floated all kinds of schemes to counter terrorists, with legislation to be introduced in the autumn, including the amendment of the Human Rights Act in respect of the provisions...

F or the dwindling band of us prepared to admit that we backed the war in Iraq, there appears to be yet more bad news from Baghdad. By next Monday the Iraqis are supposed to...

SIMON KELNER I have always thought I was allergic to the English countryside: too melancholic, too dark, too many Daily Mail readers. So it was with some misgivings that I...

PETER OBORNE Blair’s frivolous and impractical plan is designed only to please the tabloids F or security reasons newspapers have been asked not to name the holiday...

Theo Hobson says that the suicide bombers are not inspired by a belief in an afterlife so much as by political ideology — like the kamikaze pilots of the second world war H...

ROD LIDDLE I remember a very clenched-buttocked editorial in The Spectator some years ago on the subject of homosexuality. The gist was this: leave individual homosexuals alone...

Mark Steyn says there should be no agonised debate about whether Britishness is best: of course it is New Hampshire T here’s an abandoned town in Labrador called Davis Inlet....

Andrew Gilligan says that reducing our liberties in response to terrorism will make us less safe I n these frightening days, we must seek our consolations where we can; and one...

Bruce Anderson says it is dangerous to try to bully the Iranians into abandoning their nuclear ambitions I t would appear to be another August crisis. From Washington to Tel...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft recalls his friendship with the writer Shiva Naipaul, who died 20 years ago O n the morning of 13 August 1985 I was at my desk at the London Evening Standard...

West Yorkshire chief constable Colin Cramphorn talks to Dean Godson about the hunt for the bombers C olin Cramphorn, the chief constable of West Yorkshire, occupies one of the...

FRANK JOHNSON How long before the police round up the Notting Hill Set? T wo of the suspects who appeared in court this week in connection with the attempted London bombings...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES Here’s a better way to run Gordon’s asylum: pay attention to the inmates T o put the lunatics in charge of the asylum makes admirable sense. They are the...

PAUL JOHNSON The saponaceous opera of newspaper dynasties and villainies A s a historian I am fascinated by dynastic rows, and as a journalist I am particularly devoted to the...

Philip Hensher V ICTORIAN L ONDON : T HE L IFE OF A C ITY , 1840-1870 by Liza Picard Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 363, ISBN 0297847333 L ondon is such a Victorian city in its substance...

Stephen Abell L OVE IS S TRANGE by Joseph Connolly Faber, £12.99, pp. 495 ISBN 0571227082 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 L ove is Strange is, like love, strange. It is...

Anne Applebaum 1776: A MERICA AND B RITAIN AT W AR by David McCullough Allen Lane, £25, pp. 386, ISBN 0713998636 ✆ £23 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T o a British reader who...

C. D. C. Armstrong C ARSON : T HE M AN W HO D IVIDED I RELAND by Geoffrey Lewis Hambledon & London, £19.99, pp. 277, ISBN 1852854545 E dward Carson: even today, almost 70 years...

Anthony Sattin P LACE OF R EEDS by Caitlin Davies Simon & Schuster, £12.99, pp. 436, ISBN 074325953X V £11.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 P icture this scene: in the...

Christopher Howse C OLLECTED P OEMS by John Meade Falkner John Meade Falkner Society, Greenmantle, Main Street, Kings Newton, Melbourne, Derbyshire DE73 8BX, £15, pp. 88, ISBN...

P. J. Kavanagh Z IMMER M EN by Marcus Berkmann Little, Brown, £16.99, pp. 212, ISBN 0316728381 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 M any things lead to addiction and...

Using our imagination Selina Mills feels her way round an exhibition designed to appeal to the blind S ensory deprivation has, it would seem, become fashionable these days. As...

Andrew Lambirth The Stuff of Life National Gallery, until 2 October The Westminster Retable National Gallery, until 4 September T he fourth in the National Gallery’s series of...

Lloyd Evans Justice Old Red Lion The Reappearance of Christ in the East End White Bear T he Old Red Lion is a relaxed and civilised pub with an atmospheric little theatre...

Ursula Buchan T he rose has long been an international symbol of peace and reconciliation. A striking example is ‘Peace’, which was bred by Meilland in the south of France,...

Michael Tanner Otello Glyndebourne Boris Godunov Royal Opera O tello is the most simple of Verdi’s operas, from a narrative point of view, and in the motivations of its...

Marcus Berkmann The Russian Tatiana Monogarova is beautiful both to see and hear, but she sang in what I take to be some kind of operatic Esperanto, and Desdemona’s pleadings,...

Mark Steyn The Island 12A, selected cinemas N o man is an island, at least according to John Donne. But I wonder if we’ll be able to make the same confident assumption the day...

Michael Vestey I t’s strange to think that John Le Mesurier has been dead for 22 years, a reminder that came in an affectionate profile of his life as a character actor, Conked...

James Delingpole U nfortunately I was in deepest Wales on the day when TV made me briefly famous so I missed all the phone calls from friends saying nice things. I did pop into...

Simon Courtauld I have recently acquired a charming little book by Ambrose Heath called From Creel to Kitchen . Published in 1939, it offers recipes for 20 species of...

Taki On board S/Y Bushido In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain and the mountains. In the bed of the...

Jeremy Clarke I n summer we let half the house out to paying visitors, who generally stay for a week, from Saturday to Saturday. Before the guests arrive we always worry about...

SIMON HOGGART T his is an exciting selection — eight wines from six countries offered by Corney & Barrow, though it could be too exciting for the company’s MD, Adam BrettSmith....

Wigan’s peers FRANK KEATING P remiership soccer begins today. The poor prancing zillionaires do not get much respite from it, do they? Nor, alas, do we. Newcastle United at...

Q. I am shortly to attend a wedding. My problem is that I feel uneasy about kissing the bride as she stands in the receiving line because I am very aware of the dozens, if not...