At this time of year, perhaps more than any other, it is easy to see why Australia is the envy…

Baffling that so many observers had so much trouble interpreting the recent Charlie Hebdo cover on which Mohammed is depicted…

It’s time to try my hand at currency exchange with the tourist touts of Zimbabwe. I manage to get one…

The lost art of British history

Of all the sports on earth, one was clearly designed by a free marketeer

Just because I am horiified by what happened at Charlie Hebdo doesn’t mean I want to rescind 18C

Over many years, the Left have ensured that free speech does not extend to criticising certain religions

The lost art of British history

It’s not just Al Murray: British politics is increasingly about who has the most popular joke. The consequences won’t be funny

He’d just about sold the idea that businesses weren’t intrinsically evil. Then he started one of his own…

Degrees are losing their prestige at the very moment their cost is increasing

The Front National now has the support of a quarter of Paris’s gay voters – and only 16 per cent of the straight ones

Just because the biggest scandal involving a fraternity house has fallen to bits, that doesn’t mean universities are stopping their crackdown

The misery of emails and texts full of weak commas and dot-dot-dots

The county is saturated in his poetry; or perhaps his poetry is soaked in this county

Commentators fear that falling prices could lead to a Japanese-style downwards spiral. Their gloom is misplaced

Home More than 1,100 imams and Islamic leaders received a letter from Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, and Lord Ahmad…

Plus: Dresden, Goebbels’ last and most enduring triumph

Plus: homes for Page 3 refugees, and who’s gained from falling energy prices

How the ancients handled mockery of the sacred

From ‘Economic quackery’, The Spectator, 23 January 1915: Ever since the war began there has been a tendency to rely upon…

Lucky Country Sir: I run a slashing contracting business and cattle at Byron Bay. I just sat down here at…

By the Chancellor’s 2004 rules, his chances are on a knife edge

Everywhere you look there is outrage and fury and screaming and violence

Ask any charitable group. ‘Internecine’ doesn’t do justice to the undercurrents of resentment

Every prancing Etonian in tights is a stockbroker, or an ambassador, or a permanent secretary that never happened

Plus: Catching up on the careers of old colleagues at a big birthday

Johannes Fried’s newly translated history proves that the Middle Ages were not an ideas-free zone

Quite a Good Time to be Born is the memoir of a good man written by a great novelist

Will Boast’s Epilogue is hard to love

Adam Thirlwell’s ‘tale of suburban sex and violence’ has lost whatever charm his narrative voice once possessed

A sassy retelling of two women’s stories from Greek mythology

Jonny Steinberg finds A Man of Good Hope in ‘the asshole of Cape Town’

Anita Anand tells the story of an unlikely suffragette

Scott Blackwood’s ultra-clever See How Small is a novel written to be studied, not read

Jeff Noon on Peter May’s Runaway, Dan Kavanagh’s Putting The Boot In, Ferdinand von Schirach’s The Girl Who Wasn’t There, Eric Lundgren’s The Facades

Benjamin B. Olshin’s The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps is an unconvincing speculation – but a reminder of a great story does not convince our reviewer

In The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time, Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin attempt to bring modesty to physics

Christopher Elliott’s High Command is a study of what’s wrong at the MoD, and an excellent primer for the Chilcot report

In Tolstoy’s False Disciple, Alexandra asks many questions, but doesn’t always answer them

Not so much striding across the political landscape as huffing and puffing his way through the back rooms, Clive Palmer…

The British have never warmed to the Flemish master’s fleshy paintings. But then neither did he have a very high opinion of us

The Koran has no injunction against depicting Mohammed. In fact, within Islam, there’s a rich tradition of painting the Prophet

By all means go to hear the thrilling Jonas Kaufmann but don’t expect a night of theatrical profundity

I’ve illegally downloaded hundreds of pounds worth of classical music and I feel no remorse

Plus: at the Park an X-rated show you can take your kids to - and gran

New York’s heating oil business is sexier than you’d think - especially with Oscar Isaac at the helm

If the makers of this drama serial don’t know the difference between a barrister’s and a judge’s wig, it’s not worth our attention

Plus: why I find The Infinite Monkey Cage infinitely irritating

This is a great time of the year to make progress with that stack of unread books. One of my…

Betty Grable I never met, Ava Gardner asked me if I was gay, Cyd Charisse told me to drop dead — and I blew it with Ginger

In a last-ditch attempt to cheer my cabbie up, I said, ‘I’ve got cancer.’

And before you call me delusional, let me tell you I have witnesses

There's no real point to them, I think, but once you have one, they're terribly hard to live without

Clare Balding’s successor needs genuine knowledge and insight, not a ‘big name’

2015 got off to a rollicking start with TGR’s sixth Auction Pairs — chief rollickers being the Norwegians, whose unparalleled…

Britain’s leading grandmaster, Michael Adams, started well in the London Classic, with a beautiful win against the rising star Fabiano…

White to play. This position is a variation from Kramnik-Nakamura, London Classic Blitz 2014. How can White make a decisive…

In Competition No. 2881 you were invited to do as Carol Ann Duffy has done and provide an amusing poem…

Each clue contains a superfluous word. When these words are put in sequence according to alphabetical order of answers to…

Eight unclued lights were papal names used only once. Pope JOAN (30) was the fanciful ninth.   First prize Michael…

The idea that we are in the midst of a rape epidemic caused by ‘everyday sexism’ is a myth

Plus: the record-breaking Lindsey Vonn

Plus: Etiquette for stepchildren in economy class

Count Dracula, ever the postcode snob, had a ‘malodorous’ house at 347 Piccadilly; and here is his local

A word that didn’t arrive in English until 1941 is already bonded into nonsense