T hough largely forgotten now, the headlines ten years ago this week had an uncanny resemblance to those of the past few days. There was an emergency bailout, demands to slash...

holds that MPs have a three-month summer break. If only. I have spent more time canvassing, selling tombola tickets and doing politics than ever before. And then on the eve of...

G ordon Brown’s critics are confused. For months they have been accusing him of dithering, of timidity, of being unable to make the bold moves that are needed if his...

W e all know that everything about money comes down to confidence, but normally, because we have that confidence, we do not think about what this means. Now we must. We have...

MONDAY Everyone in a panic about our Greek taverna line. Am starting to wish I never mentioned it. DD keeps ringing up to tell Gids about big game hunting. ‘I know, I know,’...

versus George is the key battle Stand by for a mighty clash between two politicians, says Fraser Nelson . The now infamous dinner between Mandelson and Osborne was a cordial...

P.G. Morgan goes in search of the truth about the great director’s flight from the US courts — and uncovers some uncomfortable truths worthy of a scene in Chinatown H igh...

Martin Vander Weyer says that the collapse in the markets reflects a loss of confidence that is out of proportion to all reason: a trip to Mamma Mia! is the answer to this...

Nominations continue to roll in for the inaugural Spectator’s Readers’ Representative. This week saw several MPs nominated for their campaigning work. Richard Hamilton...

Sarfraz Manzoor celebrates an iftar meal with homeless people and his fellow Muslims, a web-generated ‘flashmob’ observing an Islamic tradition of generosity to the needy I...

Rod Liddle — a former editor of the Today programme — says that the Corporation must stop pretending to be democratic if it is to keep the licence fee. Unashamed elitism is...

Sir: While I do not flinch from looking on the Clinton era as a disaster for its neglect of the threat to global security posed by bin Laden et al and the tacit encouragement of...

Sir: I am pleased that it annoys Rod Liddle (Liddle Britain, 4 October) as much as it does me that BBC newsreaders have the annoying habit of affecting the local dialect to...

Sir: It is good that the Vatican is finally taking a firmer line against the Medjugorje cult (‘Sex, lies and apparitions’, 4 October). Too many of my fellow Catholics have...

Sir: In your article focused on Medjugorje the overdue action by the Vatican against the known activities of Fr Vlasic is of course a defence of the Medjugorjian phenomenon...

Sir: Peter B. Martin’s letter (Letters, 4 October) took me back to a rain-swept moor near Catterick Camp in September, 1954. National service recruits from the 65th Training...

Sir: As Paul Johnson should know (And another thing, 4 October), there never was an Emperor Charles V of Spain. Karl V of Austria (technically a Duchy) was also King Carlos...

the current Pope. But since his latest piece shows God divulging to him His plans for the universe, he can probably take that apparent snub with equanimity. Tim Hudson (Dr)...

Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 4 October) touches on an issue which has been the occasional subject of my thoughts since the Conservatives coined their slogan...

Sir: Your new acquisition Giles Coren (‘I’m proud to be famous for being rude’, 4 October) says he is proud to be famous for being rude. I wonder what Dot Wordsworth...

DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Joe Citizen (a citizen) Jack and Jill Jones (Joe’s neighbours) Mr Whatam-Ibid (a surveyor) Mr Ballpark-Estimate (a valuer) Ms Dreamhomes (an estate agent)...

P eople who are infuriated by the huge sums paid for stuffed animals in tanks and the adulation heaped on Francis Bacon’s squiggly horrors should grasp that there is no reason...

Matthew Lynn says Britain’s largest building society prospered by refusing to follow fashion — while its bolder, greedier rivals have all gone bust or been taken over O ver...

Ross Clark S eldom has tax featured in the media over the past decade without the lanky figure of Robert Chote of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, or his predecessor Andrew...

Leading hedge-fund manager Paul Marshall says Rowan Williams was wrong to scapegoat share traders W hen Rowan Williams and John Sentamu took up their crosiers against...

Judi Bevan hears the views of Paul Myners, the left-leaning millionaire art collector who has just become Gordon Brown’s City minister T here is a telling mischief about the...

Ian Cowie agrees with the contrarian investor Anthony Bolton that this is a moment to buy shares, not sell them J ust as directors’ dealings often reveal more about the...

W hen the credit crunch first hit, Icelanders blamed everyone but themselves: international banks for their loss of faith, hedge-funders in London for betting on the country...

