I n an interview with The Spectator last September, Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, advanced the following paradoxical political principle: ‘What we have tried to...

least of which was a wife’s burden of organising the traditional family Christmas. Inevitably, come Boxing Day, I was whey-faced with fatigue and singularly lacking in...

W hat do you give a Prime Minister who wants nothing? The Indian government has been asking itself this for some time, ahead of Gordon Brown’s official visit later this month....

in fact, convey a message about themselves. There is a vital distinction between candidates who, mentally, face outwards and those who face inwards. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton,...

But it’s all still to play for, says James Forsyth . Senator Clinton’s astonishing comeback does not man that Obama is finished by any means -— and John McCain has injected...

Denis MacShane says that the Conservatives’ refusal to align themselves with other centre-right parties on the Council of Europe has driven them into a shabby alliance with...

I was looking at bird-feeders reputed to resist the attentions of squirrels as a suitable present for my husband, who already often sits in his armchair nursing his whisky glass...

Aidan Hartley says that the violence in Kenya reflects the failure of the political class: better paid than their European counterparts in a nation where many live on 50p a day...

Bryan Forbes is drawn into a cyberspace scam by an indignant ‘happily married’ woman who invites him to Madrid to arrange a princely payout I t all began when an email greeted...

To understand those in power, says Alice Thomson , ask whether they are older or younger siblings. Brown, a middle son, is far less easy-going than Cameron, a youngest son K...

Rod Liddle , recovering from his Christmas parental responsibilities, is unimpressed by Harriet Harman’s instructions to fathers, which are undermined by the very social...

Sir: Boris Johnson is to be praised for his intention to honour the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (‘How, as mayor, I would help our brave troops’, 15–29 December)....

Sir: Michael Gove should be wary of accepting the standard Rwandan narrative, given his advocacy of democracy as a cure for Africa’s ills (‘An act of evil that recalled the...

Sir: Rod Liddle is quite right to forewarn us of the dreary and right-on nostalgia for 1968 that will fall upon us this year (‘Stand by for a year of nostalgia for 1968’, 5...

Sir: Robin Holloway has observed — as any viewer must — the Grainger museum’s uncanny resemblance to (as he puts it) ‘a public lavatory without users’ (Arts, 15–29 December)....

Sir: I thoroughly enjoyed the splendid articles by Christina Lamb and William Shawcross on the late Benazir Bhutto (‘The fears of Pakistanis’; ‘At war with hatred’, 5 January)....

Sir: I read with interest the results of your Christmas poll (‘Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?’ 15–29 December). Galatians iv 4 shows that in about ad 53 Paul hadn’t heard...

T he assumption, of course, is that Gordon Brown isn’t having much fun. That is what lurks behind the question, every time. On Monday’s Today programme, when Ed Stourton asked...

A t this time of year, exactly 70 years ago, I was taken to my first exhibition of professional conjuring. The magus called himself Dante — he was Danish-American and his real...

Allister Heath forecasts that Britain’s economy will suffer less than America’s, but that homeowners and consumers will still feel the pain — and blame it on Gordon Brown F...

A t the time of his death in 1972 my father worked for WD and HO Wills, the Bristol tobacco people. Wills were huge and rather enlightened employers and even now plenty of...

Philip Hensher H oW To T ALK A BoUT B ooKS Y oU H AVEN ’ T R EAD by Pierre Bayard, translated by Geoffrey Mehlman Granta, £12, pp. 176, ISBN 9781862079861 ✆ £9.59 (plus £2.45...

Carole Angier HOMECOMING by Bernhard Schlink Weidenfeld, £14.99, pp. 272, ISBN 9780375420917 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 B ernhard Schlink’s The Reader was one of...

Philip Mansel L ION OF J ORDAN : T HE L IFE OF K ING H USSEIN IN W AR AND P EACE by Avi Shlaim Allen Lane, £30, pp. 720, ISBN 9780713997774 ✆ £24 (plus 2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655...

Christopher Howse A B LoGGER ’ S M ANIFESTo by Eric Ringmar Anthem Press, £8.99, pp. 148, ISBN 9781843312888 ✆ £7.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T HE B ooKAHoLICS ’ G UIDE...

T he transition from iconoclastic youth to crusty age is common enough. The emergence of Martin Amis as a critic of Islam (at least in some of its manifestations) may be an...

T he Eileen Atkins experience — the word ‘interview’ doesn’t even begin to describe it — starts for me at about 3.30 on a brilliant, sunny afternoon in December. There I am in...

Andrew Lambirth Hidden Burne-Jones Leighton House Museum, 12 Holland Park Road, London W14, until 27 January I t’s always a pleasure to visit Lord Leighton’s house and imagine...

Lloyd Evans Much Ado About Nothing Olivier The Masque of the Red Death Battersea Arts Centre The Winter’s Tale Courtyard Theatre S imon Russell Beale is working through the...

Deborah Ross Charlie Wilson’s War 15, Nationwide M ike Nichols’s latest film is a mixed bag and a stuffed bag and, incredibly, none the worse for either. In its rat-a-tat,...

Kate Chisholm H ow crazy is this! A huge great whopping oil tanker, 250,000 tons of rust-red steel, sails through one of the narrowest, most beautiful and most populated sea...

James Delingpole M y resolution this year is to make huge sums of money, buy a vast country estate, surround it with a moat and spend the rest of my life hunting, driving fast...

Robin Oakley I was given a new take on diplomacy the other day in what you might call the reflective postcoital stage of an interview with a foreign minister from eastern...

Alan Judd M ost of my regrets are of sins of omission rather than commission; what I didn’t do rather than what I did. (I’m thinking here of acquisitive opportunities rather...

Taki A lthough I have to declare an interest, by far the most authentic comments about the Bhutto murder were those made by Jemima Khan in the Sunday Telegraph . As Jemima...

Jeremy Clarke O n the last day of the year 22 of us turned up at the car park. We’d come for the ranger-led walk advertised in the Dartmoor Visitor Guide as an opportunity to...

Alex James H ow do you stop people taking cocaine? Illegality keeps it at bay a bit. It stops it being quite so freely available, but it makes it sexy, too. I wonder how much...

Richard Sennett J anuary meant marrow-bones in my youth. For most of the year on my housing estate in Chicago, beef featured at best twice a week; after the expense of the...

SIMON HOGGART I f you live in or around London you must have noticed the chain of Davy’s wine bars which dot the capital, most especially the City. Many have offbeat names,...

Leaving town James Rubin indulges a fantasy: staying in a top London hotel A fter seven and a half years living in London, there was one thing left to do. Paris, Rome, New...

M ore bad news for the ‘Hons’. According to a sociological survey funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, class doesn’t necessarily guarantee status. On the...

One moment laws against ‘religious hatred’, the next against smoking in cars, now mobile phones. What next? But then, law-making has been expanding ever since the Romans drew up...

The medical profession used often to be twitted with the mortality of its own members: for if doctors knew so much, how came it that they died like everyone else? I think a...

Q. My brother-in-law, of whom my wife and I are very fond, is an admirable man and rightly proud of the ordinary background from which he has risen to a leading position in his...