The image of the benign, slightly fuddy-duddy old eccentric has been wrong for some time. But in recent weeks, the…

When Senator Eric Abetz was a raw youth of 23, he had what he calls an ‘instructive’ experience. A newly…

Writing about the need to reform the ABC is profoundly depressing. You can draw attention to its failure to provide…

Here in Patterson Lakes — Melbourne’s Mecca for cashed-up tradies and tattooed ladies — Tony Abbott has an image problem.…

The new movie resonates with Eighties London adland, albeit in a less cartoonish fashion

And I want the public broadcaster to be privatised

Last October, the ABC aired two consecutive episodes of its flagship science programme, Catalyst, which claimed the causal link between…

We could be seven months away from the end of Britain. It's time to worry

The next president and the people she drives crazy

If you want to understand mass hysteria, watch a second-rate stand-up pick on an accountant

David Cameron’s government continues to subsidise its enemies

What Catholics really talk about in the confession box

How the first world war inspired the EU. And why its supporters won’t tell you

One of the many things I love about my wife is that she doesn’t make me do anything for Valentine’s…

Most floods are an act of nature. This one belongs to the Environment Agency

Home The Somerset Levels continued to wallow in floods. The Environment Agency was widely blamed for not having dredged channels,…

Plus: The other referendum Scotland needs, a revolution in life jackets, suggested topics for David Cameron

Plus: The countries with most cancer, and where the Tube runs all night

Private pain Sir: A line in Alec Marsh’s article (‘Britain’s one-child policy’, 1 February) caught my eye; that school fees…

A new voting system could be Miliband's legacy. It could also backfire disastrously

Plus: The last newspaper diarist who knew his stuff, and Classic FM vs Radio 3

It links together Sally Morgan and Philip Seymour Hoffman

‘No’ won’t be Scotland’s final answer. Not unless the unionist parties get ready now

It seems the only sane celebrities are politicians

Plus: How the EU saved bankers’ bonuses, and Michael O’Leary’s new manners

It made Britain a world power, but unleashed the kind of greed that led to the wolves of Wall Street, according to the late great Andro Linklater in Owning the Earth

In Portrait Gallery, Edward Greenfield remembers the characters he met in his days as a classical music reviewer — revealing his own character in the process

The author bought bushland, replanted trees and befriended birds, as she recounts in White Beech. Then she tried to find its former Aboriginal owners...

Mike Toms's Owls may lack a jolly anecdote or two, but mainly it's a hoot

Hard to own, harder to shoot. Zooming in on the life of Jumbo, John Sutherland shows us the plight of captive animals — and of humans

Barry Miles's biography is in danger of overemphasising Borroughs as a scientist and a shaman, diminishing both the novelist and literature

The Virgin empire may be a house of cards, as Tom Bower argues in Behind the Mask. But let's give Branson credit for his shrewdness and survival instincts

Dylan, Kerouac, Joplin, Vidal, Vicious — all checked in at this legendary Manhattan hotel

Yes, economics really is a dismal science, if this book is to be believed. Even when things are going right,…

Could splashing public money on city of culture initiatives make good business sense? William Cook reports

Its exhibition on the London Group is a show many larger public institutions would be proud to have put on

Plus: Even as a five-year-old, I had more imaginative power than the likes of Hunter S. Thompson

The Royal Opera House's production is one of the worst I've seen — and there's been stiff competition

He never seeks our affection or sympathy, but somehow wins both

Paddy MacAloon always had talent, but in Crimson/Red he seems to have regained his confidence

In this case, the leftists may be right — it was all about oil

This week, I listened to the Barchester dramas, and to a man reuniting with the person who had saved him from suicide

What ex-residents of Heygate Estate did about a planned sculpture that wasn't really about 'regenerating' the neighbourhood

I felt sadness after three days of non-stop revelry, for I know a twilight party when I see one...

The driver appeared. He wasn't going to give us any booze, he said, because our young ladies were out of control

Cydney needs to be gainfully employed, and would languish on the dole or at jobseekers' training

While my neighbours and I fought valiantly against a windfarm project, I think it was state-funding reductions that finally stopped it

Plus: The sporting woman of the moment who's turning out tuned-to-the-minute steeplechasers

January ended for me with the annual Icelandic Bridge Festival in Reykjavik. There may be a better tournament but I…

Daniel Johnson, the distinguished editor of Standpoint magazine, can be bracketed with Tim Congdon and Dominic Lawson, as having had…

White to play. This is from Johnson-Finch, Marlow 1974. White is building up a strong attack on the kingside and…

In Competition 2833 you were invited to submit an extract from the adolescent diary of a well-known public figure, living…

Unclued lights (including two of two words and an accent to be ignored) can be expressed in such a way…

Each pair consists of two in a ‘row’ in a variety of meanings. PURL (14) & PLAIN (25) (line of…

The Education Secretary is right about the teaching establishment – show weakness, and they’ll destroy you

Elite sport is about constant reinvention. Right now, few sides need that more than England’s cricketers

Plus: Dealing with an obnoxious flirt at a grand lunch

Street food for people who hate streets, world cuisine for people from somewhere else

A borrowed German word that has developed a false English back-story