And so those who kill by the polls now refuse to be judged by them. It was wrong of Malcolm…

Not too much should be made of my enforced overnight under the stars, halfway down the western slope of Mt…

The Battle of Ideas will not be won by telling students what words they may or may not use

Choose whichever language you want, but the facts are indisputable

The marriage equality debate can only be resolved with a plebiscite

Rumana was a sari-clad, olive-skinned woman who presented to my western Sydney practice. She had arrived months earlier to live…

The Prime Minister’s latest Captain’s Pick is far more damaging than any knighthood ever was

Throughout much of the Middle East, monarchists offer a way to bring about modernity and tackle Islamism

Can you believe that after the Brussels attacks the BBC took us on a tour of vulnerable London Tube stations?

There are far fewer ‘elite’ armed officers than we think... but their methods are creeping into everyday policing

The message that the Republican frontrunner is anti-feminist is inflicting  damage on him

Charles is a serious, decent and admirable man. But he should renounce the throne in advance

Dentists will tell you cheerfully – and accurately – how little over-the-counter products do. But they’re keen to get in on the business

With their puritanical lifestyles, the young are getting it all wrong

Hundreds of millions are handed out to mega-­charities, pressure groups, think tanks, multi­nationals, councils and NGOs

This new law is a charter for busybodies and profiteers that won’t stop irresponsible owners and breeders

In Downtown, you glimpse the city LA might have been – and might yet still be

The answer is a simpler system with flatter rates

Home Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, said that the government would like a buyer to save Port Talbot steelworks. ‘We’re…

Also in Virginia Ironside’s diary: why Putin’s facelift is so obvious; camouflage; saving a park; when to visit the doctor

Also in our Barometer column: tax havens, domestic abuse and grammar schools

Mental workouts and moral inventories

From ‘Per Mare, Per Terras, Per Coelum’, The Spectator, 8 April 1916: The very worst the Germans can do in the way…

Illegal entry Sir: ‘Shoaib M Khan (nothing illegal about them – 2 April) is mistaken. It is well and truly…

But victory for Sadiq Khan in the mayoral election could gift the Tories more years of abysmal opposition from Jeremy Corbyn.

Also in The Spectator’s Notes: sheep; the smell of spring; my nephew’s art; FGM

They are not ‘democracy at work’ — they are a recourse for tyrants

Without them, many of the artefacts now demanded back from museums simply wouldn’t have survived

Also in Any Other Business: the balance of payments; and a new job for Mossack Fonseca

Frances Wilson goes in pursuit of the ‘Pope of Opium’ — the first writer to make drug-taking seem dangerously exotic

Will Caroline Alexander’s translation of the Iliad — the first in English by a woman — prove the definitive one?

St Paul’s ablaze in 1666 makes a vivid backdrop to Andrew Taylor’s latest thrilling novel

Ghislaine Kenyon celebrates the much-loved artist, whose work (says a fellow artist) feels like a gulp of fresh air

Jenni Fagan’s latest dystopian novel — set in Scotland in 2020 — is enough to give one the shivers

The desperate sexual compulsion at the heart of Garth Greenwell’s novel is as oppressive as its Soviet-style setting

In an effort to make things better, the founding fathers of the Irish Republic made things much, much worse, according to Ruth Dudley Edwards’s The Seven

Gregory Woods’s Homintern opens with a bracing demolition of homophobia but rapidly descends into social tittle-tattle

Matthew Desmond’s account of the relentless downward spiral of America’s dirt poor — and the greed of their ruthless evictors — makes for devastating reading

With little to go on, says Nicola Barker, Michael Haag has cunningly constructed an imaginative, sympathetic portrait of the seductive ‘13th disciple’

New crime fiction from Gillian Slovo, Chris Brookmyre, Helen Fitzgerald and Bill Beverley

Having regained her freedom, the Nobel peace prize-winner seems to have lost interest in human rights, according to Peter Popham

The British Museum’s new exhibition, Sicily: culture and conquest, celebrates the glories of this multi-ethnic, quadrilingual powerhouse

Compton Verney’s Shakespeare in Art show is all but ruined by the ambient sounds – visit instead its small but superb companion exhibition Boydell’s Vision

An anarchic musical cut-up of Wilde’s play that’s dangerously hilarious is revived at the Barbican Theatre

By leaving the public behind modernists pushed music into a cul-de-sac, the only way out of which has been a headlong rush into superficial soft-harmony

A patchwork family flee the Sri Lankan civil war for Paris, where Jacques Audiard’s Palme d’Or-winner reaches a climax of symphonic heft

Plus: how Richard Alston Dance Company is finally winning me over

Plus: why I’m not convinced The Caretaker is a masterpiece

Geldof is unfailingly good company in this engaging, informative and thoughtful piece of television

Plus: a lost early screenplay by Alan Bennett, Denmark Hill, is given a beautifully paced performance on Radio 4

Contemporary dance may not be to everyone’s taste but too many tired, grey performances of Swan Lake will encourage converts.…

Boys enjoy it more than girls — but we knew that all along

I took the dead mouse with a horse and handed it back to him. He threw the mouse down again

It looks as though my only option is to move to an unheated cottage in Surrey

Leave.eu's 'balanced view' was anything but – and deeply unconvincing

Well done to Janet and her team for their victory at the London Easter Congress. My own team — David…

Sergey Karjakin, who in 2002 became the world’s youngest-ever grandmaster at the age of 12 years and seven months, has…

White to play. This is a variation from Aronian-Svidler, Moscow 2016. In this game Aronian misplayed his attack and Svidler…

In Competition No. 2942 you were invited to submit a rhyme incorporating the lines ‘What are little girls made of?’…

Four unclued lights (eight words in all) form a phrase describing an activity. The other unclued lights give the author,…

The works were Striding Folly (anagram of 11/22), Whose Body? (36/1D), The Nine Tailors (2/48), Strong Poison (9/30) and Gaudy…

Do they not know, or have they forgotten, that Guardian Media Group used a shell company in the Cayman Islands?

Every trend has a counter-trend. And Argos might just be the counter-trend to Amazon

Plus: pricing a holiday let from a friend; keeping shoes stylish while cooking

This column has had harsh words for Bordelais vignerons. But Anthony Barton has always been an exception

Of course the wearing of dreadlocks has a meaning, even if few can agree on it