le Suicide français reveals a political thinker in the Jeremy Clarkson league, says Graham Robb

Apart from Charles Wellesley’s study of the Iron Duke’s victorious portraits, a round-up of the year’s art books inlcudes Judith Zilczer’s A Way of Living, Nicola del Roscio’s The Essential Cy Twombly, David Dawson’s A Painter’s Progress, Jan Verwoert’s Wolfgang Tillmans, Joanna Cannon’s Religious Poverty, Visual Riches, Judith Collins’s Sculpture Today,  Michael W. Cole’s Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini, Emily Braun’s Cubism, Sheila R. Canby’s The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp and The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Toronto

In a review of Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange Things the inhabitants of the planet Oasis embrace the King James Bible and begin numbering themselves Jesus Lover One, Two and Three ...

In a review of The Neruda Case by Roberto Ampuero, Cayetano Brulé takes his time digging deep into his client’s past

As well as nose-diving into the tasselled damask of Nicky Haslam’s A Designer’s Life, a round-up of the year’s design books delves into Room by Nach Alegre, Rock Covers by Julius Weidemann, Studio, by Tom kelley,  and 100 Buildings - 100 Years by Gavin Stamp

Ironic Capitalisation of That Which You Do Not Like is apparently A Thing. You’ll forgive me for employing this Irritating…

A new film on Hockney opens next week. At Pace Gallery New York his latest paintings are on show. Martin Gayford talks to the celebrated Yorkshire artist about 60 years of ignoring art fashion

Possibly. That said, the best of the Pallant House Gallery's Spanish civil war show, Conscience and Conflict, are a revelation

These newly refurbished rooms pose several questions about the nature of great art and what the difference is between a copy, reproduction, fake and facsimile

Mark Irving laments how students of curation start off as lively citizens of the world and end up as dulled parrots of ideological cant

Richard Cork relives the extraordinary moment in 1970 when a Velazquez’s portrait smashed the world auction record at Christie’s

A bogus history book and a new John Adams oratorio turn Mary of Magdala into the wife of Jesus and a human rights activist. Damian Thompson feels sorry for the poor woman

Solomon and Marion, a new play at the Print Room set in South Africa, whose emotional impact is potent and long-lasting

But the film’s major problem is that it goes all John Wayne on us midway through

Radio has always been a picture-inducing medium as these programmes on poet William Soutar and artist Winslow Homer prove

If this new Channel 4 documentary is to be believed, policing in the 1970s was every bit as sexist and unprofessional as programmes like Life on Mars suggest it was

Andy Warhol is the star but Roy Lichtenstein is the master. That’s the quick take out of POP TO POPISM…

Britain has never been the Greece to America's Rome

One of the most fantastic evenings of my life — with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frasier and Baroness Trumpington

Never mind that these animals prefer to sleep in the open

They dream of great wealth and then, when they have it, can’t think of anything interesting or life-enhancing to spend do with it

Thaddee’s story tells us a lot about the complicated nature of truth and the Rwandan genocide

It’s one of the burning political issues of the day: why don’t more MPs play bridge? Two weeks ago, the…

For reasons unknown, the world championship in Sochi between Carlsen and Anand is turning into a catalogue of disastrous blunders…

Black to play. This is from Korchnoi-Karpov, World Championship (Game 17), Baguio 1978. Can you spot Black’s winning coup? Answers…

In Competition No. 2874 you were invited to submit a scene written by a well-known children’s author of the past…

One unclued light is the name of a 15A activity requiring the 4A of three things. Answers to clues in…

Unclued lights (11/1D, 12/35, 15, 18/1D and 22/17) are fences of the Grand National course, together with two famous winners…

Forbidden to ogle, forbidden to read – it’s no wonder these guys go nuts

Online data reveals all kinds of things about us that we’d never say out loud. In some cases, best hope it’s wrong…

Plus: can I take my own teabags on weekend visits?

Le Gavroche has done more than diplomacy ever could to justify the ways of France to Britain

Its history is long — and not entirely pleasant