Should he fail to win the forthcoming election, Tony Abbott would be forgiven for expressing his frustration by punching a…

It was a great night in the Paddo RSL. It was an open-to-all public meeting to hear and question candidates…

Some readers have said I have been uncharacteristically quiet on Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme and want to know…

It’s the Friday before the first weekend of the election campaign and one day to go before the launch of…

Back in Los Angeles after four months in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where I directed a three hour Bonnie & Clyde…

Melbourne’s Crucible is unbewitching

It’s August, and you are a journalist stuck in the office without an idea in your head. What to write?…

The great stabilising force in our society is disappearing fast

The government’s high-speed rail plans will never be implemented

China’s fallen princeling has a new role to play: one he may not enjoy

Travelling people are putting their business skills to increasingly impressive use

Centenaries now seem to be the only reason that publishers and concert planners do anything at all

He’s one of my favourite writers. But canonising Chesterton would hurt his reputation – and that of the Catholic church

The occasional alcoholic blowout is much to be preferred to steady, everyday drinking

The homicidal sheepdog that launched itself at me from behind a grassy hillock, had the look of a demented hearth…

It is good to see the Guardian suddenly rediscover its interest in the sanctity of a free press.  Just five…

Home The cost of the HS2 railway line was expected by some in the Treasury to rise from £43 billion…

There isn’t a Scottish politician in living memory who hasn’t been on the Caledonian Sleeper. I always imagined Donald Dewar…

Whatever problems Greeks and Romans faced, a politicised priesthood was not one of them. They might have made three observations…

We will remember them A German diplomat called on Britain to commemorate but not celebrate the centenary of the Great…

Some doctors write Sir: Professor Meirion Thomas (‘Dangerous medicine’, 17 August) may be an excellent surgeon but he is uninformed…

Sometimes only a cliché will do, especially when the subject is the Australian Labor party. Labor is holed beneath the…

I returned last week from a short break in the Balkans; travelling by train in Serbia, walking from village to…

My thanks to ‘AndyB’, the only reader who posted an online comment on my column last week. It was ‘Don’t…

Those of you dieting your way to a svelte physique amid the flesh-exposing terrors of summer should take courage from…

There could be no backsliding while preparing the next plot, murder or battle in the French Wars of Religion, says Hywel Williams

Many books have been written about the corruption, venality and incestuousness that characterise Washington DC, but none has been as…

The last time David Peace wrote a novel about football he got his publishers sued for libel, which may help…

The title of Alwyn W. Turner’s book could deter readers. Even the Hollywood film The Secret Lives of Dentists promised…

This may sound a little orientalist, but Tangier has some claim to being the most foreign city in the world.…

Charles Cullen, an American nurse, murdered several hundred patients by the administration in overdose of restricted drugs. Hospitals should be…

Adrian Tinniswood, so gifted and spirited a communicator of serious history to a wide readership, here brings a number of…

Like Mel Brooks’s character the Two Thousand-Year-Old Man, Peter Lewis has met everyone of consequence. Though he doesn’t mention being…

The Man Booker prize has strong years and weak years. There have been ones when the judges have succeeded in…

What a spectacle. A Fairfax journalist flanked by a beaming James Packer, making no secret of his loathing for her…

Robert Gore-Langton on Oxford’s new Story Museum, which aims to put stories into young lives deprived of books

Whenever Michael Tippett’s first opera, The Midsummer Marriage, is revived, there is a chorus of voices, including mine, complaining that…

High summer and it’s blockbuster time. The Donmar’s latest show is by the acclaimed Nick Payne, whose play about string…

Lloyd Evans finds politics everywhere: not only in the architecture but at the Fringe too

My wife says you can always tell a self-portrait by the quality of its self-regard. There’s something about the eyes…

What Maisie Knew is an adaptation of the Henry James 1897 novel, updated to Manhattan in the now, and is…

One of Boy’s more annoying teenage rules of thumb is that, if Dad likes it, it must be crap. This…

It must have sounded like such a great idea. To gather a group of thinkers, agitators, experts, intellectuals and media…

Martha Wainwright was keeping it in the family at the Union Chapel in Islington last week. Arcangelo, the singer-songwriter’s three-year-old…

Just before I left Gstaad for the Greek islands I went to dinner at Eugenie Radziwill’s, whose other guests included…

Golly my testicles are shrinking fast. At this rate by Christmas they’ll be down to the size of garden peas.…

At last. I’ve waited a long time for this moment. I’ve been through years of torture at the hands of…

After a carefree month at my wife’s house in Tuscany — the longest summer holiday I have spent there for…

  Laikipia The bull elephant had roamed our northern marches of the Laikipia plateau for decades. I always recognised him…

If jealousy is measured in twinges my twinge-o-meter has gone viral. On my self-imposed sabbatical, otherwise known as a holiday,…

Britain’s top grandmaster Mickey Adams has won clear first prize in the tournament at Dortmund, ahead of former world champion…

White to play. This position is from Williams-Brown, British Championship, Torquay 2013. What is the most direct route to victory…

In Competition 2811 you were invited to take an existing word and alter it by a) adding a letter; b)…

Each of twelve clues contains a superfluous word. 9 of these words are unclued lights, which are of a kind. …

Character is destiny, according to Heraclitus, and that becomes increasingly clear as you get older and chart the ups and…

Seven unclued lights are STUFFED ANIMALS (13 18) — i.e. deer, horse, anoa, cat, seal, tup and boar, filled with…

Were you still up, as they used to say about Portillo in the 1997 election, for Hedwall? It was well…

Q. My boyfriend, an artist, is driving himself and others mad by his inability to keep track of his mobile.…

There was outrage last week when it was found that the Oxford English Dictionary had listed one sense of literally…