The Prime Minister's speech on foreign policy at the Mansion House this week was a classic instance of reassurance rhetoric: his intention to soothe Atlanticists on both sides...

NORMAN STONE Istanbul Ihad a medical in Ankara not long ago. The doctor was a good sort, looked over her spectacles and read out the list: blood pressure all right, weight OK,...

liver Letwin's enemies thought they had seen the last of him at Blackpool. His idea of laying out a policy smorgasbord had almost sunk the party, they argued. Yes, there were...

CHARLES MOORE politicians find it impossible to say they are against Freedom of Information because it sounds as though they must be hiding something if they do so. But the way...

By Tamzin Lightwater MONDAY This Aitken business is all v confusing. Has led to heated debates about some extremely oddsounding things that happened ten years ago. I thought Mr...

Simon Thurley says that, almost by stealth, the nation's built landscape is being transformed on a scale not seen since the postwar period. Our town and city centres are being...

Only in New York, they say: not so, reports Amelia Torode. From all-night queues for nursery places to doggy fancy-dress parties, Manhattan's strangest practices are arriving...

In her first major interview, Janet Paraskeva, the First Civil Service Commissioner, talks to Matthew d'Ancona about the big constitutional changes coming to Whitehall you may...

Bryan Forbes, the great British film-maker, is mad as hell and he's not going to take it any more: today's television is rubbish, especially the brainless music My wife tells me...

Paul Wood says that things are moving in the right direction in the Sunni heartland, Saddam's old stronghold, where the Coalition is the best protection against Shiite death...

Rachel Johnson is troubled by the growing necessity of writing pro bono and says that, if everyone is a 'citizen journalist', there is no need to pay professional hacks So this...

Rod Liddle says that this horrific killing has gripped the British psyche because it involves allegedly transgressive sexual behaviour by an attractive woman 1 t was true in...

Leo McKins try reveals the workforce militancy and indiscipline at the Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich which almost scuppered production of the legendary fighter The nation...

Sir: Your profile of Lord Malloch-Brown was grossly unfair (Labour's lord of the perks', 10 November). I have known him since 1979 when, at the age of 26, he built and ran the...

Sir: Rod Liddle implies (Don't mention Enoch' 10 November) that Enoch Powell's 1968 speech was not racist, and that his comments were taken out of context. This is a case of...

Sir: Paul Barker's account of the recent AGM of the London Library is a distorted version of both the temper of the meeting and of the discussion (The Stalinists have taken over...

Sir: I agree with Charles Moore that the sense of Newman's 'Praise to the Holiest in the Height' is not 'impenetrable'. Yet it does seem to be open to more than one...

Sir: I nearly fell out of my chair when I read Douglas Murray's egregrious whitewash of Tom DeLay (A thoughtful man at the eye of the storm', 10 November). Murray suggests that...

HUGO RIFKIND 1 f he was a plumber, though, what manner of plumber would David Cameron be? The Tory leader, summoned via the Yellow Pages to fa a problem with your boiler. You...

rayer books are the toys of age,' wrote Pope. Maybe so. But it's surprising how many old people — grown-ups — like children's toys as well. This Christmas West End shops have...

Jonathan Ruffer argues that investors and depositors who were gulled into thinking mortgage-backed paper was riskless will not readily return to fund another boom There is a lot...

Allister Heath For a man who has been Chancellor of the Exchequer for just over four months, Alistair Darling has certainly made some powerful enemies. In fact, it's hard to...

Joanna Pitman discovers the investment merits of military medals and rare — but not fake — coins ur gallant armed forces who face the daily horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan are...

MARTIN VANDER WEYER 1 s prison reform an economic issue, as well as a moral and social one? Well, if it's uppermost in my mind and this column, then it must be — and it holds...

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (Profile Books, £9.99) is small, short, cheap and perfect. It is a gem among the dross, without a wasted word. It conjures a picture so...

This year I have been mostly reading novels about American estate agents. You might not think this would be a popular subject, but in the kingdom of the restless the realtor is...

In his Skin Lane (Serpent's Tail, £10.99) Neil Bartlett shows eerie skill in his evocation of a small, secret pocket of the City of London devoted to the skin trade way back in...

