Looking like a cross between Princess Diana and Michael Jackson, our glamourous foreign minister last week rocked into – of…

I see that another parliamentary committee has been grappling with the dispute between the government and Gillian Triggs, and the…

Malcolm Turnbull is never far from the front pages (or even the covers of men’s fashion magazines!) usually with stories…

Bastardry is a small price to pay for economic reform

After a year of living in Sydney, the smog in Hong Kong is a shock. I do not see even…

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement is a toxic monstrosity

The desire to preserve the Anzac tradition comes from below, not from above

Exclusive interview: David Cameron on what his government has achieved, and what it will take for him to get another one

He was already clearly destined for the top — and in no doubt who would win that day

Libby’s conviction looks ever shakier – and the system that produced it ever more worrying

They complain that the university is too ‘Eurocentric’ – but they show no signs of wanting to make any actual changes

The Orangeman with the First in law from Cambridge has found himself suddenly popular with Commons colleagues

Drugs, yoga, CBT and busy lives are occupying the space once reserved for the shrink’s couch

Britain buys £43 million worth of human hair a year. But it’s dismayingly hard to find out who it comes from

Parties, hats and dancing around handbags – everything you need to know about becoming a dame

Laughter, bird-watching, jazz and unmatched erudition

They thought it would be fun to let a team of journalists compete against the students from Oxford and Cambridge. We didn’t know what we’d be facing…

Labour’s position on an EU referendum is indefensible. Ed Miliband should be made to defend it

Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into…

Plus: Why it’s wrong to call Daesh Islamic State; and the deeper meaning of Norwich

Plus: Scotland’s budget deficit, high pay at charities and the facts about postal votes

The Tory campaign chief has two big ideas. The ancients wouldn’t have liked either

From ‘Soldiers of Italy’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: It is winter in Florence. The sun shines, but snow lies low on Monte…

Plus: Airline pilots answer back, David Starkey and his teeth, and a telling off from a tailor

There are two ways to solve this migrant crisis. Either we must let them all in, or we must stop them from attempting the journey

Riding a hunter is all very well. But Potato the polo pony makes me feel like Alexander the Great

Plus: In praise of the well-upholstered director; and the wisdom of the Irish

It will be a travesty if the Easter Rising is commemorated with jolly fancy-dress parades and hagiographies of dead heroes, says Roy Foster

Not much is known about St George, says Christopher Howse, reviewing Samantha Riches’s biography, except that he had many lookalikes (including Islamic) — and his dragon was a bit of an afterthought

Steve Davis was so boring Spitting Image nicknamed him Interesting — giving him the title for his third autobiography to date

Americans have an almost mystical belief that guns are synonymous with freedom, says Michael Moorcock, reviewing Gun Baby Gun. Every time there’s a call for stricter arms control, the sales of guns rocket

I lose the will to live if forced to play Monopoly. But the story of the game’s invention, as related in Mary Pillon’s The Monopolists — now there’s a thing...

However hard we try to eradicate bedbugs, they constantly outwit us, according to Brooke Borel’s Infested — and from Horace to Henry Miller they infest literature too

Two innocent men face kidnapping, death threats and haunting by the devil — and The Discreet Hero is Llosa-lite — a mere jeu d’esprit

Gore Vidal’s deservedly forgotten pulp thriller, now resurrected after 60 years, is so bad it’s good

You don’t want to end up like those sour-faced children of the idle rich who invariably go to the bad, says Julie Burchill, reviewing All Day Long, by Joanna Biggs

If only Charlotte Gordon's Romantic Outlaws would let Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley speak for themselves

The 34-year correspondence between Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark was a substitute for a friendship that didn’t happen, says Duncan Fallowell, reviewing My Dear BB, edited by Robert Cumming

Move Up is a torrent of random words arranged into perfectly focused falsehood

Le Hamel was the site of an extraordinary triumph of allied arms early on the morning of July 4, 1918.…

Wars make myths; probably no-one understood that better than Charles Bean, Australia’s first true war writer and a person who…

Wars make myths; probably no-one understood that better than Charles Bean, Australia’s first true war writer and a person who…

The celebrated conductor/soprano talks to Philip Clark about her forthcoming tour with the Britten Sinfonia and how atonal music is like a deep tissue massage

Plus: a Classical Opera revival of J.C. Bach’s Adriano in Siria that’s entertaining, absorbing and much more than a scholar’s pet

Plus: the Duke of Wellington’s London home reopens to the public

Plus: Kirov goddess Diana Vishneva shows what happens when Russian ballerinas disappear up their own mythology

But the set pieces are impressive - if that’s what impresses you

Plus: the Royal Court’s adaptation of The Twits doesn’t belong on stage but Mrs Roosevelt Flies to London offers an illuminating slice of history

Plus: did Top of the Pops realise how weird it was?

Plus: Private Passions celebrates its 20th birthday and did Simon Armitage’s new play The Raft of the Medusa need an online visual accompaniment?

Jonathan Meades sees today’s growing curatocracy as a ‘conspiracy against the laity’

The garbage bins from MTC’s production of Endgame are being packed away at the Southbank Theatre to make room for…

The solution? Move to Vienna or Warsaw or Krakow

I chose poetry — and then the nightmare began

But then who will fight on behalf of all those normal people who don’t get off on arguing like I do?

Two occasions to remind us how lucky we are to have a proper royal family

Even if he did have Simply Red playing in the operating theatre

Congratulations to the Welsh women’s team, who staged one of the most spectacular comebacks I’ve ever seen at last weekend’s…

Hikaru Nakamura has won the US Championship in convincing style with 8/11, ahead of Ray Robson and Wesley So. Things…

Black to play. This position is a variation from Troff-Nakamura, US Championship 2015. How can Black conclude his kingside attack…

In Competition No. 2894 you were invited to submit a paean to a famous racehorse. Thanks to David Pearn, who…

Two words form the name of a fictional 28, described by his creator as a ‘22A/31/26’. Remaining across unclued lights…

Unclued lights were set out in the form of two squares in the grid (shown here in red). The theme…

If you’ve over 40, dignity goes out the window the moment your first child arrives. But that’s not the real problem…

People are often more productive when they work fewer hours

Plus: Who should do my wedding hair?

One would need Wagner to orchestrate the fanfare of trumpets it deserved

On the evidence presented by Kenneth Haug, probably not