leading to the death of Dr David Kelly, the xpert on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Mr Andrew Gilligan, who had used Dr Kelly as his source for a report on the BBC about the...

I t has become customary to preface any comment on the government's policy on school examinations with a glowing tribute to schoolchildren who have worked hard for their...

I was sad to hear about the death of Bob Hope, although hitting 100 is a fabulous record — almost like batting 1,000. I worked with Bob several times on his television variety...

ROD LIDDLE I don't know if you are fully acquainted yet with that careerist Teutonic harridan, Gisela Stuart. She is one of New Labour's muppets on the now disgraced foreign...

STEPHEN GLOVER hat is the view of the Andrew Gilligan affair at the Frog and Firkin? It is some time since I have been down to the Frog, but I feel I know its ways so well that...

Nigel West says that the lesson of the Hutton inquiry is that the government is using the intelligence services for political purposes, and that this Soviet approach is making...

David Lovibond returns to his Welsh roots and finds poverty and decay I remember Wales: the early start from a sleeping Liverpool, the changes of trains and freezing...

A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade It didn't take long for the heatwave to bring out the nation's puritans in force. Police, we learn, have told...

It is by no means clear to me which words are acceptable in what social circumstances. I mean words from bloody southward. It was, 20 years ago, the case that in the grown-up...

Philip Hensher was rude about Tracey Emin. Now, he suspects, she is ordering incontinence pads for him 1 t started with some junk mail. I threw it out: I gave no consideration...

Andrew Gimson on Sir Hayden Phillips, the unfailingly agreeable civil servant in charge of constitutional affairs his name is seldom, if ever, on the lips of the man in the...

It is fashionable to dismiss the ancient historians' descriptions of tyrannical Roman emperors as so much literary stereotyping. But the evidence offered by. e.g., Saddam and...

Mark Steyn says that Arnold Schwarzenegger is not part of the trivial, self-promoting, self-obsessive political club New Hampshire I haven't really followed California...

Ross Clark on how the new CAP rules make it profitable for city folk to buy farms and use them as homes — with big gardens ir f the words 'Get orff my land' are delivered in...

Many people have a low opinion of the cult TV soap, but not Mary Kenny, who sees 'the forces of conservatism' in it T he sexually explicit scenes in Sex and the City — now into...

You'd have to be mad to believe in a dodgy dogma invented in 1950. Christopher Howse takes a rationally long view of it A nglicans in the United States believe it is a good idea...

.4RISTOP4EP FILDES uestion: how many Bristol University undergraduates does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: none — they just move into MiThmy and Daddy's other flat....

FRANK JOHNSON Nr Pezenas, L Herault T he British who reach here — the Midi — from the pas de Calais through la France profonde at this time of the year think of the histoty...

From May Ellen Synon Sir: Peter Hitchens (God save the nation', 9 August) is right when he says that the decline in the Episcopalian Church in America is due to its urge to...

From La/age Bosanquet Sir: Having read Mary Keen's article (Gardener's question time', 9 August), I must defend our Duchess. Together with rny husband we run our small family...

From Helen Brady Sir: I sympathise with Tom Fort (The rising tide of cliches', 9 August) and his weariness with BBC spoken English. If he would like to experience further BBC...

From C.R. Smith Sir: Yes, you certainly could open the carriage windows under British Rail (Diary, 9 August), but all you got through them, in the days when porters came,...

From G.B. Gilbert Sir: I enjoyed Rod Liddle's complimentary article (Thought for the day, 2 August) on the Labour spin doctor David Hill, but has something important been left...

PAUL JOHNSON T he report in Le Monde began `L'Europe meurt de soir I looked out of the window into my London garden, where the rain was pouring down, as it had been all week....

Boris Johnson offers cyclists an A to Z of how to survive in the capital know what,' I told my publisher the other day, as a light went ping in my head. 'I've got just the book...

Lloyd Evans I 've always favoured the ghetto. In the 1980s I lived in Brixton, where the night sky was often tinged with volcanic orange as embittered youths took their anger...

Andrew Gimson T here is in London all that life can afford, or at least a great deal more than appears in the newspapers. We know that this modern Babylon, which thanks to the...

Elisabeth Anderson A few hundred yards from the computer a nd high-tech shops of Tottenham Court Road sit two smallish houses. one 18th-century, the other 19th. Step inside and...

Ken Livingstone M atthew Parris recently recounted a Russian fable in which a woman is sent to Hell, but then redeemed by an angel because of one good act in her otherwise...

Miranda Seymour A DOUBLE LIFE: A BIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB by Sarah Burton Penguin/Viking, £16.99, pp. 445, ISBN 0670893994 S arah Burton has picked herself a plum of...

Anthony Daniels BROTHERS UNDER THE SKIN: TRAVELS IN TYRANNY by Christopher Hope Macmillan, £17.99, pp. 288, ISBN 1405005556 B y now it is clear that, with one or two...