On stage from the start Sam Leith H ENRY : V IRTUOUS P RINCE by David Starkey HarperPress £25, pp. 413, ISBN 9780007247714 ✆ £ 20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A mong...

Anthony Beachey T HE S NOWBALL by Alice Schroeder Bloomsbury, £25, pp. 976, ISBN 9780747591917 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T he perfect timing of this book rivals...

Andrew Taylor A lan Furst’s e s p i o nage novels have a melancholic tinge, depending, as they so often do, on the debacles of recent history and, on a personal level, on the...

Jane Ridley T HE H ORSEY L IFE by Simon Barnes Short Books, £12.99, pp. 206, ISBN 9781906021429 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 D olly Dolores was a bigbottomed...

S O Y OU W ANT TO T RY D RUGS ? (1980) by Fiona Foster and Alexander McCall Smith A lexander McCall Smith is best known for his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agenc y series of...

Paul Binding T HE B EACON by Susan Hill Chatto, £10, pp. 154, ISBN 9780701183400 ✆ £8 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 O f the four Prime siblings of the Beacon farm, Frank,...

rolling banks of cloud, sure of its way, the Führer’s plane descends — over half-glimpsed views of bell-towers, alleyways, rooftops, tall-spired churches, the ancient (now...

Dominic Cooke on why we must guard against a self-perpetuating climate of fear and timidity F orty years ago, the Theatres Bill removed from the Lord Chamberlain his...

Andrew Lambirth Joan Eardley The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, London W1, until 20 December T he interplay between realism and abstraction that occurred in the 1950s...

Giannandrea Poesio Merce Cunningham Dance Company Barbican swan Lake Royal Opera House scottish Ballet Queen Elizabeth Hall A s if by tacit agreement, Dance Umbrella and the...

Lloyd Evans Girl with a Pearl Earring Theatre Royal Haymarket Waste Almeida Creditors Donmar I don’t know much about art but I know what I dislike. Art history. It forces...

Michael Tanner Cavalleria rusticana & I Pagliacci English National Opera Don Giovanni Royal Opera C avalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci tend to be regarded by opera buffs as a...

Harry Mount T hese days, Charles Pooter, the City clerk and narrator of George and Weedon Grossmith’s The Diary of a Nobody ( 1892) — the enduring comedy of hum-drum...

Deborah Ross Gomorrah 15, Nationwide G omorrah is a mafia film and while we are well used to mafia films and even like some of them — for example, and if I recall rightly,...

Charles Spencer T his is a time for making the most of small mercies. One of the greatest of these, as the financial system collapses around us, is the splendid joke that is...

Peter Phillips F or some reason October this year is yielding the kind of running about the place more normally associated with the summer festivals. From Naples to St Asaph,...

Kate Chisholm ‘I couldn’t understand most of it. I mean I could understand each word but not when they were put together,’ says one of the characters in Tulips in Winter...

Simon Hoggart T here’s something agreeably aimless, even melancholy, about late Saturday afternoons, after you’ve finished whatever you were doing in the day and before...

Taki New York T he war on terror, as the most inarticulate man ever to inhabit the White House calls it, has now lasted longer than the second world war. And take it from Taki,...

Jeremy Clarke T here was this evil Albanian gang specialising in kidnapping young girls, forcibly addicting them to heroin and selling them on to wealthy Arabs as sex slaves....

Melissa Kite I have been living in hotels for so long I am beginning to hallucinate. For example, at an EU summit on Saturday I could have sworn that Nicolas Sarkozy winked at...

One Highlands estate is to become a wilderness reserve, writes Lisa Marie Johnson I ’ve recently found myself musing on why, in this age of luxury linens and 24-hour room...

STATUS ANXIETY I cannot help feeling a certain affinity with Peter Mandelson. Like me, he has been given a number of high-profile jobs, only to lose them in slightly dubious...

In 1885 W.T. Stead bought a 13-year-old girl for £5 as part of his campaign to get the age of consent raised to 16. He was the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette , an evening...

T he evenings are getting darker, someone called Libor has nicked all our money, and Scarlett Johansson’s got married. There’s little to smile about. So in a spirit of pro...

Q. Next week I will visit London where I have been invited to an exhibition in Cork Street by the artist Richard Foster. Since I understand he is one of the so-called Pinstripe...