rather you didn't see P olice raided the offices of Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland Assembly building at Storrnont and several private addresses before charging Sinn Fein's...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 020-7405 1706; Fax 020-7242 0603 END THE CHARADE A coalition with Sinn Fein was never likely to be straightforward...

0Kabul n the trail of genetic traces of Alexander's soldiers in Afghanistan, I arrived in Badakhshan. the country's most remote and beautiful province that abuts China. I went...

PETER OBORNE T he memoirs of Joe Haines, now being serialised by the Mail on Sunday, are certain to rank among the most revelatory and important of the 20th century. Joe Haines...

STEPHEN GLOVER M y colleague Matthew Parris is in trouble with Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's director of communications. Mr Campbell accuses him of invention — a...

Like Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair understands the need to anticipate social change, but Michael Gove wonders whether the Tories are drawing the right lessons from their Last...

THE Tories need not despair. Their problems, though grave, are less serious than a superficial reading of the opinion polls would suggest. Anyone trying to make sense of current...

John Hayes says that big business is as culturally damaging as big government AS I walk through the centre of Bournemouth I see brand names, shops, hamburger joints that are...

Andrew Gimson launches a campaign to save the 1983 Hackney Peace Mural, which our culture has grown to resemble Hackney. E8 MURALS are unfashionable, and peace murals...

Alasdair Palmer on the efforts to exculpate criminals by appeal to their genetic inheritance 'IT is better for all the world,' insisted the great American judge Oliver Wendell...

Michael McMahon, a former follower of 'the Work', reflects on the mixed credentials for sainthood of Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer SO there he is, then; up there with...

The head of the Islamic terrorist group is poised to replace Yasser Arafat, says Alan Philps Gaza THERE is an argument in the taxi about the proper form of address for...

Guy Walters anatomises the Englishman's unhealthy interest in the Third Reich IT IS a shaming truth that Nigella, Posh 'n' Becks and all the Pop Idols put together can't sell...

IT's a rum world: everything is upsidedown or inside-out, a mixture of Kafka and Through the Looking-Glass, of the sinister and the hilarious. Horace Walpole said that the world...

Mary Wakefield finds a gang of missionaries in the sex-and-drug-fuelled raves of Ibiza BEFORE 11 o'clock in the morning, San Antonio, Ibiza, is a normal Spanish town....

'I COULD have told you that,' said my husband, as if this were the general state of reality. Normally if I ask him any question about his native tongue, he says, 'Don't ask me,...

The UN's bullying of Britain over smacking has persuaded Ross Clark that his column must now tackle international puritanism SO, the United Nations weapons inspectors are...

PAUL JOHNSON L ast week I awoke on a dewy, shiny morning to find that a synod of spiders had transformed our bird-table into a masterpiece of theatrical art. This wooden...

From Mr Tom Benyon Sir: The rumours that the Tories are dissatisfied with the performance of lain Duncan Smith (it's crunch time for the Tories', 5 October) are inevitable, and...

From Mr Alexander Sinclair Sir: Mark Steyn ('Put up or shut up', 5 October) writes with characteristic wit and verve; but he glosses over certain fundamental points. Mr Steyn...

From Mr Herb Greer Sir: Emma Williams ('Why Sharon wants war', 5 October) is solemn but blithe from Jerusalem. She is especially blithe about the Palestinians, who are to have a...

that Emma Williams is the first journalist to take a politician's words at face value? Given the media's inability to take seriously anything uttered by our own government...

From Mr Dan Weeks Sir: I would like to qualify Charlotte Metcalf s assertion (Victims of their own greed', 5 October) that Enron's pension plan was 'tied to' the company's...

From Brenda Murray Sir: Re 'Departure lounge' (5 October): every word rings true. I have been visiting friends in these homes for more than 20 years and have long wondered what...

From Lord Vinson of Roddarn Dene Sir: Michael Hanlon's provocative article (`Throw them to the wolves', 21 September) on British agriculture misses two essential points. The...

From Rosalind and Leonard Ingrams Sir: The final entry of Barbara Amiel's New York diary (28 September) contains a reference to the Palestinians so ugly that it recalls the...

