Australia’s newly commissioned Shortfin Barracuda submarines may as well be referred to as the Shorten Barracudas, because it is largely…

I suppose I must be the only person in Australia who has read, re-read and underlined Niki Savva’s The Road…

Breivik: murderous fascist having a lend If a measure of civilisation is the absence of violence (see Steven Pinker’s The…

Irony of ironies: Abbott to save Turnbull? Putting Malcolm Turnbull in the Lodge has not worked out as the conspirators…

Maybe it’s the sleeping monarchist in me – my Irish Catholic granny would be so ashamed – but wasn’t it…

The Christian concept of ‘sanctuary’ is at odds with the law

Turnbull’s Liberals have forgotten a wise old adage

Humour in the face of death is a sign of a confidant society

Penalising thrift, or ending a superannuation tax lurk?

The insurgent conservatives aren't just angry, they're loopy

Clarksdale, Mississippi, where Highway 61 crosses 49 and Robert Johnson met the Devil, who taught him the secret of the…

The untold story of a celebrity encounter

The state’s most important economic role is to get out of the way

If we accept that literature can heal, we have to admit that it can harm, too

A paper review suggests many studies are flawed, and the effect may not be negative even if it’s real

The oilman and former Spectator owner shows little sign of slowing down at 76

My new habit has almost become a millennial cliché, and for good reason

The public would rather have something inspiring to vote for than an enemy to kick against

Plus: Hillsborough verdicts, deaths of Victoria Wood and Prince, BHS and Austin Reed go into administration

Plus: Ignorance on Europe, rubbish on Olympus, political correctness on campus

Also in our Barometer column: academy performance, big employers, and casualties of Chernobyl

The EU is undoing an approach pursued since the days of Henry III

From ‘The Dublin Revolt’, The Spectator, 29 April 1916: If we are to do what will most disappoint the Germans, and that…

Cartoon charms Sir: Politics can grow stale and reviews be a matter of taste, but Spectator cartoons are a continual…

The EU referendum hogs all the attention, but what happens in Scotland, Wales and London has real political significance

Also in The Spectator’s Notes: the FT’s nervous condition; the Mail’s Eurosceptic rage; Englishness; hairbrushes

They seem to think that the Prime Minister should be some kind of neutral observer in the debate

Lefties will grab at anything in order to corral it into their own absolutist little pen

Also in Any Other Business: the meaning of the BHS bust, what’s happening at Hinkley Point, and friends on the Rich List

Our fascination with canvases that have been abandoned or deliberately left ‘painterly’ should not blind us to the beauty of the finished work, says Philip Hensher

Kate Summerscale rediscovers a sensational case of juvenile matricide in Victorian London — and an adult life spent making atonement

Tristan Gooley learns to read all kinds of ripples and undercurrents, while Jack Cooke explores London’s vast leafy canopy

Raymond and Laura Coppinger remind us that most nations simply can’t afford to be as sentimental about dogs as the British

Alexander Masters transforms some anonymous diaries found discarded on a skip into a volume worthy of Laurence Sterne

A lacklustre new biography does at least help rescue Nietzsche’s reputation from the pernicious meddling of his anti-Semitic sister

Cannibalism is added to Maoism’s many other crimes in Frank Dikötter’s final searing volume of A People’s History

British high command’s fear that shell shock would become an ‘epidemic’ resulted in the barbarous treatment of hundreds of sufferers in the first world war

Jenny Diski, now terminally ill with cancer, longs ‘to die easily’ — in contrast to her former complicated life, vividly portrayed in her challenging memoir

C.E. Morgan’s vivid epic of rage and racism on a Kentucky stud farm exposes the myth of the American dream

Amid the abundant cinema of Nazi atrocity, the Oscar-winning Son of Saul is exemplary. Ian Thomson explains why

Plus: a wisely small show of Dutch flower paintings at the National Gallery and a unwisely medium-sized Sicily exhibition at the British Museum

Janacek’s operas are unique and uniquely great – but only a full sensitive staging will get this across. This fine Royal Festival Hall performance did not do this

I’m genuinely perplexed as to how people think this movie has emotional depth

The weirdo recluse pop genius was a girls’ idea of what rock music ought to sound like - an act of debauched sexual communion

Plus: My Mother Said I Never Should is a chick-flick evening with one great selling point: Maureen Lipman

Bruch’s Violin Concerto, Holst’s The Planets, Colin Matthews’ 2,765th Proms piece, a Strictly Come Dancing prom, a Shakespeare theme... It’s programming on autopilot

Plus: a drama about Shakespeare’s dying days on Radio 3, and Trevor Phillips explains why he changed his mind about multiculturalism

Now that TV has overtaken the books, will season six of HBO’s cult fantasy live up to George R.R. Martin’s sinister genius, wonders James Delingpole

There is an interesting article in the latest issue of Apollo, the international art magazine, a stablemate of The Spectator…

I read this in an American newspaper (it was written by a woman who used to edit my copy for…

I’d forgotten how boozed, drugged-up and clinically depressed I was but reading them brought it all back

No more neurotic menopausal fruitcake; it’s time to unleash my difficult side

At a racecourse you really mean it — maybe that’s why, at Sandown, all our prayers were answered

The day before the London Marathon, Young Chelsea BC held its spring half-marathon. Eighty-seven boards were played over 12 hours…

World champion Magnus Carlsen takes much inspiration from the games of the former champion Emanuel Lasker. Lasker and Carlsen share…

White to play. This is a position from Bjornsson-Sigurdsson, Iceland Team Championship 2016. How did White make the most of…

In Competition No. 2945 you were invited to suggest remarks guaranteed to get rid of a guest who is outstaying…

Clues are listed in alphabetical order of their solutions. An 11-word quotation runs around the perimeter from the top left-hand…

Oscar WILDE (35) described hunting as THE UNSPEAKABLE IN FULL PURSUIT OF THE UNEATABLE (1A, 14, 30, 42), and the…

A new book says the left-liberal bias is so ingrained it would survive any change of ownership

Plus: why Jamie Vardy: The Movie is having script problems, and the dazzling dancers of the Indian Premier League

Plus: foot-filing in public; the trouble of knowing one’s fellow commuters

The Criterion in Piccadilly has a cursed location. It’s lucky I love rotting beauty

When the word came into the language, the habit was thought of as quintessentially French