Walking into the gilt opulence of the ‘Credentials Room’ of the Istana Merdeka palace in Jakarta, our new Prime Minister…

With the unrelenting march of time, I have been giving a lot of thought to what I want to do…

At Julia Gillard’s triumphal rallies, her ecstatic audiences applauded the idea that her valour in standing up to misogyny will…

I have been spending the week in Rome, having breakfast and dinner most days with Pope Francis I. Literally. How…

The brash and combative Oracle skipper has become the focal point of New Zealand’s collective anxieties

If only Britain had sound conservatives such as John Howard and Tony Abbott

History will be kinder to Julia than Kevin

Sam’s Abbott, not Anton’s Sir: Sam Roggeveen’s article (‘Abbott is not a neocon,’ 28 September) is a useful analysis of…

The global persecution of churchgoers is the unreported catastrophe of our time

Parts of northern Syria are already an Islamic emirate in the making

Doing a full week's work in three days is not in patients' interests

Can you blame the IMF for a surge in superstitious violence? Sociologists are trying

Why will no one sell trousers that fit me?

Here’s why

Our population’s growing – and we’re not in the eurozone

There’s an unlikely new role model for sellers of savings products

Carney’s ‘forward guidance’ already looks like a farce

China’s banks are weak, ill-managed puppets of the state

Why didn’t I know about the Tarn Valley? I’d often been right next door. But here, north-east of Toulouse, between…

Every opposition leader sometimes needs to act as a saboteur. Ed Miliband showed his wrecking skills this week, picking a…

Home Shares in Royal Mail are to be sold by the middle of this month, before postmen can go on…

So mysterious, the Conservative party. In every poll, our five most admired institutions are the NHS, the BBC, the Royal…

Party conferences always provide the most agreeable spectacle of politicians desperately trying to appeal to both the diehards among the…

Does workfare work? George Osborne announced a ‘work for benefits’ scheme. ‘Workfare’ schemes have been attacked by the left. Do…

 Manchester The Tory party has been at peace with itself this week. Eurosceptic backbenchers have given Nigel Farage a verbal…

 Manchester For those of us of a certain age, Ed Miliband’s speech last week was exhilaratingly nostalgic. His promise to…

Ring, ring goes the telephone every minute God sends. Sometimes I pick it up and say hello, sometimes I don’t.…

Such is my respect for Spectator readers that I offer you a column whose subtext is in Latin. Ours is…

‘We need successful energy companies in Britain, we need them to invest for the future,’ said Ed Miliband in his…

When you hear the words ‘economic recovery’, do you think: ‘Great! Britain is on the mend’? Or ‘Damn! I should…

Sam Leith is transported by the finest scenery in England

‘How could a man who has loved light and flowers so much and has rendered them so well, how could…

The Dreyfus Affair, the furore caused by a miscarriage of justice in France in 1894, is a source of perennial…

The Great War was an obscene and futile conflict laying waste a generation and toppling emperors. Yet here are two…

The blogger, once accused by the ex-Labour adviser of the 'dark arts', reviews Power Trip

There are two ways of being a political journalist. One is to stay on the outside and try to avoid…

The Poets' Daughters, by Katie Waldegrave — review

Though alcohol withdrawal is potentially fatal, booze has none of the media-confected glitz of heroin (imagine Will Self boasting of…

William Boyd's Solo, reviewed by Marcus Berkmann

Fred Goodwin’s descent from golden boy of British banking to ‘pariah of the decade’ would be the stuff of tragedy…

Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…

At the end of this affectionate memoir of Sir Robert and Dame Pattie Menzies, Heather Henderson recognises some might see…

William Cook has moved to Metroland. He contemplates John Betjeman’s vision of it

Astonishingly, the last major survey show of Australian art in this country was mounted more than half-a-century ago. Then it…

Does London need another concert hall? Or, to put it more precisely, does London need another chamber music hall? The…

Brecht in the West End? Quite a rarity. Jonathan Church’s zippy and stylish version of The Resistible Rise of Arturo…

Superstar Carlos Acosta makes little or no reference to Don Quixote’s established history in his programme note about the genesis…

It’s been a sensational week for opera in London, with a sensationally good performance of Strauss’s Elektra at the Royal…

People are generally saying Filth fully fulfils the promise of its title and is not for the faint of heart…

The acclaimed television series Breaking Bad has ended. Steffen Huck on what it can teach us about economics

This week saw the final episode of possibly the greatest television series ever. Breaking Bad wasn’t made by the BBC,…

This time round in the autumn shake-up of the schedules it’s Radios 2 and 3 who are on the frontline…

‘Women spend more money on their ears in pearl earrings than on any other part of their person.’ So said…

 New York The trouble with driving into the city is nostalgia. Manhattan Island looms into view and it still has…

I went to a Tibetan yoga all-day workshop. Tibetan yoga is very simple. It would be hilariously so if it…

Natural horsemanship has a lot to answer for. After a cross country event the other day, I rode back to…

There is at last good news to report on the poultry front. In the past, when I have mentioned my…

I defy anyone, even Tolstoy were he still alive and were he to abandon War and Peace for a bridge…

Grandmasters Pal Benko and Viktor Korchnoi have worn dark glasses to counter perceived hypnotic influence during games. In the recent…

White to play. This position is from Alekhine-Bogolyubov, World Championship (Game 4), Germany 1934. The black king has been driven…

In Competition 2817 you were asked to provide a poem, in the manner of Harry Graham’s Perverted Proverbs, questioning the…

All except four clues contain a superfluous word each. Initial letters of these words spell the titles of four 29D…

Extra letters in clues give the assertion by HOUSMAN (31) that ‘I could no more define poetry than a terrier…

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference in Manchester, but it’s Ed Miliband I want to discuss. In particular,…

This weekend is the final round of the southern hemisphere’s Rugby Championship, the best tournament outside the World Cup and…

Q. Towards the end of last year, I began three months of treatment for a knee replacement. During one consultation…

The Wild Rabbit is a pub in the Cotswolds, that small corner of Britain full of evil grinning cottages; if…

I am shocked to find that William Empson, famous for his technique of close reading, was no good at reading…