From Mr Gordon Grender Sir: The chief executive of the NSPCC's letter (5 October) in response to Shelagh Shepherd's article (`The NSPCC harms children', 28 September) was...

From Pamela Campbell Sir; I have read with interest the articles by Petronella Wyatt (Singular life, 28 September and 5 October) on mugging, because 1 have been mugged five...

From Erik Leesen Sir; The trick about having a good time in Norway is not to tell snoops from boring, politically correct countries like Leah McLaren's Canada ( - The Vikings...

MATTHEW PARR IS GROUCHO MARX's disinclination to join any club which would accept him suggests a corollary that Groucho never mentioned: the club anxious to recruit just the...

has been stalking the City. Crushed in his paw, hopes, jobs and wealth have all wilted. A Chancellor of the Exchequer who proclaimed that there would be no more boom and bust...

George Trefgarne explains why the wheels are coming off Gordon Brown's hospital trolley I'M not sure what Sarah Brown made of it, but I certainly enjoyed it. We were assembled...

The clannish consultants' performance cells are everywhere and nowhere, says Becky Barrow THE biggest hurdle when trying to understand McKinsey & Company is not that the high...

James Grant proclaims a bear market in the world's most powerful central banker New York ALAN GREENSPAN, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, was widely acclaimed as the...

We can thank him, says Sophie Barker, if we are still paying for our pints in pounds in 2004 THE chairman of Britain's anti-euro campaign likes being as far from the limelight...

The bottom has fallen out of Michael Jackson, but diamonds may be an investor's best friend, says Martin Vander Weyer A LETTER arrives from the manager of a fund of which I am...

Past, present and future: David Kynaston surveys London's emporium for the whole earth 'I HAVE seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares, but I love the City far better,'...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES G rrrrr. Not for thirty years has a bear market growled as fiercely as this one. In those distant days a friend of mine found himself questioned by a BBC...

Michael Portillo ALBION by Peter Ackroyd Chatto, £25, pp. 548, ISBN 1856197212 E verything of value in our spiritual and cultural life springs from our soil.' Thus spake...

John Mortimer THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN: A LITERARY COMEDY OF THE 1950s by Humphrey Carpenter Allen Lane/Penguin, £18.99, pp. 209, ISBN 0713995327 A young writer produced a...

This Sceptred Isle 55Bc —1999 (BBC Box Set — CDs or Cassettes) This award-winning BBC Radio 4 series tells the story of Britain from the arrival of Julius Caesar 55Bc,...

Jan Morris VENICE REVEALED by Paolo Barbaro, translated from the Italian by Tami Calliope Souvenir Press, £10.99, pp. 233, ISBN 0285636359 W ho hasn't walked down a mediaeval...

Margaret Forster SPECIAL by Bella Bathurst Picador, £15.99, pp. 310, ISBN 0330491008 Y ou'll have noticed them on the roads, minibuses, full of schoolgirls, being driven by...

Samuel Brittan TRUTH AND TRUTHFULNESS: AN ESSAY IN GENEALOGY by Bernard Williams Princeton, £19.95, pp. 322, ISBN 06911027157 T here is a well-worn saying, 'History is written...

Oliver Rackham REMARKABLE TREES OF THE WORLD by Thomas Pakenham Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 192, ISBN 0297843001 T he English have loved ancient trees for centuries, have celebrated...

Lee Langley WHITE MUGHALS: LOVE AND BETRAYAL IN EIGHTEENTHCENTURY INDIA by William Dalrymple HarperCollins, £20, pp. 580, ISBN 0002256762 T he South Park Street cemetery in...

Jasper Griffin THE PREFERENCE FOR THE PRIMITIVE: EPISODES IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN TASTE AND ART by E. H. Gombrich Phaidon, £35, pp. 324, ISBN 0714841544 h e late Sir Ernst...

Ronald Mutebi THE DEVIL THAT DANCED ON WATER by Aminatta Forna HatperCollins, £17.99, pp. 416, ISBN 0002570653 T he voices we rarely hear in literature are those of the...