Toby Young DR SWEET AND HIS DAUGHTER by Peter Bradshaw Picador, £10.99, pp. 341, ISBN 03304921260 I n the world of Dr Sweet, an unas suming research scientist, it doesn ' t...

Salley Vickers COURTESANS by Katie Hickman HatperCollins, £25, pp. 343, ISBN 0007113919 A ny woman worth her salt has a touch of the courtesan about her — or wishes she had....

Michael Glover REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS by Susan Sontag Hamish Hamilton. £12.99, pp. 117, ISBN 024142075 DON MCCULLIN by Don McCullin Jonathan Cape, £17.50, pp. 294, ISBN...

Patrick Marnham REGIME CHANGE by Christopher Hitchens Penguin, £5.99, pp. 104, ISBN 0141015675 1 nthis collection of republished polemics, Christopher Hitchens sets out his...

Jane Gardam LEARNING TO TALK by Hilary Mantel Fourth Estate, £6.99, pp. 160, ISBN 0007166443 W e look out eagerly for anything new from Hilary Mantel, These six stories, with...

Giles Waterfield THE BOOK OF SALT by Monique Truong Chatto. 412.99, pp. 261, ISBN 0701175222 B inh is the Vietnamese cook to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris, until...

Robert Edric PARALLEL LINES OR JOURNEYS ON THE RAILWAYS OF DREAMS by Ian Marchant Bloomsbury, £12.99, pp. 320, ISBN 0747565783 1 an Marchant is a long-suffering, ever hopeful,...

D. J. Taylor MR GOLIGHTLY'S HOLIDAY by Salley Vickers Fourth Estate, £16.99, pp. 356, ISBN 0007156472 m r Golightly, the male lead of Salley Vickers' decorously written third...

Harriet Waugh A HISTORY OF FACELIFTING by Duncan Fallowell Arcadia, £11.99, pp. 354, ISBN 19900850796 I 'mnot sure there's such a word as lacelifting . . When starting Duncan...

Raymond Carr FOR THE GLORY OF GOD: HOW MONOTHEISM LED TO REFORMATIONS, SCIENCE, WITCH-HUNTS AND THE END OF SLAVERY by Rodney Stark Princeton University Press,124.95, pp. 488,...

Andrew Lambirth on an exhibition which looks at our relationship to nature 1 t's the height of the silly season, and the capital glows in the unexpectedly seasonal heat. For...

Henrietta Bredin T seem to have fallen in love with Finland. 1 This has come as an unexpected and delightful act of bouleversal by a country which, admittedly, for a week in...

Giannandrea Poesio Tap Dogs Rebooted Sadler's Wells Theatre I f the four weeks of Kirov Ballet left you longing desperately for something different, worry not. Remedy is at...

Lloyd Evans Tape Soho Theatre Hamlet Royal Observatofy Greenwich and Middle Temple Clod. I was happy to get into the Soho V Theatre. It's refrigerated and as I sat in the...

Charles Spencer O n the rare occasions when I dip a tentative foot into the social whirl I almost always regret it. In the old days I almost invariably got embarrassingly...

Michael Tanner Stiffelio Holland Park S tiffelio has been one of my favourite lesser-known Verdi operas since I saw its first revival in modern times in Parma at the end of...

Mark Steyn American Pie: The Wedding 15, selected cinemas W as it last year or the year before that they came out with / Still Know What You Did Last Summer? That was the...

Michael Vestey N o more, it seems, will the jaunty theme tune of The Archers on Radio Four drift through the open window into the piazza in Umbria, whereas, on previous visits,...

James Delingpole T here was a lovely piece about me in Private Eye this week suggesting that the influence of this column is so powerful that I am destined to sell as many...

Simon Courtauld y ou don't want to eat plaice, they say in East Anglia, until the corn is in the ear. Others don't really want to eat plaice at all, judging it to be a little...

Taki Gslaad I remember it as if it were yesterday. Rodney Solomon, a friend no longer with us, came into the Clermont club all huffy and puffy and dressed in a morning coat,...

Jeremy Clarke I was running the Whack-the-Malteaser stall yet again this year. My sister put me on it the first year I helped out at the 'fun day' she organises every summer at...

Jaspistos In Competition No. 2302 you were invited to write a letter gratuitously exploiting an imperfect grasp of foreign languages. As soon as this competition was set in...

he other morning, with the heat being what it was — phew, what a scorcher! I felt just like Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, minus the looks — I went and bought an...

Four play Europe Jane Ardizzone writes: H eathrow, Sunday, three guys and a girl off to five European cities in five days, all business, no pleasure. Tee hee. John and Stewart...

MICHAEL HENDERSON Cape Cod L ord's one week, Yankee Stadium the next. Both are bastions of long-estabished games, though only one can be considered the true home of the sport....

Q. What should you answer when a lady whom you have not seen for 30 years greets you with the question, 'You do not remember who I am, do you?' when you don't? P.S., Cornwall...