Lo and behold the number of politicians enjoying a last minute Road to Damascus conversion – or should that be…

The Royal Commission into child abuse has already done enormous service in establishing, and making public, the vast range of…

Has Australia’s most valuable currency lost its value?

Don’t mention the Surplus, Mr Fawlty

I land six weeks after the Israeli elections and only a few days ahead of the British ones. Jerusalem’s political…

The mis-named ‘marriage equality’ issue must be decided by the people, not by Parliament

The ‘Recognise’ campaign is being pushed by Big (Old) Men hoping to relive past glories

The safest country in the Middle East for Christians? Israel.

These days, the person trying to do the right thing by the rest of us is the rarity

Increasingly, we’re allowing the health service to boss us around to a ridiculous degree

Childhood obesity is falling. Adult obesity is flatlining. And it’s longevity that really costs the NHS

He was a phenomenally gifted politician, and a Highland crofter to his core

It’s not just a new king. It’s a new world – one where desert oil is suddenly less important

Laughably improbable candidates are an essential part of the process — and many of them do pretty well out of it…

As academic staff suffer and ever more power is granted to donors, one slice of university staff seem to be doing very well

All my female friends are addicted to emoji. And now I finally understand

Sad, I know, but most men would much prefer the money

Plus: Another sign of how overblown the phone-hacking saga was

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, toured Europe trying to gain support for reforms to favour Britain’s position in the…

Plus: Labour’s leadership crisis, the Lib Dems’ fatal mistake, and the joys of life without Twitter

Plus: Mothers’ ages, how many words it takes to define human rights, and the death toll of World Cup construction

What he said about corruption still rings true: ‘The most serious diseases are those diffused from the head’

From ‘Depression and its Causes’, The Spectator, 6 June 1915: The British nation have still great possessions in the way of…

Plus: What the obituaries page teaches Lord Tebbit

Those who might drive the ‘no’ side are waiting until after renegotiation. They will find themselves with much ground to make up

Plus: Chumocracy on the Privy Council; a new case for ‘first past the post’; and the risks of Scottish political life

The countries that can actually play the game didn’t vote for Sepp Blatter, but that didn’t mean they behaved much better

It’s just not enough to parrot received opinions. If we care, we must ask questions

By the time complaints are rejected, the damage is done: journalists are fined days of work for voicing unpopular opinions

Plus: A bank that really is going to take a Hippocratic oath, and the future of cannabis stocks

The Adventures of Alice Laselles reveals much about the future queen — including her dearest childhood wish to have a room of her own

Repetitive and highfalutin, I Saw a Man, involving a distant drone strike and close-ups of a failing marriage, feels rushed and undeveloped

With Quicksand, a flaccid carrier bag of a comic romp, I fear that Steve Toltz is trying to find out

In Station to Station, former commuter James Attlee finds romance and malarkey along the line to Bristol

Catherine Lampert’s revelations about Frank Auerbach include the astonishing claim that, as an orphan, he never felt the need of parents

Stephen King’s latest foray into hard-boiled detective fiction has a definite whiff of Elmore Leonard — without the humour

The more we know about environmental damage, according to Michael McCarthy’s The Moth Snowstorm, the more of it we seem to do

Gary Mead highlights the many problems involved with awarding the VC. How can courage be graded? And who should be the judge?

Béla Bartók cannot really be considered Hungary’s ‘national’ composer at a time when borders were constantly being redrawn — but he was an undoubted hero when it came to collecting folk music

Two new books on Sicily celebrate the island’s rich history, from the ancient Greeks to Cosa Nostra (but both are wrong about Leonardo Sciascia)

Two new books on internet trolling reveal that the geeks, hackers and misanthropes who are wrecking people’s lives are mainly young, male Americans — but with a fair smattering of Brits and Aussies

Stephen Grey’s The New Spymasters traces an astonishing transformation in MI5, MI6 and GCHQ — but at least some of the old rules apply

Will Gore wonders whether the arts should be at liberty to exploit real-life tragedy for entertainment

Peter Phillips sees weaknesses in the programming that suggests the pace of evolution is too slow

Plus: it’s a great, sad mystery that Guillem’s legacy is not visible in the current shambolic Royal Ballet where the best thing in their final 2014-15 programme is the music

Michael Craig-Martin has brought some much needed order to the primordial free-for-all that is the Summer Exhibition

Deborah Ross thinks director John Boorman should have spoken to her first before embarking on this uninteresting and misguided sequel

Plus: catch one of the funniest stage comedians alive in the Olivier’s new production of The Beaux’ Stratagem

When they spoke, they made little to no sense, but when they sang and played they came close to perfection, says Melissa Kite

For a good sitcom, catch the latest series of BBC2’s Episodes. Plus: does BBC2’s The Game end on an infuriating cliffhanger finale with the cry of ‘second series, please’? Of course it does

Plus: the World Service’s documentary about Tibet’s female football team shows why we must preserve this corner of the BBC from further cuts

Another announcement: more cultural infrastructure to dramatically increase the exhibition space at the Art Gallery of NSW. The architects are…

This depressing inevitability makes me want to go on a cruise  with Spectator readers for the next five years

Your entries to the ‘drunkest I’ve ever been’ contest make me feel sober and upright by comparison

The payments for channels I never watch grow ever bigger and more inexplicable

Or so the newspapers would have us believe

The Hacketts are probably the best known bridge-playing family in the world. They live in Manchester but travel constantly —…

Boris Gulko, celebrated both as a grandmaster and a former Soviet dissident, has recently completed his great trilogy of instructional…

Black to play. This is from Caruana-Jakovenko, Khanty-Mansiysk 2015. Black is winning -easily, but can you find the most accurate…

In Competition No. 2900 you were invited to write a short story that ends on a condiment of your choice.…

The theme word is 29 down, which defines each of the other unclued lights (including one of two words) in…

‘THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH YIELDING PLACE TO NEW’, from Tennyson’s IDYLLS OF THE KING, suggests the outcome of ANAGRAMMATISM (2).…

But I have faith that they’ll carry on, at the Royal Court and elsewhere

It’s the last-minute swingers, not the ideological warriors, who make democracy function

Plus: Cleaning etiquette and a missing gallery invitation

…and what we drink there

It’s part of a fairly long tradition (although the OED still doesn’t have ‘brain fart’)