David Kynaston's Austerity Britain: 1945-1951 (Bloomsbury, £25) is one of the most vividly imagined, brilliantly researched and hugely entertaining books of social history I...

Grand Cancd Great River: The Travel Daily of a Twelfth-Century Chinese Poet, translated with a commentary by Philip Watson (Frances Lincoln Ltd, £20). A beautifully written and...

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson, £17.99), a risky but in my view wholly successful departure for this author of mellifluous, well-crafted novels — witty, intelligent,...

I haven't read a better new novel this year than Clara's Tale by Pierre Peju (Harvill Secker, £12.99). Excellently translated by Euan Cameron, this is a meditation on the...

Death of the novel — again. This conclusion was reached after reading the ramshackle performances of J. M. Coetzee (Diary of a Bad Year, Harvill Secker, £16.99), Michael...

A poetry highlight of the year was a new Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice (Faber, £30, edited by Peter McDonald). The previous Collected (1966), by E. R. Dodds, MacNeice's...

Rosemary Hill's God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain (Allen Lane, £30) is an informed and scholarly study of a great architect, a wide-ranging conspectus...

This year, I felt galvanised and excited by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan (Allen Lane, £20). Taleb, whose background is in finance, believes that, in the modern...

I read, on a friend's recommendation, V. S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival (Picador, £8.99) this year. Strange, thwarted, entrancing book. It calls itself a novel, but it reads...

Nicola Barker's visionary epic, Darkmans (Fourth Estate, £14.99), is a really strange and lively and unsettling book that at first I hated, then loved, and now can't get out of...

The book I loved best all year was Daljit Nagra's wonderfully inflected collection of poems, Look, We Have Coming to Dover! (Faber, £6.99). When I had finished it, half the book...

Graham Greene, A Life in Letters by Richard Greene (Little, Brown, £20). At a time when British fiction is stuttering, this is a very good moment to look back on the life and...

This was a vintage year for history books, none better than David Kynaston's Austerity Britain: 1945-1951 (Bloomsbury, £25), a cracking read with powerful resonances for those...

Fathers and Sons by Alexander Waugh (Headline, £8.99) about his extraordinary forebears starting with the Brute, his greatgreat-grandfather, who always carried a whip with an...

The most enjoyable book I have read this year is Vic Gatrell's City of Laughter (Atlantic Books, £35), a work which is as boisterous as its subject — sex and satire in...

The book I have bought most copies of this year is Tom Hodgkinson's How To Be Free (Penguin paperback, £7.99). Hodgkinson is only in his late thirties, but already he is tired...

Mavericks of the money world fascinate me, but the books I want to read by and about them are often left aside while I tackle duller tomes for duty. So here's a couple of years'...

Alan Strachan THE LETTERS OF NOEL COWARD edited by Barry Day Bloomsbury, £25, pp. 800, ISBN 9780713685787 £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Noel Coward owned always that luck...

Frederic Raphael THE ROMAN TRIUMPH by Mary Beard Belknap Harvard, £14.40, pp. 448, ISBN 9780674026131 £15.95 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 How should ancient Roman history be...

Sebastian Horsley THE ADVENTURES OF HERGE by Michael Farr John Murray, £20, pp. 125, ISBN 9780719567995 £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Ihad two great childhood heroes: Marc...

Clare Asquith THE LODGER: SHAKESPEARE ON SILVER STREET by Charles Nicholl Allen Lane, £20, pp. 400, ISBN 9780713998900 £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Nine years ago Park...

Ben Wilson THREE VICTORIES AND A DEFEAT: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE FIRST BRITISH EMPIRE 1714-1783 by Brendan Simms Allen Lane, £30, pp. 800, ISBN 9780713994261 © £24 (plus £2.45...

Bevis Hillier The humorist Paul Jennings wrote for Punch when it was still funny — that is, up to and including the editorship of the late Alan Coren. Jennings also wrote such...

Peter Oborne BEHIND THE SHADES: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Duncan Fletcher Simon & Schuster, E18.99, pp. 400, ISBN 9780743275590 £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 English cricket...

Byron Rogers THE BAREFOOT EMPEROR: AN ETHIOPIAN TRAGEDY by Philip Marsden HaiperPress, £17,99, pp. 432, ISBN 9780007173457 © £1439 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Iapproached...

