Many questions remain in the wash-up of the House of Cards style coup in which Malcolm ‘FU’ Turnbull plotted over…

How many lives has climate science saved? As PM Turnbull wings his way to Paris for the 21st yearly session…

When I signed up to work for the Catholic Church, I was delighted to see a clause in my contract…

The Liberal party has fallen into the hands of kleptoparasites

Has the poll-driven Turnbull coup put paid to conservative economic reform in Australia?

The taxpayer-funded Recognition movement has trouble accepting diversity of opinion

Calls to solve the Middle East refugee crisis have been loud but vague; so here’s my guide to dealing with…

The schools chaplaincy program pits government funding against religious freedom

His leadership campaign is foundering while Osborne surges ahead

The education secretary may join the race to become the next leader of the Conservative party

How will he remembered compared with Thatcher, Disraeli, Salisbury or Macmillan? You can be sure he’s thinking about it

For women, sexual desire has a comic edge. And that makes all the difference

Cruel sex crimes have surged since King Abdullah died, and we can do nothing about it

So many friends told me to go but not listen. Is it any surprise that people are setting up alternatives?

One-eyed environmental policy created the conditions for this fraud – and other damaging problems

A beloved species is in catastrophic decline. But there’s plenty we can do about it

Ten days of trans-Atlantic bliss aboard the QM2

Plus: Throwing £20 at Cherie Blair, a night with Christopher Hitchens, and other conference memories

Plus: The Spectator reveals Corbyn’s great conference crib

Home In his speech at the Labour party conference, much of it taken from material that had been on the…

Water worlds Nasa announced it had found evidence of running water on Mars in the form of dark streaks on…

At least one person on the Labour front bench seems to recognise that the state must protect property

From ‘The western victories’, The Spectator, 2 October 1915: As this is a war of heavy artillery, masses of slow-moving guns…

Plus: Conservatives who rock, Machiavelli on immigration, and the most moving moments in opera

Europhiles may find that ever-looser union is the only future for the EU

Their technique was pure Mandelson/Campbell

It must be said that none of those who attended the Cereal Killer Café protest appeared to be horny-handed sons of toil

Leave compassion to journalists and Lib Dems. Voters want a dash of acid

Plus: What’s an environmentalist to think about Shell’s Alaskan decision?

Plus: Some advice for Glencore; and a parlour game while waiting for the red chancellor

Tim Blanning's instructive, entertaining and surprising new biography of Prussia's colourful king will become the standard English-language account

How Philip Tetlock has transformed the science of prediction

Dictator - the last in Robert Harris trilogy on ancient Rome - focuses on Cicero and his secretary Tiro and 'the most tumultuous era in human history'

DeWitt's dark fairy-tale Undermajordomo Minor is gripping and unsettling and reminds one of the Grimms, Kafka and Edward Gorey

A Man’s World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith, by Donald McRae, tells the fascinating tale of a boxer who loved men, and killed a man

In trying to be realistic, The Gap of Time: The Winter’s Tale Retold drains the original story of its poetry

The final instalment of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, The Story of the Lost Child, combines a striking approach to narrative with being a real page-turner

If the issue of Australia becoming a republic is a marathon rather than a sprint, the republicans never had a…

Jonathan Bate fails to make his sensational case that the poet was a sexual sadist

German-speaking emigres like Frank Auerbach dragged British culture into the 20th century. But that didn't go down well in Stepney or Stevenage

It might interest GCSE first-timers but as psychodrama the film’s a bit rock vid - all flames, flashbacks and slo-mos. And is that Bananarama I see before me?

Plus: I can take immersion. But washing up? The Barbican’s ‘mindfulness opera’ Lost in Thought reviewed

The showstopping artistry of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo highlights the lack of ballerina wattage at the Royal Ballet

1989 saw the establishment by Paul Dyer of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra with the assistance of Bruce Applebaum as General…

Plus: students will find Lyttleton Theatre’s Jane Eyre an excellent revising resource. For a fun night out I’d look elsewhere

The German director’s animating rage was the misery of almost everyone’s life. And he used this to turn out several films a year that, on his 70th anniversary, continue to enthral

While Avigdor Arikha (Marlborough Fine Art) and Dennis Creffield (James Hyman Fine Art) toy with the abstract/figurative dichotomy, Robert Irwin and Cerith Wyn Evans (White Cube) sidestep it completely

Plus: E! Online’s new reality TV show The House of DVF  is transfixingly watchable even if you’re not gay or female

Plus: a very Reithian message from Brian Eno in his John Peel Lecture and does the broadcast of Max Richter's record-breaking Sleep suggest that Radio 3 has lost its way?

She beat Lady McCartney and Naomi Campbell to the job

But I am still reluctant to cancel my Being a Cool Person insurance in case I suffer an instant collapse in my looks and fortune

As things stand, those who obey the rules are losing out to those who don’t

Unclued lights (three of two words; ignore one apostrophe) may be grouped to form a related triad.   Across  …

GRASSHOPPERS (9) of ZURICH (30) is a team that plays football — not cricket, as indicated by corrections of misprints…

Danny Boyle's new film reveals the splinter of ice in the Apple founder's heart

The England captain is being pilloried for a wise decision, even if it didn’t work out right

To celebrate, I got totally and deliberately and gloriously drunk and danced the Gay Gordons

He should take his lead from American TV presenters, who are upholders of Reithian propriety

The 42nd Bermuda Bowl has kicked off in Chennai, and after several weeks of cheat-busting Boye Brogeland (‘The Sheriff’) has…

Paul Morphy, in a strange prefiguration of the later career of Bobby Fischer, was often described as ‘the pride and…

Black to play. This is from Botterill-Basman, Eastbourne 1973. What is Black’s best move? Answers to me at The Spectator…

In Competition No. 2917 you were invited to submit a reply from Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress. Marvell’s mix of cajoling…

Also, how to tick off litter louts without getting beaten up, and a good way to make use of empty rooms

But you should go anyway — it’s such a strange and needy place

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to start doing it myself