Paul Fox PANORAMA: FIFTY YEARS OF PRIDE AND PARANOIA by Richard Lindley Politico's, £18.99, pp. 383, ISBN 1902301803 I t is two years since Panorama was shunted out of peak...

Beryl Bainbridge FATAL PASSAGE by Ken McGoogan Bantam, £7.99, pp. 416, ISBN 0553814931 h e more one reads about polar exploration in previous centuries, the more one comes to...

Raymond Seitz WILFRED OWEN by Dominic Hibberd Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 424, ISBN 0297829459 0 n the morning of 4 November 1918, just a week before the end of the ghastly slaughter...

Julie Burchill AMONG THE BOHEMIANS: EXPERIMENTS IN LIVING, 1900-1939 by Virginia Nicholson Penguin/Viking, £20, pp. 362, ISBN 0670889660 F rom the time I was a little girl,...

John Donne, uneasiest of apostates, Renouncing Rome that he might get ahead In life, or anyway not wind up dead Minus his guts or pressed beneath great weights, Ascribed his bad...

Henrietta Bredin on what can be done to encourage the staging of new opera E nglish National Opera staged a revival of a new opera at the end of June this year an opera that the...

Constable: Le Choix de Lucian Freud (Grand Palais, Paris, till 13 January 2003) Portrait surprises Martin Gayford H istory changes according to one's distance and point of...

On the move Peter Phillips J ust as the remaining copies of the first (and so far only) edition of Muso are beginning to look a little tired after several months on the pop...

Generation gaps Marcus Berkmann I went to a pop quiz the other day: a terrifying event. Never has the depth of my ignorance been so cruelly laid bare. I didn't recognise a Dr...

Dahlia come-back Ursula Buchan I t is a feature of our humanity that we must always be looking for moments that we can call 'defining' — in our personal lives, in the...

Jenufa (Opera North, Leeds) I Masnadieri (Royal Opera House) Almost sublime Michael Tanner J enufa. Janacek's first operatic masterpiece, is nevertheless not a consistently...

Red Dragon (18, selected cinemas) Cultured monsters Mark Steyn S nobbery with violence' was the formula for the old country-house murder mysteries and it works even more...

Woyzeck (Barbican) Bremner, Bird and Fortune Live on Stage (Albery) Crimson pain Patrick Carnegy T he Betty , Nansen Theatre's production of Woyzeck from Denmark has been...

At home with men of Russia's history Alastair Macaulay is in thrall to the poetic beauty of Stoppard's trilogy The Coast of Utopia (NationaL Theatre) How do we combine the...

Simon Hoggart I knew that Tipping The Velvet (BBC 1) was camp, but just how camp it is I didn't realise till I looked the word up in Collins dictionary. 'Effeminate, affected,...

Keep on trucking Michael Vestey T he BBC has been an agist place since the John Birt period at the Corporation but there have been some notable survivors of various culls over...

Virus of change Alan Judd A nd so now to my 69th car, purchased this weekend. The romance of car-buying is not felt in every breast. Some regard cars as no more than a means...

Raising questions Robin Oakley W hat odds would you have got ten years ago against John Major having had an affair with Edwina Currie? The same sort of price, I suspect, as...

In the steps of Demosthenes Taki T o Rockford, Illinois the heartland of America, corny and flat as a pancake, but folksy, nice and with a Fifties, small-town feeling. The...

Homing instinct Jeremy Clarke My Buddhist landlords are back from their holidays, looking tanned and relaxed. I've moved out and found temporary lodgings in a house round the...

Home thoughts from abroad Petronella Wyatt I have just been staying outside Rome near a town called Ladispoli. In ancient times, the area, which was a luxury seaside resort...

in my son's black books because, deciding to press ahead with this selective school thing, he now has a Saturday tutor. Still, he is coming round to it. I hate you, I hate you....

Michael Henderson MY word, Paris looked wonderful last weekend. The city is not necessarily more beautiful in autumn than London, which has better parks, but it is no less...

Q. Last week I had dinner in a restaurant with some old friends whose number included a woman we all like a lot with her new (younger) boyfriend. The latter responded to every...