I n his film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth , Al Gore quotes Winston Churchill’s famous warning in 1936. Admonishing those who were ‘only to be undecided, resolved...

ensconced in my festering paper mountain of an office, tapping away on subjects as vital to the world as the size 00 ‘debate’ and the imminent reunion of The Police. It’s...

D avid Cameron has never quite understood why so many of his Conservative colleagues are so keen on America. In the build-up to the Iraq war, he was bemused to watch close...

cellar, fill it with coal and carry it up to light the fire in my study. The coaldust clings to my shoes and so, as the carpets testify, I have a carbon footprint. David Cameron...

MONDAY I don’t know why everyone is getting so worked up about our lovely green taxes. If they read the small print, they would see that what Gids takes away with one hand, he...

Austen Ivereigh says that illegal immigration is both a sympton and a cause — of British economic success. The dead hand of the state is getting it wrong, as usual: time for a...

Melanie Phillips is delighted by the clear-sighted views of Australian ministers about the war on terror, and their contempt for British ‘appeasers’ of Islamism C oming from...

stall for Brown Anthony Giddens tells Fraser Nelson that the Labour project has to ‘restart’ and that Gordon Brown can no longer afford to be a ‘closeted Machiavellian...

Primary school pupils in Clackmannanshire, taught to philosophise ‘like Socrates’, have evidently demonstrated dramatic improvements in IQ and other tests. But since the...

Rod Liddle is stirred by the martial prowess of a usually wimpy football team in combat with the Chinese, and ponders the geopolitical implications for the supposedly scary...

John Casey I hear that the Conservative Philosophy Group is about to be revived after a hibernation of about 15 years. The group, in so far as it has been heard of at all, has...

Martin Gilbert , Churchill’s official biographer, says that the row over the war leader’s alleged anti-Semitism is nonsense. Churchill was a lifelong supporter of the Jews...

I wonder how much of our hatred of certain words and phrases is really a hatred of people. My husband, no mean hater, is given to self-defeating outbursts in response to some...

Michael Moorcock once thought the Upper House was a bastion of anti-democratic privilege, but life in the US has convinced him that he was wrong Lost Pines, Texas W hen I...

Sir: Could I, as the person who unwittingly provoked Jennifer Paterson’s outburst in the Spectator kitchen, say exactly what happened? I was not, as Simon Courtauld writes...

Sir: As the wife of a Cheviot farmer, I read with interest Charles Moore’s ‘Notes’ of 10 March. Hugh Trevor-Roper taught me history at Oxford. After I married and settled...

Chávez is a ‘dictator’ four times, and a ‘socialist dictator’ twice. Really? Browne is referring to a man who has just won the latest of a whole string of elections...

Sir: I am sorry to see a writer as generally well-informed as Frederic Raphael (Books, 10 March) trotting out the absurd legend that ‘ Hep hep ’, as an insult to Jews,...

� ngraved – or die-stamped – printing, in which the text is printed from a copper die and raised from the paper, is the very best type of printing there is. From shops in...

Sir: Rod Liddle, in his excoriation of Red Nose Day last week (was there ever a subject easier to lambast, or one less in need of it?), tells us that, without the input of Billy...

Sir: Allan Massie (Books, 3 March) missed a chance to bring up again the story of the most (in)famous use of the first person singular in English literature, i.e. the case of...

A s we go to print the five kidnapped tourists in Ethiopia have been returned alive, but mystery still surrounds the circumstances of their capture and the motives of their...

R alph Waldo Emerson is quoted as saying: ‘If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, tho’ he build his house in...

Matthew Vincent exposes ‘boiler-room’ scams, which sell worthless shares through hard-sell phone calls to British investors from hidden locations abroad ‘G ood morning,...

John Andrews J amie Oliver would make an excellent investment manager. Not because he’s moonlighting as a private-equity mogul although his rival influencer of public...

