offences such as speeding and being drunk in public; it would be hypothecated to the compensation of victims of crime, but employers would also have to pay compensation for...

A t 6.20 a.m. on Tuesday, the serial killer Harold Shipman hanged himself in Wakefield prison. He tied a noose in a bedsheet, placed it round his neck, tied the other end to the...

our son for Christmas to work. Four adults, working in shifts, couldn't get it to work on Christmas Day. The same four adults, still working in shifts — very ill-tempered shifts...

1 in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 general election victory Tony Blair made a series of important organisational mistakes, for which he is still paying the price. Probably...

Ross Clark wonders whether Iraqis would prefer clean water and electricity or Britain's taxpayer-funded 'gender advisers' iv ollowing the successful liberation of their country...

- One nod doesn't make a Homer,' said my husband, laughing as if he had said something funny. He was happy in the way that only my mistakes can make him. I had just shown him a...

John Laughland says the real nutters are those who believe in al-Qa'eda and weapons of mass destruction B elieving in conspiracy theories is rather like having been to a...

nasty foreign importers who insist on selling a similar product at half the price? Don't worry: just start a health scare. It's cheap, it's rapid and the World Trade...

Leo McKinstry says there is no evidence to support the national panic over drink-spiking p ubs are supposed to be havens of relaxed conviviality. But certain self-appointed...

his 'beliefs'. If this was a political move, Athenians would have found it baffling. The 5th-century BC thinker Protagoras defined 'excellence' as 'proper management of one's...

Andrew Gim son says the Prime Minister is quite right to impose top-up fees on millions of listless, lazy, conformist students I t is time we gave the party some electric-shock...

We must all move with the times, of course, or the times will move without us. I am in any case no Luddite who wishes to keep everything exactly as it was, merely from fear of...

Geoffrey VVheatcroft says the long slow decline of the Tory party can be partly attributed to a devastating article 40 years ago F . orty years ago today, The Spectator...

T _ he emotional tirade against President Bush published by Sir David King is an excellent example of Churchill's maxim that experts should be 'on tap' but not 'on top'. This...

p radford is to demolish huge swaths of its own centre. Acres ...., of hateful Sixties concrete are to , be pulverised in the year ahead, according to a tiny article in the...

From Sebastian Shakespeare Sir: Theodore Dalrymple notes that Jacques Chirac wrote an introduction to a catalogue of Ecuadorean baroque religious sculpture (`Escape from...

smacks of Daniel going blindfold into the lions' den. The social and moral degeneration he so accurately describes in Britain is no less, as he virtually admits, on the other...

From Philip Hensher Sir: Benedict le Vay is surely being rather hard on Lynne Truss's English (Pluck Truss and grieve', 10 January), and the examples he chooses of her bad...

a great service by helping people to use it properly in a living, changing language. Benedict le Vay is wrong in every example he cites of the alleged grammatical errors of...

From Oleg Gordievsky Sir: The discovery I have made in Britain is that many academics wear pink glasses. Paul Robinson claims, The government of Vladimir Putin is probably the...

From Robert Peston Sir: I was mildly surprised by the complaint of my old friend Stephen Glover that the Sun day Telegraph has not written enough about the travails of...

From John Laughland Sir: How interesting that Richard North should now start attacking me, just as the original accusations made by his co-author. Christopher Booker, have been...

From J.G. Cluff Sir: It is time for some lateral thinking regarding the sky marshals controversy. Would it not be sensible, instead of attempting the difficult and inconvenient...

From Paul Smith Sir: The statements attributed to me by Ross Clark (Speed cameras are good for you . . 10 January) are not a true or fair representation of my position_ These...

From Audrey Parry Sir: Antony Flew (Letters, 10 January) quotes Aquinas in showing us the hard-heartedness of Catholic theologians who 'have not pity for the damned'. Aquinas...

From Robert Bruce Browne-Clayton Sir: Having read the review of Anthony Sattin's excellent book The Gates of Africa (29 November) and now the book itself, I am sad and maybe a...

It's a tough call T he serious newspapers — what we used to call the broadsheets — have extracted themselves from the frying pan only to find themselves in the fire. For years...

0 h, look: an independent director. A real one, that is. He disagrees with his colleagues about the direction of the company and doesn't mind saying so. This is Paolo Scaroni,...

Sebastian Smee THE EARLY STORIES, 1953-1975 by John Updike Ha mish Hamilton, £25, pp. 838, ISBN 0241142144 R ivalled only by the Rabbit novels, John Updike's early stories —...

Byron Rogers THE BLOODAXE BOOK OF MODERN WELSH POETRY edited by Menna Elfyn and John Rowlands Bloodaxe Books, £10.95, pp. 448, ISBN 1852245492 T his, the most comprehensive...

