The tragic death in Iraq of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull under US 'friendly fire' in March 2003 has become a bleak parable of the flaws at the heart of the US-UK 'special...

SALLY EMERSON Since my two children have dispersed to Hollywood and gap-year Sydney, I spend a great deal of time at home with the individual who needs me most: my house — mean,...

FRASER NELSON 1 t is a strange form of bombardment. Days, sometimes weeks, can pass without any movement from the Metropolitan Police and it seems as if the all-clear is about...

CHARLES MOORE At the same time as it tries to loosen things up, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is told by the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, that schools must...

By Tamzin Lightwater MONDAY What a morning! Was having coffee with Jed's new PA, Janice. Lovely lady. V spiritual — although some might say a bit severelooking with the shaved...

Ross Clark investigates the government's plans to deal with a human flu pandemic, and finds that the preparations for mass drug treatment are in a scandalous mess — unless, that...

Last week James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson exposed the full extent of educational failure in this country. Here they explain the simple steps that could change everything...

I was defrosting the fridge a few days ago and listening to Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre, that book about Eddie Chapman, the wartime double agent, on the wireless. The reader...

Irwin Stelzer says that we must ask ourselves how Gordon Brown and David Cameron would each cope with the pressure of office and the 'unknown unknowns' Cordon Brown used an...

Toby Young is not impressed by Wellington College's classes in 'Happiness', which he says are a wishy-washy mixture of anger management and relativism passing through the...

Carla Powell says that the case of Catholic agencies and gay adoption points to a slippery slope, at the bottom of which sermons are recorded and handed to the police The temper...

Rod Liddle says that the case of the Muslim King Fahad Academy shows that you cannot encourage rampant diversity and then be surprised when the consequence is sectarianism At...

From John Parfitt Sir: Matthew Parris should do better than his elegant nonsense about so-called gay adoption (Another voice, 3 February). Until the inclusiveness lobby turned...

From Nick Reeves Sir: Charles Moore is wrong to suggest that environmentalists are predicting the end of Planet Earth unless we act now on climate change (The Spectator's Notes,...

From David Roberts Sir: What's all the fuss about selling honours? They've always been for sale. In The Inimitable Jeeves (1924) Bingo's uncle is raised to the peerage. 'A...

From Alexander Massey Sir: Israel guilty of destabilising 'not just the Middle East but much of the rest of the world' (Jonathan Sumption, Books, 3 February)? Sure, and global...

From Sir Tim Rice Sir: I was thrilled beyond measure to see a cartoon in this week's Spectator which could only be appreciated by those familiar with the Marcels' 1961 No. 1 hit...

Who's this professor? From Tom Burkard Sir: However much educational standards have deteriorated in recent years, it seems that editorial standards have fallen even further...

From Michael R.V Whitman Sir: James Forsyth says that either John McCain — bound for ever to the Iraq debacle and a major player in the late and unlamented Monkey Congress — or...

Chosts are fashionable just now. There are two productions of Ibsen's play and a movie. At dinner parties, if conversation falters or begins to move down forbidden (by me)...

Judi Bevan meets inexhaustible international dealmaker Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of Citigroup Europe — who is very pleased with his latest purchase, the internet bank Egg Iv...

Joanna Pitman Not many people seem to realise this, but it's cheaper in the long run to buy a solid carved mahogany antique chest of drawers than a modern pine one from Ikea....

ROBERT BEAUMONT IN SHEFFIELD lunkett Is Blind' screamed a pertinent piece of graffiti in Sheffield city centre in the 1980s. This wasn't just a statement of the bleeding...

Sam Leith RICHTER'S SCALE: MEASURE OF AN EARTHQUAKE, MEASURE OF A MAN by Susan Elizabeth Hough Princeton, £17.95, pp. 337, ISBN 9780691128078 © £1436 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429...

Ian Thomson WITH VINE-LEAVES IN HIS HAIR by Paul Binding Norvik Press, £14.95, pp. 230, ISBN 187004164X www.norvikpress.corn email: norvik.press@uae.ac.uk Henrik Ibsen's...

