refer to a special select committee, and thus delay, the Constitutional Reform Bill, which seeks to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor and to set up a Supreme Court to...

A small milestone was reached this week. The Prison Service announced that for the first time the prison population has passed the 75,000 mark. To be precise, a total of 75,007...

'chavs' — to the new working class. They are the type of people I have been drawing for years: trailer trash covered in Ming bling, wearing Burberry baseball hats, white...

D erry Irvine has not gone to pieces, as some former colleagues predicted that he would after being suddenly sacked as Lord Chancellor last June. Friends say that, if anything,...

A nother week, another explosive revelation about the relationship between Downing Street's pouting Rasputin, Carole Caplin, and the Prime Minister. We dismiss, of course, as...

Simon Jenkins says that Tony Blair's Sedgefield speech was just another attempt by the Prime Minister to scare us into believing that we are all in mortal danger. We are not A...

Rod Liddle looks at a new magazine dedicated, perhaps a little hysterically, to security matters H ow resilient are you feeling, right now? One would hope that you're feeling...

chads, please Bob Alexander on the need to reform the voting system to get rid of 'electoral bias' 0 ne of New Labour's most outspoken commitments in opposition was that it...

Before I forget, here is a slight development on chav, this year's youth pejorative term of choice. It is, as Sampson's Dictionary of the Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales makes...

Charles Moore believes it is essential for any new owner of the Telegraph to make good journalism the first priority -1 t is a buzz phrase that everyone should 'have ownership'...

at all Freddie Sayers went to an EU conference for young people in Ireland — and no one turned up. Euroenthusiasm is not groovy I magine a huge celebrity wedding before any of...

The US is powerful and religious; the EU is weak and secular. Mark Steyn wonders whether it is any coincidence T he other day, the guy on my local radio station mentioned that...

The Gender Recognition Bill plodding its way through the House of Commons does not deal with hermaphrodites. Bad mistake. Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite....

Conservatives must resist liberalism, says John Hayes. What the country needs is order, not social licence C onservatives are the party of freedom. We believe in giving people...

S hortly after seven every morning I am swimming or (to use the fashionable phrase) doing my aquatic aerobics in the Porchester baths, round the corner from where I live....

From Ida Lichter Sir: Bruce Anderson points out that it is the Gospels that are anti-Semitic, not Mel Gibson ('Christianity and Judaism cannot be reconciled', 6 March). This...

From Frank Fuller Sir: Deborah Ross accuses Sir Andrew Green's Migration Watch of 'not especially helping matters' (`Green's pleasant land', 6 March). Isn't it possible that...

no problem with immigration, only with the public's fear of immigrants. The same no doubt applies to the perceived rise in gun crime and street violence. One assumes, therefore,...

From Jonathan de Ferranti Sir: I am the owner and full-time occupier of a country house around which wild birds and a variety of domestic and semi-domestic cats live together. I...

the 'animal rights' brigade, I found Rod Liddle's article particularly loathsome. His new neighbours might just find this an interesting welcome for this Liddle creature who is...

From Noble Frankland Sir: David Woodhead (Letters, 6 March) asks why, if it was legitimate to destroy Dresden because it was a communications and industrial centre, the RAF and...

A fter writing this I shall set out for Iraq. The Times is sending me there, I am enormously lucky to go, and hope to see as much as possible in the ten short days of my trip....

Nv ho should be the next chairman of the BBC? Should it be Terry Burns, the former Treasury mandarin and chairman of Abbey National? Or Michael Grade, the former chief executive...

L ord Penrose's report on the Equitable Life Assurance Society bears the delicate impress of Ruth Kelly. She has been sitting on it for months, as a part of her duties as...

Raymond Carr THE LETTERS OF CHARLO 1 IL BRONTE: VOLUME III, 1852-1855 edited by Margaret Smith OUP, 1'85, pp, 396, ISBN 0198185995 Q f the hundreds of books I have reviewed...

Harry Mount THE ISLAND AT THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD: THE UNTOLD STORY OF DUTCH MANHATTAN by Russell Shorto Doubleday, £18.99, pp. 432, ISBN 038560324X I have a fantasy of...

Robert Oakeshott MOTIVATION, AGENCY AND PUBLIC POLICY: OF KNIGHTS & KNAVES, PAWNS & QUEENS by Julian Le Grand OUP, I25, pp. 191, ISBN 0199266999 A s its more memorable subtitle...

A mong the letters I get from Spectator readers — and I'm always delighted to learn your views — are those that ask us to offer some cheaper wines. I do try to pay heed to this...