GUIDE TO RAILWAY SAFETY (1991) by Roald Dahl The slender book above was the last thing Roald Dahl ever wrote, and was published posthumously by the British Railways Board. It is...

Jonathan Miller, in reflective mood, talks to Henrietta Bredin about his work on stage Jonathan Miller possesses the great gift of making those with a lesser intellect than his...

Andrew Lambirth An American's Passion for British Art: Paul Mellon's Legacy Royal Academy, until 27 Januar), 2008 Supported by the Bank of New York Mellon Daul Mellon (1907-99)...

Michael Tanner The Fortunes of King Croesus; Madama Butterfly Opera North Reinhard Keiser is not a name that triggers many associations in most opera lovers' minds, even the...

Alan Powers The Beauty of Holiness: G.F. Bodley (1827-1907) and his circle V&A, until 17 Feb/vary 2008 The date of George Frederick Bodley's death (1907) offers a partial...

Michael Henderson ne of the most gilded careers in our post-war musical life ends next week when Robert Tear sings in public for the last time. At least he thinks it will be the...

Matthew d'Ancona Anyone in the building under 40?' asks Johnny Rotten. Yes, I am (just): and, by the looks of things, about 20 others among 3,000-odd punters at the Brixton...

A small jewel Deborah Ross Brick Lane 15, Nationwide Well, it's not as good as Monica Ali's book. I'm not convinced it does the book justice. I didn't think it captures the...

Charles Spencer Is there a more irritating figure in British public life than Richard Branson? The beard, the cuddly sweaters, the toothy grin, the self-advertisement, the...

Patrick Camegy Henry V Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon ne of the few certainties aboutHemy Vis that every performance is apolitical act, or will certainly be read as...

Lloyd Evans The Arsonists Royal Court The Giant Hampstead The Bicycle Men King's Head Strange happenings in theatreland. Three London playhouses have taken it into their heads...

Kate Chisholm rr he blogosphere is threatening to take over the airwaves and even the great Eddie Mair is feeling ruffled. Last Saturday, half an hour of PM, his five o'clock...

James Delingpole For much of the summer my brother Dick spends his weekends either as a skirmisher with the 69eme Voltigeurs in Napoleon's Grande Armee or — depending on which...

Ursula Buchan rr he party is almost over. One of the best autumns for many years is coming to an end, the leaves finally seared off the trees by stormy weather. Even people who...

Alan Judd At Oxford I had a clerical friend, a mature postgraduate and student of 19th-century evangelism, who developed a temporary but consuming passion for car tyres. Unlike...

Taki New York Three months before the Americans I committed their greatest foreign policy blunder ever, I had gone up to Cape Cod to interview Norman Mailer. Towards the end of...

Jeremy Clarke T 'm in agony. Toothache. Upper left molar. The pain is shooting up the side of my face and stabbing through my left eye socket. On the plus side, the world is...

Melissa Kite illy really. Although it seemed like a good idea at the time. A girls' poker evening. I forgot that trying to persuade a group of women to do anything involving a...

Neil Clark says cigar smokers are leading the fight for smoker's rights For British lovers of La Diva Nicotina, 1 July 2007 was a black day indeed. The government's draconian...

Diamonds are Oscar Humphries's best friends Buying jewellery is, along with the rubbery smell of hot water bottles and getting upgraded on aeroplanes, one of life's great...

Forte Village is a near-perfect family activity venue, says James Delingpole k re akfast and dinner are pincluded but for God's sake watch out for the extras,' said a friend...

/cannot remember when I became a wine bore. It could have been when Majestic opened a branch in Shepherd's Bush — or it might stem from the first time I saw Sideways. Perhaps it...

Hansard does not show that, when the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, Dr Vincent Cable (as he likes to be called, having a doctorate of philosophy from the University of...

Dear Maly Q. A dinner-party guest rang me three hours before the dinner for ten I was giving as a thank-you to her and her husband to say that as soon as she arrived at my flat,...

FRANK KEATING The to-and-fro of the 2012 Olympic Games's accounting transparency (or otherwise) continues to be what old sportswriters used to call 'a ding-dong contest'. The...