Jonathan Davis says investors should remember the lessons of the Edwardian era — and beware of complacency E ven before the world’s stock markets had their latest wobble two...

Elliot Wilson says the smarter, safer way to invest in China’s growth story is via blue-chip stocks elsewhere W hen China sneezed on 27 February, the whole world caught cold....

Richard Northedge says the Chancellor is highly unlikely to abolish stamp duty on shares, despite City pleadings B efore every Budget, for as long as memories extend,...

B y far the stickiest moment of my journalistic career was the time I interviewed a foul-tempered Michael Howard on his battlebus between Bristol and Cardiff during the 2004...

‘ H asn’t done half as much damage ...’ is faint praise for a man hailed by his own propagandists as the greatest chancellor in modern times. But faint praise is what...

E ven Brown’s own propagandists have never claimed his Budget speeches to be great oratory. This 11th and last could be the dullest of the lot if, as expected, he saves all...

O ver the weekend I conducted a focus group on personal responses to Gordon Brown, to check whether I’m right about this. I can’t claim it was scientific; the participants...

Sam Leith W hat’s the bestest book in the world ever? What a silly, vulgar, philistine question — and what an irresistible one. According to J. Peder Zane’s researches,...

Robert Stewart E DMUND C URLL , B OOKSELLER by Paul Baines and Pat Rogers Clarendon Press, £30, pp. 388, ISBN 9780199278985 ✆ £24 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 S atire...

Anne Applebaum H OW L IFE I MITATES C HESS by Gary Kasparov Heinemann, £20, pp. 262, ISBN 9780434014109 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I f I were a leading venture...

Theodore Dalrymple SHAME by Jaswinder Sangheera Hodder, £12.99, pp.289, ISBN 9780340924617 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I n a society in which multicultural...

Matthew Dennison MORTMAIN by Judy Corbalis Chatto, £,16.99, pp.272, ISBN 9780701180478 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 M oney lay at the heart of the Statute of...

Christopher Ondaatje MOSQUITO by Roma Tearne HarperCollins, £14.99, pp. 296, ISBN 9780007233656 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 R oma Tearne’s first novel of...

Michael Henderson M AESTROS , M ASTERPIECES AND M ADNESS : T HE S ECRET L IFE AND S HAMEFUL D EATH OF THE C LASSICAL R ECORD I NDUSTRY by Norman Lebrecht Penguin/ Allen Lane,...

Philip Ziegler M ICHAEL F OOT by Kenneth O. Morgan HarperCollins, £25, pp. 568, ISBN 9780007178261 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I t would be difficult to write a...

Jonathan Sumption T HE V ERNEYS : A T RUE S TORY OF L OVE , W AR AND M ADNESS IN S EVENTEENTH -C ENTURY E NGLAND by Adrian Tinniswood Cape, £20, pp. 570, ISBN 9780224072557 T...

Caroline Moorehead TALLEYRAND: B ETRAYER AND S AVIOUR OF F RANCE by Robin Harris John Murray, £30, pp. 436, ISBN 9780719564864 ✆ £24 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 F rom...

Allan Massie T HE D EATH OF D ALZIEL by Reginald Hill HarperCollins, £17.99, pp. 408, ISBN 9780007194841 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 R eginald Hill’s many...

Andrew Lambirth J AMES B OSWELL : U NOFFICIAL W AR A RTIST by William Feaver Muswell Press, £25, pp. 136, ISBN 09780954795924 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 J ames...

John Martin Robinson I NIGO J ONES AND THE E UROPEAN C LASSICIST TRADITION by Giles Worsley Yale, £40, pp. 220, ISBN 9780300117295 ✆ £32 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I...

Simon Baker T HE P ESTHOUSE by Jim Crace Picador, £12.99, pp. 309, ISBN 9780330445627 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 J im Crace’s latest novel, The Pesthouse ,...

