The Easter message is about resurrection. In Australian politics, the week before Easter has seen more risings than Lazarus with…

For seasoned consumers of Australian media, watching what are surely the last chapters of Fairfax as we know it be…

Can an expensive firm of accountants really tell us the true value of our democratic rights?

Crusaders against paedophilia seem able to turn their outrage on and off

Innovative ways to make our government lean and agile

Why such antipathy to The Donald?

Why is Australia’s model so much more successful than Europe’s?

Months after a historic election victory, party unity is in pieces. What can David Cameron do about it?

Why the only rational answer for US voters is ‘none of the above’

It’s not about economics. It’s about our snobbish, slobbish culture

Entrance fees? Fashion shows? Corporate dinners? These days, nothing is ruled out

It used to be fun telling companies what you thought of them before they insisted on it all the time

You only have to listen to the patronising, gaslighting ‘in’ campaign to know why

My father enjoyed playing up to his misanthropic reputation. But its consequences now are beyond a joke

Book your holiday for May or June, when the light-hearted locals are emerging from winter hibernation

Tuesday’s explosions in Belgium soon after the arrest of Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam show the Islamists’ ability to act quickly

Home Iain Duncan Smith resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary two days after the Budget, throwing the government into a…

Ben Schott has an app for that. Also in his diary: first-class stance, tiponomics, and the Independent’s photographic golden age

Also in our Barometer column: ageing populations; stay-at-home towns; growing mountains

How the ancients dealt with the age-old question of ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’

From ‘Common-sense and the command of the air’, The Spectator, 25 March 1916: The Air Service will be the great fighting…

Lefties Sir: Why is it that conservative commentators never promote the fact that Hitler and the Nazis were National Socialists?…

Also in The Spectator’s Notes: the last of Operation Midland, Labour anti-Semitism, Obama in Cuba, and hot-cross buns

Labour seems to be trying to find out

A callous sonographer who treated guidelines as facts left me and my husband in mistaken mourning

After my pulmonary embolism I’m watching trash TV with my son, spending hours on the Xbox... and reading The Iliad

The ‘leave’ lobby has the best tunes but fails to make a clear economic case

Srinath Raghavan shows how fighting with the Allies in the second world war would profoundly affect India’s future, for better or worse

Caroline Jones records in gut-wrenching detail the organised chaos of her 14-year battle with bulimia

Ben Wilson’s Heyday describes many thrilling advances in world communication and travel — and fortunes made and lost in the gold rush

Barney Hoskyns describes how Bob Dylan’s ‘greatest place’ in the early Sixties soon became one big chaotic nightmare

Deborah Levy’s novel, set in contemporary Spain, is rich in mythological allusions — especially to the Gorgon Medusa

Despite its drab prison setting and lonely, dysmorphic heroine, this creepily funny first novel shows immense promise, says Lewis Jones

Frances Borzello argues that the best way for female artists to advertise their skills was to paint self-portraits

Alexander Litvinenko’s gruesome poisoning in 2006 continues to pose many disturbing questions — not least over Britain’s cynical attitude to justice

Ghosts of the past haunt Commissario Soneri in this sinister story of bribery and murder in fog-bound Parma

We are only just beginning to understand our neighbourhood star, its mysterious corona and its effect on our weather, according to Lucie Green’s thrilling 15 Million Degrees

Despite her alias, Margaret Forster’s heroine finds it difficult to rebuild her life after serving ten years in prison

Kadare writes hauntingly about loss and omission— the girl never met, the book never written, the love never found

Tom Bissell goes in search of the tombs of the Apostles — but finds that their legends soon run into the sand

Once upon a time, Christianity in Australia was seen as the One True Faith. These days, it is likely to…

Damian Thompson admires a Chilean film about paedophile priests which, unlike Spotlight, dares to explore social and psychological complexities

Martin Gayford does a roundup of photography shows including Performing for the Camera at Tate Modern, Paul Strand at the V&A and Avedon Warhol at Gagosian Gallery

Plus: a play about the Easter Rising that reveals popular support for the Dublin rebellion was patchy at best

This courtroom drama is understated and patient, and the acting deliciously naturalistic - and it’s available to watch online so there’s no excuse

But the production has energy. And full marks to the company’s Iphigenie en Tauride – for daring

Plus: The A Word, BBC1’s impressive replacement for Happy Valley, is both tactful and not remotely soppy about the difficulties of autism

Plus: Radio 4 on the joy of rockpools - and how to get a foot on to the property ladder (if you’re a crab)

‘The Queen is dead!’ are not words any of us is anxious to hear; they will be followed by the…

Uncle Vlad did a Kutuzov in Syria

I shared a cab with a stripper from Cardiff during the Cheltenham Festival

Darcy has been lame all year, and it just keeps getting worse

Louise Minchin wants to sit on the right - is it her right?

The destruction of habitat is the greatest threat to wildlife

Bridge players are a superstitious bunch. And I don’t just mean the steps they take to prepare for matches —…

With the proliferation of modern opening theory and advances in knowledge of the game, I wonder sometimes if the kind…

White to play. This is from Karjakin-Nakamura, Fidé Candidates, Moscow 2016. Hikaru -Nakamura has just implemented an ingenious combination to…

In Competition No. 2940 you were invited to supply Dr Seuss’s take on the US presidential race. Given his taste…

One ‘unclued’ light, as the title suggests, can be paired (on one occasion twice) with each of the other unclued…

The unclued lights can be preceded by JACK.   First prize Margaret Lusk, Preston, Lancs Runners-up P.D.H. Riddell, London SE23;…

Maybe it’s because of my childhood. I came home aged ten and disturbed burglars but I lived to tell the tale

Human intuition is tuned to get questions vaguely right rather than precisely wrong. Ignoring it is a mistake

Plus: another suggestion for calling in a forgotten debt, and how to handle Brexit arguments

A journey through grand cru vineyards and crypt-like cellars to discover the overlooked vintages of 2014

Newly named as a cross between goosebumps and butterflies, it doesn’t sound a very agreeable sensation