All of a sudden the world and his pet poodle purport to have crucial advice for Tony Abbott, as the…

The ABC’s Australian Story (‘Just Call Me Bob’) about the former Prime Minister Robert James Lee Hawke touched on many…

Millions of Australian investors can now sleep safely in their beds knowing that in November 2014 Jacqui Lambie and Ricky…

The Israeli’s and I didn’t get off to the best start. Maybe they just didn’t like the cut of my…

Many on the right believe the rest of us on the right should refrain from criticising the Abbott government. They’re wrong.

There is much about the legacy of Whitlam that is reminiscent of Kennedy and Obama

It is too easy, sometimes, to forget that new media is media at all

We know they can be good citizens when they want to be. So why are they acting in ways that could endanger us all?

This new newspaper, whatever its quality, is a reminder that the thirst for change in Scotland remains unquenched

A new line for the world’s ninth most lucrative dead celebrity

Just when it seemed that French politics couldn’t get any worse, the former president has put himself back in the game

A culture that sees itself as one continuous collective protest eventually suffocates itself

To survive as a technophobe in the 21st century, you must depend on the kindness of strangers

Sometimes they arrive with firmly held ‘traditional’ views which clash with the values of such establishments

The runner-up in The Spectator’s 2014 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Award

The Stockholm Grand: I saw no reason to ever leave the room

The only way to stop Russia's escalating displays of aggression is to show western strength

Home Theresa May, the Home Secretary, spent a few days announcing things. She broadcast on the Andrew Marr Show on…

Plus: Come and visit your taxes at work in Belfast

Plus: the highest-earning migrant groups, and the facts on Britain’s white van men

Understanding the mechanics of the world has nothing to say about ‘how to do what we think is right’

From ‘Sedition in Ireland’, The Spectator, 28 November 1914: If the press is to be muzzled, why do not the…

Creative writing Sir: When Geoffrey Robertson gets it wrong he is calamitous. He ends his Diary note defending ‘a young…

Owen Paterson's bid to lead the 'out' side is only the most obvious preparatory manoeuvre

Mention this and you are likely to be defriended on Facebook and stopped from attending Hay-on-Wye

The internet can turbo-charge national hypocrisy so that it turns ferocious within hours

Plus: George Osborne’s bonus defeat, and the horrors of Heathrow

Before he was 35, Eugene O’Neill had emerged as a titan on the American stage, and arguably America’s greatest playwright

In a review of David Goldblatt’s The Game of Our Lives, television sponsorship, pampered star players and the vanity of oligarchs are blamed for the current sad state of English football

A review of Rick Bragg’s Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story reveals the bad boy of rock’n’roll feared he was destined for hell

In a round-up review of children’s books, Melanie McDonagh launches a campaign for bigger, better illustrations — and many more of them

A review of Allen Shawn’s life of this maverick reveals him as an object of both admiration and suspicion in the music world

Rose Prince gives us a feast for the eye and the palate in her round-up of the year’s cookery books

A review of Dear Reader explains how its author, Paul Fournel, has tried to future-proof his creation against the ravages of readers

Ian Thomson applauds the grand rituals of West Indian funerals in his review of Charlie Phillips’s How Great Thou Art

In his review of Dominic Frisby’s Bitcoin: The Future of Money? Michael Bywater points the way to the possible future of economic history

There were more than three people in this overcrowded marriage

Present-day Algeria, as revealed in a review of Boualem Sansal’s Harraga, lies somewhere between nightmare and soap opera

A review of John Launer’s Sex Versus Survival tells the impressive story of a young patient of Jung who became a leading child psychologist in her own right

There is plenty of interesting material in Iain Gately’s Rush Hour, but not much of it is about commuting

A senior Minister in the NSW government of John Fahey once told me that there was a vacant metaphorical chair…

Until the wow factor of CGI and 3D wears off, cinema will continue to lose its best writers to television and documentaries. Thomas W. Hodgkinson reports from the front line at the Austin Film Festival

And are the women depicted in his fetish furniture a male fantasy or a terrible nightmare?

Deborah Ross revels in this wondrously British new film and its anti-Ukip message

Plus: something you’d never get at the Royal Court - a funny, candid, dramatic and fresh new musical from the Big House

Plus: the Royal Opera’s Elisir comes as close to Christmas panto as opera can, and is all the better for it

Christian Blackshaw’s recordings of Mozart have already secured him a place in history

And if Jimmy Bullard wins out over everyone’s favourite Milf, Melanie Sykes, I may have to become a feminist

Plus: Samuel West, Olivia O’Leary and Fi Glover on what makes a good radio voice in The Essay on Radio 3

John Hearder was a society photographer whose studio and display window were on Castlereagh Street between Rowe Street and the…

How we dress today reflects the extinction of human decency

Women aren’t allowed (unless they are dead)

I don’t think I have been so excited about a social outing in years

Mary Soames was a remarkable woman in her own right

You should never write off one of Paul Nicholls’s horses

Last weekend saw the start of the Tollemache qualifier, the inter-county teams of eight championship. Thirty-five teams competed in four…

The Tiger of Madras has gone the way of the sabre-toothed tiger. Viswanathan Anand, world champion from 2007 to 2013,…

White to play. This position is a variation from move 37 of today’s game. How does White win? Answers to…

In Competition No. 2875 you were invited to submit a poem about an unlikely aphrodisiac. Thanks are due to that…

‘1D/19’ (six words in total) is a work by 18/13. Remaining unclued lights form two pairs suggested by 13.  …

The theme word is PHOENIX (38A). 6A, 12A and 26A are legendary birds; 15A, 28A and 4D are state capitals;…

My father was a Labour peer. So why should I have received special treatment when I applied to Oxford?

The man who would lead Scottish Labour has written a lovely little book

Plus: Avoiding new friends, and how to not go dutch

Too much of travel is like this today; the destination conforms to the place you left behind

If Mr Miliband knew about life ‘down in the street’ he’d realise that ‘respect’ is the gangland correlative of honour