Toby Young HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL: A MEMOIR OF LOVE AND BETRAYAL by Joe Eszterhas Hutchinson, £17.99, pp. 730, ISBN 0091800048 T his book, which presents itself as a...

Robert Stewart RUMOURS OF WAR by Allan Mallinson Bantam, £16.99, pp. 405, ISBN 059304729X , or his part, she filled a signifi cant void in his human inter cant void in his...

Sebastian Smee THE MASTER by Colm TóibIn Picador, £16, pp. 470. ISBN 0330485652 C olm Toibin's fifth novel opens with a tremendously assured description of an already famous...

Jane Gardam THE LEMON TABLE by Julian Barnes Cape, £16.99, pp.213. ISBN 022407198X W here are the songs of Spring? Well, certainly not in these short stories about people in...

Ray Monk THE FLY IN THE CATHEDRAL: How A SMALL GROUP OF CAMBRIDGE SCIENTISTS WON THE RACE TO SPLIT THE ATOM by Brian Cathcart Viking, £14.99, pp. 308, ISBN 0670883212 S...

Victor Sebestyen INSIDE PUTIN'S RUSSIA by Andrew Jack Granta, £17.99, pp. 352, ISBN 1862076405 PUTIN'S PROGRESS by Peter Truscott Simon & Schuster, £17.99, pp. 370, ISBN...

William Read GENGHIS KHAN: LIFE, DEATH AND RESURRECTION by John Man Bantam Press,120, pp. 388, ISBN 0593050444 F rom inauspicious beginnings as the fugitive son of a small-time...

Andrew Lamb irth visits a triumphantly successful Rubens exhibition in Lille H ow do people respond to Rubens these days? Is all that lush flesh so out of fashion that he is of...

Alan Powers T he Dutch-born architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas pushed the borders of his discipline after it had reached a deadend of debate on language and history. So...

Mark Steyn Starsky & Hutch (15, general release) T he late Lionel Bart , composer of Oliver!, told me once that he'd done so many drugs in the Seventies he had no memory of...

Giannandre a Poesio Nina Ananiashvili and Moscow Dance Theatre Sadler's Wells Theatre odern ballet is not something one would immediately associate with Russian dancers....

Marcus Berkmann A n unusually fat cheque has just come through the post, so like most males of my age and temperament I am thinking, 'To iPod or not to iPod?' Yes, yes, I know,...

Michael Tanner Figaro The Guildhall School The Rhinegold The Coliseum U ntil fairly recently I didn't think I could fail to enjoy a performance of Le Nozze di Figaro unless it...

Toby Young Oliver Twist Lyric, Hammersmith The Skin of Our Teeth Young Vic Calico Duke of York's A t last month's Critics' Circle Theatre Awards I was singled out for abuse by...

Sebastian Smee ircuses everywhere do their best to resemble what the writer Jean Starobinski once described as 'an island shimmering with marvels, a place kept intact from the...

Simon Hoggart T +There hasn't been much good comedy 1 on BBC 1 lately. In fact there's been a string of woeful flops. Doctors and Nurses by Phil Hammond and Nigel Smith, both...

Michael Vestey C uch was Alistair Cooke's endurance and tenacity, I never thought that he would retire from writing Letter from America, at 58 years the longest-running speech...

Robin Oakley I f one is plucked to move on one day to joust with the bookmakers in the Celestial Beyond (well, those of them who make it there rather than the clipped odds lot...

Taki Gstaad W hen Marlene Dietrich heard Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor complain they were fed up with staying in hotels blockaded by fans, she advised them to stay in...

Jeremy Clarke E velYhotel in town was full, I was directed to a country club on the outskirts, also full. The receptionist at the country club had an idea, though. She rang the...

Petronella Wyatt T here has been the predictable politically-incorrect fuss about the Tories selecting an openly lesbian millionaire, Margot James, as a parliamentary...

MICHAEL HENDERSON D r Johnson, as usual, had a phrase for it. There was nothing to be gained, he declared, in 'settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea'....

I would like to know exactly how much I might receive in a divorce settlement, just so I could have an unnerving little smile playing about my lips, safe in the knowledge of...

important issue is available from a close friend, but he refuses to charge me for it. I prefer a formal client relationship and payment of the usual fee, as much to separate the...

whenever I fly into Heathrow I wait till we are on the Tarmac before ringing a minicab. My problem is that I always seem to miscalculate the time it will take for the luggage to...