Footsore, like the Assyrians of old as ravenous as wolves, we left the hill bright-eyed, invigorated by the cold, clean mountain air of which we’d drunk our fill and slept on...

revisited Edward Harrison H ugh Trevor-Roper’s study of Hitler’s death was published by Macmillan 60 years ago this month. It won the Oxford historian an international...

S ome 20 years ago A. N. Wilson published a novel entitled Gentlemen in England . It was savagely reviewed in The Spectator by the late Lord Lambton. He complained that two...

T he Hound of the Baskervilles first appeared on stage 100 years ago in Berlin, presented by Ferdinand Bonn. Herr Bonn was dead keen on realism and decided that his wife’s...

Andrew Lambirth Gilbert & George Tate Modern, until 7 May Home and Garden: Domestic Spaces in Paintings 1914–60 Geffrye Museum, Kingsland Road, E2, until 24 June A courier...

Michael Tanner Iolanta; Gianni Schicchi Royal Academy of Music Figaro Guildhall School of Music and Drama W hich language should students at a music college perform an opera in...

Giannandrea Poesio Royal Ballet: Triple Bill Royal Opera House L ike many dance-goers, I have long given up unravelling the logic of ballet programming and have reached the...

Lloyd Evans The Entertainer Old Vic King of Hearts Hampstead Treats Garrick H appy birthday to The Entertainer . The ultimate state-of-the-nation play is 50 years old. I’ve...

Patrick Carnegy Coriolanus Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon F or its farewell to 75 years of performing in the great barn of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre on...

Deborah Ross Premonition 12A, Nationwide I n this film Sandra Bullock plays Linda Hanson, wife of dishy Jim Hansom (Julian McMahon), mother to two adorable little girls,...

Kate Chisholm T he pity of war has been well documented ever since we as rivalrous, destructive human beings developed pen and paper. But this latest British conflict against...

Simon Hoggart T he News Quiz on Radio Four gives its participants a direct line to Middle England. We forget that a decade ago Princess Di was losing her popularity rather...

Ursula Buchan ‘ G olden Harvest’ 1 Y-Y, ‘High Society’ 2 W-GWP, ‘Jetfire’ 6 Y-O; these names strangely preoccupy me at this season of the year. If you think that my...

Robin Oakley G eorge Bernard Shaw once asked a female acquaintance on a cruise ship, ‘Will you sleep with me for £10,000?’, and received an affirmative answer. When he...

Taki ‘O ne of the least edifying sights in Britain today is that of Douglas Hurd expressing his righteous anger over the war in Iraq ... ’ So begins one Roger Cohen’s...

Jeremy Clarke W e didn’t get to Sheffield till after dark. But when the Renault Mégane drew up as we waited beside the station taxi rank, the boredom and discomfort of the...

Roy Hattersley O nly the howl of anguish spoilt last Sunday afternoon and even that turned out to have far less distressing causes than I had feared. So I enjoyed a perfect...

who I’m sure don’t want to be named, so let’s call them Bob and Jim, even though their real names are Tobyn and Leaf. I let them choose the restaurant. I do this not...

Michael Kallenbach , a recent convert to hunting, finds that dressing up is more than half the fun I decided to take up hunting rather late in life — it was after hours of...

Samantha Weinberg decides to give up flying W e spent Christmas and New Year in Tangier. It was spicy and colourful, smelly, exotic and wonderful — everything we could have...

Johnny Ray bowls his maiden over A week in North Wales in February was hardly the sort of honeymoon Marina had in mind when she rashly agreed to marry me all those years ago....

FRANK KEATING C ricket’s World Cup will be an interminable slog in every sense. It began on Tuesday, 13 March; the final is still six weeks away (28 April). With only a month...

suffered from extremely thin hair for many years — not quite alopecia, just extremely thin hair through which my scalp was all too visible — I suddenly stopped shampooing...

Dear Mary Q. The tennis coach at our village club was recently coaching one of his young clients. On the next court, one of the club regulars and her new middle-aged male...