‘Military madness’, sang Graham Nash, ‘is killing my country.’ That was back in the ‘70s when US and Australian forces…

Australia was invented Malcolm Turnbull appeared on Channel Ten’s The Panel on Australia Day. Panellist, Waleed Aly chided the PM…

I don’t know what made me change my opinion so dramatically on a certain matter of public interest that has…

Cheap petrol comes at a cost to our exports

Gimmicks and tricks are far easier than trying to come up with a workable republican model

The scandal that reveals Australia’s real moral crisis

The appeal of a rude, narcissistic reality TV star cannot be under-estimated

The Woolies’ Employee of the Month has more merit than the Australian of the Year

They are too divided and their campaigns too shambolic to seize this opportunity

The publishers have asked for all review copies of That Was the Church That Was to be returned

The French president’s response to the November terror attacks has left him increasingly isolated and unpopular

The helmsman’s a woman, the wardrooms are unisex... but the stokers are disappearing in droves

I thought it was part of our job to promote tolerance and challenge orthodoxy. I was wrong

Ten years ago the National Health Service eased my father’s last days. My mother, this year, was not nearly so lucky

The care system’s eagerness to separate babies from parents is taking a large but secret toll

Jacob Zuma's economic mismanagement has a benefit for tourists: it’s as if a whole country has become half-price

David Cameron must stop campaigning for an ‘in’ vote and improve the terms of his inadequate deal

Plus: more migrant children drowning, Islamic State kill 71 in Damascus, Ted Cruz beats Donald Trump in Iowa

Also in Alexander Chancellor’s diary: Honouring Lord Hutchinson, Olivia de Havilland and Aung San Suu Kyi

Elections, US presidential election 2016, Iowa caucuses 2016, Oxford University, University admissions, Golf, Tax

The ancients – unlike our Prime Minister — recognised it as a vital quality

One thing was certain: keeping the British there long-term wouldn’t help

Madness Sir: I always enjoy The Spectator book reviews. The review by Terry Barnes on Jeremy Sammut’s excellent book The…

Even if his bubble was burst in Iowa, his campaign has exposed deep cracks in the GOP power structure

Also in Charles Moore’s Notes: US media groupthink; ‘Islamophobic’ hate crimes; remembering George Weidenfeld

It would be Trumpageddon for all the worst people in Britain, and the prospect is rather attractive

It need not rule out selection by merit – but to assess ‘merit’, potential as well as performance should be considered

Hardly anyone voted when it was Boris vs Ken – they’ll care even less about Zac vs Sadiq. And it doesn’t matter anyway

Plus: Some good economic news; a film-worthy banking drama; and the case for using your connections

Jean Stein’s collection of Tinseltown tittle-tattle is moderately interesting, unpleasantly salacious and largely unsourced

Litvinoff apparently knew everyone in Sixties London, including Lucian Freud, Mick Jagger to Ronnie Kray (who slashed his face)

Peter Davidson’s meditation on the role of twilight in European culture is too nebulous — or protean — to be very illuminating

Daisy Dunn’s own passion for the earthy yet urbane Catullus is evident in her skilful recreation of his life and times

Following in the steps of Orwell, Judah reports on the desperate circumstances of the city’s (mainly immigrant) down-and-outs

According to the distinguished Egyptologist Susan Brind Morrow, the famous pyramid texts are more poetic — if simpler — than previously thought

Trevor Royle gives an even-handed account of this last desperate throw of the dice for Bonnie Prince Charlie

When Breath Becomes Air is the neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s powerful — and posthumous — account of finding himself on the wrong end of the scalpel

Owen Hatherley’s polemic on public expenditure cuts is less ranty — and more reflective — than one might expect

Will Andrew Hankinson’s study of Raoul Moat’s spree-killing obsession become a script for further murder?

Andrea Wulf has brilliantly resurrected the gifted naturalist and geographer who was once (bar Napoleon) the most famous man in Europe

Mick Herron’s novel explodes like a firecracker in all directions when an MI5 misfit is kidnapped

Avoiding German-language sources doesn't help when you're arguing about the Holocaust

Dashi Namdakov’s 'grotesque' She Guardian is a worthy first winner of our new annual award

Plus: a fascinating snapshot of home-grown styling versus bought-in from the Royal Ballet in Rhapsody

The casting is a dream but the script lacks nuance and is painfully padded out, and the only decent moment is an outtake played over the end credits

Plus: a new play about bulgy-eyed comedian Marty Feldman at Leicester Square Theatre directed with subtlety and quietness by Terry Jones

Plus: A delightful new display of early Tom Wesselmann collages at David Zwirner that shows a more subtle and complex artist than at first appears

Plus: a second way not to do French operetta at St John’s Smith Square from Opera Danube who took on Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld

Plus: a solo voice singing ‘Amazing Grace’ from inside a British prison stops Kate Chisholm dead in her tracks

Plus: the woman who agreed to have sex with Axl Rose as part of the Guns N’ Roses track ‘Rocket Queen’

Enthusiastically touted as the first Australian sitcom in fifteen years, Channel 9’s highly promoted Here Come the Habibs has a…

It may well be the most stimulating theatre presentation of the year and it is just what the most prestigious…

These gripping memoirs of a king, coup-maker and exile are looking for an English-language publisher

Denis may have been a Cambridge-educated former Special Branch officer but he couldn’t convince me to believe in ghosts

It was so informative and entertaining I might have to break the speed limit so that I can go on another one

Thistlecrack and Yanworth are bankers, based on their form at Festival Trials Day

The Brits have done brilliantly in Icelandair’s annual bridge festival in Reykjavik and this year was no different. The winners…

Alexander Alekhine was one of the immortals of the chessboard — world champion from 1927, when in an epic war…

White to play. This position is from Alekhine-Flohr, Bled 1931. White has a positional advantage but can you spot the…

In Competition No. 2933 you were invited to submit a blurb for a misery memoir. Thanks to Tom Dulake for…

Unclued lights (including one of two words and three pairs, 37 doing double duty) are characters in a play. A…

WARREN MITCHELL (42/43), STAR (39) of stage and screen, died on 14th November 2015. He won an Olivier Award as…

They are now the lowest-achieving group in Britain

One day soon he’ll be off to China for big money. He just has some public contract negotiation to do first

Plus: How to stop neighbours interfering in puppy training; and letting a widower down gently

One of the most talked-about restaurants of the Thatcher era turns to self-mythology

From Alfred the Great to Kim Kardashian