Some take ‘selfies’ of their shaving cuts. Others set up fatuous Facebook pages pleading to be ‘liked’. Many more propel…

The other day I went to an unusual but worthwhile election event. The international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright had…

The Labor party has no hope of winning the election unless something extraordinary happens in the next few days. Is…

Australians worry too much. You don’t dress warmly enough, especially on chilly airplanes. Your coffee isn’t as great as you…

Whereas the Libs allow diversity of opinion, the ALP acts like a peculiar, monistic outfit

Australia have regained the Ashes, much to the dismay of the British side. But did the Spectator predict this might happen…

Kevin Rudd is playing politics with security and foreign policy

The British anti-Murdoch Labour MP has no right to interfere in Australia’s election on Labor’s behalf

Supporters of intervention in Syria will be the first to desert Cameron when the going gets tough

Persecution of Christians is on the rise across the Middle East

...and why many social workers don’t like it

Local councils, banks, railway companies and the taxman have all learned the art of ‘pirate pricing’

Ayan Mahamoud, one of the organisers of Hargeysa’s International Book Fair, has all the girly vulnerability of a factory-tested steel…

Do writers really need inspiring landscapes? Or the opposite?

Leave Florence and Sienna to the aesthetes. Let the in-crowd do Naples and Palermo. For the amateur Italophile, Rome is…

There is something deeply disturbing about switching on the television and finding Jack Straw talking about the need to take…

Home Parliament was recalled four days early to debate military action against Syria, which David Cameron, the Prime Minister, had…

It’s been a strange summer. After a stroke, holidays are not what they used to be. We went to Juan-les-Pins…

Budding businesswoman Luisa Zissman, with her A in A-level English, has enquired whether ‘Bakers Toolkit’ or ‘Baker’s Toolkit’ is correct.…

Your name here Supporters of Merthyr Town Football Club objected to having their ground renamed the Cigg-e Stadium in a…

Piggies in the middle Sir: Your feature ‘The strange death of the middle class’ (24 August) assumes that young people…

Conservatives have been returning to their Westminster offices this week to find the wind behind them. Something suddenly seems to…

For a long time my view of the Imperial Capital — as, like other Scots, I am still prone to…

I’m now half way through Atlas Shrugged and I’m loving almost every moment. But Ayn Rand isn’t someone you read…

They’re getting the rebuttals in early, have you noticed that? You might call them a pre-emptive strikes. Here’s William Hague,…

The mega-rich are best housed behind high fences, on wooded estates patrolled by dogs; that way, they don’t have to…

James McConnachie finds that theology and geology have been unlikely bedfellows for centuries

Justin Cartwright is famously a fan of John Updike — and here he seems to owe a definite debt to…

Thick, sentimental and with a narrative bestriding four decades, Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings feels above all like a Victorian novel,…

This is an unusual book: a Spanish historian writes the life of an English historian of Spain. In doing so,…

The two opening volumes of Margaret Atwood’s trilogy have sold over a million copies. One of them managed to be…

Frederic Raphael is forensic in his description of the failures of successful people. He is enviously superior and he is…

Almost 30 years after his death, François Truffaut remains a vital presence in the cinema. Terrence Malick and Wes Anderson…

Denise Mina’s 11th crime novel, The Red Road (Orion, £12.99), is one of her best, which is saying a good…

Had Onan not spilled his seed upon the ground, he might have invented invisible ink. The possibility had not occurred…

The unlikely heroine of Mave Fellowes’s Chaplin & Company (Cape, £16.99) is a highly-strung, posh-speaking, buttoned-up 18-year-old with the unhelpful…

A major exhibition of Australian art is about to open at the Royal Academy. Barry Humphries believes visitors will be surprised

Lloyd Evans talks to Henry Goodman about his role in the playwright’s political allegory

Sir Alfred Munnings (1878–1959) did himself a grave and lasting disservice when he publicly attacked modern art in a bibulous…

Chimerica. The weird title of Lucy Kirkwood’s hit play conjoins the names of the eastern and western superpowers and promises…

The Proms season of Wagner operas — pity they didn’t do them all; Die Meistersinger would have been specially welcome,…

I’m not crazy about cookery shows. I suspect they indicate how little we are cooking, rather than how much. We’re…

How many listeners, I wonder, actually tuned in to Darkside as it went out on air on Radio 2, after…

Venice may be the oldest film festival in the world but it is still breaking new ground. This week film-lovers…

Gstaad I’ve met Stephen Fry twice in my life, both times long ago. The first time at a dinner given…

This time last year the postman delivered a picture postcard depicting a village square in Provence. The photograph on the…

What is the point of living in a free country if you cannot do dangerous things every now and again?…

I have been puzzling about why the United States authorities ever thought that Bradley Manning, who was jailed last week…

Driving to Newmarket through a biblical-style deluge that had sheep, cattle and horses queuing in twos in case Noah had…

The Ukip treasurer Stuart Wheeler’s recent comments about women being less good than men at bridge (and chess, and poker)…

The Hedgehog is a respected chess formation, usually adopted as Black, where the defender crouches behind a wall of pawns…

Black to play. This is from Caruana-Adams, Dortmund 2013. Despite play being in an endgame Adams sacrificed a piece. His…

In Competition No. 2812 you were invited to provide a poem celebrating bookshops. Space is tight, which leaves room only…

This puzzle marks a 42/27 by 11 in 17/19. Five other unclued lights (one twice hyphened) together suggest another form…

The part quotation was ‘BUT WESTWARD, LOOK, THE LAND’ (1/5/28) from Say not the struggle naught availeth by Arthur Hugh Clough.…

An acquaintance of mine called Daisy Christodoulou has just published a book called Seven Myths about Education. It’s a merciless…

I’m off to Balcombe this weekend. In fact I might even carry a placard and paint my face with a…

Q. Is there a polite way of halting a wannabe novelist from reading his oeuvre aloud to an unwilling audience?…

It is impossible to think about any Italian region without wondering ‘What if?’ Sardinia lacks the glamour, grandeur and menace…

‘What’s he saying now?’ asked my husband in a provoking manner when an actor read out a bit of the…