In the lead-up to the main event, as excitement reaches fever pitch, the contenders go through the usual pre-bout rituals.…

Our criticism of the ABC loses its credibility if we do not praise it on those occasions when praise is…

So Malcolm Fraser’s new hero is Dr H.V. Evatt. This is how Robert Manne sees it in his long and…

No rest for the wicked. We touch down before dawn in Sydney after a 22-hour flight and by 7am I’m…

The legendary Australian actor triumphs in Streetcar

Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave? A self-inflicted disaster

A heraldic honours system feels more like this nation in the 19th century, not the Asian century

The uproar over the Los Angeles Clippers owner shows why we don’t need laws to admonish racists

It's not just that women are doing better. Men, on all sorts of measures, are beginning to fall behind

The left and the medical establishment ought to get behind this marvellous development

There is no more powerful voice for marriage outside a church or mosque

The Goldman Sachs executive building for the end of civilisation, and other scenes from America's thriving doomsday business

An interview the Rt Revd John Bickersteth, the oldest living former bishop of Bath and Wells

And what happened when I used it

Open-minded on fracking? Not any more

Home The British economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2014, disappointing hotheads who’d expected 1 per cent. It…

Plus: why Nigel Farage has progressed as far as he can

Plus: Prison compensation, cancer survival rates, and the price of high-speed rail

The power of optimism

Burchill’s flimsy faith Sir: It is funny that it now falls to the Julie Burchills of this world, the old…

Plus: Fighting Auberon Waugh over Europe, and what Britain will lose without Christianity

We've proved that mice despise women. But are we sure that dogs love war?

Understand that, and much that seems mysterious about it becomes clear

Racism is only rarely a secret card you put in your wallet. More often, you carry it without knowing it's there

Plus: The fate of AstraZeneca, and the curse of the Gherkin

A review of Georgie & Elsa: Jorge Luis Borges and his Wife: The Untold Story, by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. Sour grapes seem to drive this prurient look at an unhappy part of the great Argentine writer’s life

A review of Sicily: A Literary Guide for Travellers by Andrew and Suzanne Edwards. Is there anything that Sicily has not seen and does not know?

A review of John Ruskin: Artist and Observer, by Christopher Newall. This catalogue says Ruskin was ‘among the greatest of English painters and draftsman’; some of the comparisons it contains suggest otherwise

There is a problem with describing what happens in Nagasaki: impossible to reveal much of the plot without flagging up…

A review of The 21st Century Digested, by John Crace. If you think this is too much, try 131 of them in a row...

A review of The Trigger, by Tim Butcher. A triumphant and original account of the man who shot the Archduke

A review of Other People’s Countries: A Journey into Memory, by Patrick McGuinness. A dreamy excursion into the backstory of the writer’s family

A review of In Search of Gielgud: A Biographer’s Tale, by Jonathan Croall. Croall’s quarry is rival critic Sheridan Morley not the great thesp

A review of The Kept Girl, A Mystery of 1929 Los Angeles, by Kim Cooper. Cooper goes in search of Marlowe and finds a Californian Maigret

A review of Thursday’s Children, by Nicci French. This promising psychological thriller ultimately cares too little about its characters – and its readers

Hugo Williams on his encounters with The Exploding Galaxy

A review of Lost for Words, by Edward St Aubyn. This satire of the literary award scene recalls Tom Sharpe at his most extravagantly grotesque

A review of Gwynne’s Latin, by N.M. Gwynne. A tutor that applies 1950s rigour to the learning of Latin

A review of Language!: 500 Years of the Vulgar Tongue, by Jonathon Green. Julie Burchill thinks you can have too much of a bad thing

Richard Eyre on the 30 golden years of the American musical

A new choral competition hits London – and the homegrown entries get a drubbing

Plus: a play about paedo-paranoia that implodes under the weight of its internal contradictions

Go around the new exhibition of familiar British modernists at Kettle's Yard and you will constantly be provoked into thinking, ‘Who’s this by?’

Vocal explanations of what’s going on in a play or film may not be ideal but they’re much better than nothing

Plus: a quiet portrait of the 90-year-old photographer Jane Brown that benefits from not showing anyone gouging out an arrowhead from their own thigh

Plus: Danielle de Niese irritates in the Met’s otherwise musically marvellous new Così fan tutte

This lauded new BBC2 drama can’t be trusted, writes James Delingpole

Plus: a Roy Williams radio drama that nails you to your chair

Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon secured the Soho photographer's immortality

I once told her she had the temper of Callas, the aggression of a field marshal and the intolerance of Savonarola. That letter will be framed at the wedding

This was no longer the woman with no limits

The curse of paternity leave

I'd have made a good member of the old leisured class. I'm not so sure about the new elite

Yes, I've lost you £195 so far, but that's no excuse...

Somewhere highly intellectual I read that they were bringing back the Generation Game, recalling, in all their excruciating mundanity,  Brucie’s…

The history of the world chess championship includes five title matches where the challenger was the former champion, seeking his…

White to play. This is from Botvinnik-Smyslov, World Championship (Game 2) 1958. White’s next was a clever way to win…

In Competition No. 2845 you were invited to provide a hymn for atheists. This excellent, and topical, competition was suggested…

Six unclued lights are 18 Down from the same source (five are entitled to appear; the sixth appears regularly). Six…

If the grid were a TIMEPIECE (13/12), the six perimetric words (GRANITE, LIMESTONE, SERPENTINE, GREYWACKE, DALRADIAN and HORNFELS) might collectively…

In London traffic, it's always Death Race 2000. I aim to compete

These aren’t easy teams to love. But they demand respect

Plus: Should I support my son's plan for a bungee-jumping business?

But then its main virtue is that it isn’t actually in Oxford

From icy to shouty