Non-fiction: Alec Douglas-Home by D. R. Thorpe (Politicos, £14.99) Penguin Special by Jeremy Lewis (Penguin, £9.99) Generals by Mark Urban (Faber, £8.99) Luftwaffe Letters by...

Digby Durrant WINTERING by Derek Johns Potobello, f7.99, pp. 199, ISBN 9781846270222 © £6.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Wintering, a good and concisely written first novel...

William Skidelsky THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS: VOLUME I edited by Philip Gourevitch Canongate, 14.99, pp. 510, ISBN 9781841959252 © £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 The...

Andrew Taylor Natasha Cooper's heroine, Trish Maguire, is a barrister who subverts the stereotypes, an outsider whose troubled background sometimes gives her more in common with...

Peter Eyre KENNETH TYNAN: THEATRE WRITINGS edited by Dominic Shellard Nick Hem Books, £20, pp. 278, ISBN 9781854590503 £16.79 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 KENNETH TYNAN:...

Charlotte Moore AFTERWARDS by Rachel Seiffert Heinemann, £14.99, pp. 327, ISBN 978043401186X © £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Alice, the result of a teenage mistake, was...

Jeremy Treglown RISKY BUSINESS: PEOPLE, PASTIMES, POKER AND BOOKS by Al Alvarez Bloomsbury, £12.99, pp. 409, ISBN 9780747587446 © £1039 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 1 f you...

The artist Fothergill; the scene an Essex landscape. Tall trees framing the fields, a church beyond. And riding towards the painter on a sturdy cob A country figure followed by...

Andrew Lambirth talks to the artist Maggi Hambling about drawing, the sea and her terrier 1'm talking to Maggi Hambling in the downstairs studio of her south London home,...

Henrietta Bredin The great lyric poets of the English language wrote — and, I hope, are still writing — words which have their own melodic quality, cadences which lure composers...

Lloyd Evans Sit and Shiver Hackney Empire Pinter's People Theatre Royal Haymarket The Seagull Royal Court Steven Berkoff came home to Hackney last week with an excellent new...

Marcus Berkmann How pleasant it has been to hear songs from the new Norah Jones album on the radio these past few weeks. Soft, deftly performed, vaguely jazzy in that way that...

Michael Tanner II Trovatore Children's Music Workshop; Royal Opera House Ihad the unusual opportunity of seeing two productions of R Trovatore in one day last week, the...

It seems that the fuss which surrounded the appointment of Stephen Layton as organist and choirmaster of Trinity College, Cambridge some 15 months ago has not gone away. Rumour...

Deborah Ross For Your Consideration 1224, Nationwide s far as I can tell, Christopher Guest's latest film, For Your Consideration, pretty much bombed in America, which must be a...

James Delingpole The other day Boy sat the scholarship for possibly the most gorgeously wonderful prep school in the land, where the teaching is so inspiring, the headmaster so...

Kate Chisholm T,ast time I was in Delhi I was amazed by how fast it had changed in less than five years — hard hats on the scooter-riders, no more brightly decorated,...

Taki Tam seriously thinking of suing Silvio Berlusconi for plagiarising many of my lines. I love Berlusconi, but while he was crooning on board a liner long before he made his...

Jeremy Clarke Las Alpujan-as There's a man in one of the high mountain villages who lives with a cow and spends much of his time studying the cloud formations. By all accounts...

Aidan Hartley Malindi our help is requested,' my mother I wrote in a note to me on the Kenya coast. She often writes to me, or telephones, even though our houses are metres...

Neil Collins is leaving on a private jet plane Ah, the glamour of the private jet. Others may struggle in the misery and chaos that big airports promise nowadays, but here's...

Alistair Scott says it's no longer the bleak midwinter in Zermatt Twenty years ago at the Christmas Eve carol service in the absurdly quaint St Peter's English church in Zermatt...

Dear Maly Q. At a recent lunch in an hotel to celebrate my parents' wedding anniversary, my wife and I found ourselves engaged in animated conversation by our respective...

FRANK KEATING Ignore an atoning little flurry at the death, England's cricket winter has been a ghastly shambles. Embarked upon with such overweening bumptiousness — an...