Doris Lessing THE ALHAMBRA by Robert Irwin Profile Books, £15.99, pp. 264, ISBN 1861974214 F our years ago this author gave us Night & Horses & the Desert, an anthology of...

M. R. D. Foot AIR POWER by Stephen Budiansky Viking, £20, pp. 518, ISBN 0670912514 I nfluence in 1890 Captain A. T. Mahan, United States Navy, produced his book on The...

Francis King THE PHOENIX LAND by Miklos !Unify Arcadia, £12.99, pp. 419, ISBN 1900850850 W hen Count Miklos Banffy's epic trilogy The Writing on the Wall recently made its...

John Laughland THE RED MILLIONAIRE: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF WILLI MONZENBERG, MOSCOW'S SECRET PROPAGANDA TSAR IN THE WEST by Sean McMeekin Yale, £22.50, pp. 397, ISBN...

D. J. Taylor ONE LAST LOOK by Susanna Moore Viking, £14.99, pp. 288, ISBN 00670914312 Susanna Moore's fifth novel opens on board the Jupiter in February 1836, with the ladies —...

John Michell THE ROAD TO DELPHI by Michael Wood Chatto, £17.99, pp. 271, ISBN 0701165464 S tate constitutions throughout the ancient world were designed to imitate the order...

Lee Langley THE NAMESAKE by Jhumpa LAW Flamingo, £15.99, pp. 291, ISBN 000225901X jr hump Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her first volume of short stories. The...

James Fleming LADY ANNE BLUNT: A BIOGRAPHY by H. V. F. Winstone Barzani Stacey International, 128 Kensington Church Street, London W8 4 BH, Tel: 0207 221 7166, £19.95, pp. 366,...

MIL MEM 11 Some pianists forget that they are servants of music, not showmen, writes Stephen Pettitt T he archetype is beautifully caricatured in the television comedy series...

Michael Tanner The Barber of Seville Opera North, Leeds Peter Grimes London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican D uring the last three weeks of L./December and the first two of...

Andrew Lambirth Quentin Blake: Fifty Years of illustration Gilbert Collection, Somerset House, until 28 March T here are plans afoot to found a Gallery of Illustration in...

John McEwen Philip de Laszlo (1869-1937): A Brush with Grandeur Christie's. until 22 January W hen Philip de Laszlo arrived in London in 1907, having painted most of the...

Patrick Smith T hemyriad performances of music in the different-sized venues that make up the classical-music season in New York can be a daunting assignment to summarise, both...

Mark Steyn A Mighty Wind 124, selected cinemas I always love it when some record from the 'Sixties folk-music boom' comes on the radio, and one can wallow for three minutes in...

Charles Spencer G "'January is depressing but as I sit here, working on a gloomy Sunday morning, I experience a rare glow of pleasure. I have just seen three adorable green...

Toby Young His Dark Materials Olivier The Permanent Way Cottesloe Llis Dark Materials, Nicholas Wright's / adaptation of Philip Pullman's threevolume work of the same name, is...

Simon Hoggart I have a problem with The Alan Clark Diaries (BBC4), which I enjoyed immoderately. But then I should. I knew Clark, spent a weekend at Saltwood Castle, and like...

Michael Vestey A s , I listened to the first of the two-part nside the Foreign Office on Radio Four this week (Monday), I began to wonder what the point of it was. It was a...

Charles Moore rryke and Temper are Lakeland terriers. .1 At the age of 12 weeks, Temper proved her prowess by going off without invitation and finding a hole with a dog-fox...

Robin Oakley In his Devil's Dictionary Ambrose Bierce describes patience as 'a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue'. Bierce obviously did not spend much time in...

Taki qu ick visit to Paris and London — and n even quicker one to The Spectator's offices — where I failed to meet the divine-looking Mary Wakefield, a lady I have never met...

Jeremy Clarke I sliced off the top of the scab under my right nostril with the razor again. I'd skirted carefully round it when shaving at leisure during Christmas week, but...

but this time I travel with some culinary hope in my heart. As you know, I've yet to find a decent eating-out experience in these parts. The Welsh just don't seem to be...

HENDERSON T here are days when one wonders whether, as Lawrence wrote, the cataclysm has happened and we are living among the ruins. It was possible, one morning last week, to...

I am naturally thankful for this success, but one consequence is a deluge of requests to sit on committees, judge awards, champion the voiceless, network for the jobless, and so...

money under any circumstances, but the inexorable rise in house prices and the competitive reductions in the costs of package holidays have combined to make money an 'OK topic'...