at the station at Potters Bar, Hertfordshire (five miles from Hatfield, where four died in a crash 18 months ago), killing seven and injuring dozens. Two nuts on points were...

M ore or less every week the Daily Mail front page asks its readers a challenging question to which the answer is No. 'Did ancient fish-men build the Pyramids?' (No); Has...

T he Lobby is doomed. Alastair has sentenced us to a slow death by 'openness and transparency'. Our briefings will soon be accessible to all-corners, thus widening and diluting...

STEPHEN GLOVER A nother cash-for-favours scandal, another escape for New Labour. The Richard Desmond story seems nearly dead. Some may say this is because it never had much...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES Y our sympathy and mine are invited for this week's good cause: the suffering millions who bought their house with a mortgage linked to an endowment policy....

The Labour government has debased democratic and moral standards, says Simon Heifer, and the middle classes may have no choice but to follow the example of the poll-tax rioters...

HAD Pericles been asked, 'Is democracy threatened in third millennium Britain?' he would have answered, 'What democracy?' And he would have been right — because whatever our...

Ideology, big business and pressure-groups now govern politics, says Roger Scruton; and minorities barely get a look in DEMOCRACY is a procedure that people adopt in order to...

Britain and Europe have free governments, says Mark Steyn, but only in the US are the people truly free New Hampshire EXACTLY 50 years ago, the Voice of America sent along a...

Chris Patten says that the EU can work democratically, but first we must develop a kind of Euro-patriotism PEOPLE who like sausages shouldn't watch them being made. The same...

Philip Gould has seen the future and says that it will work — provided we involve all of the people all of the time DEMOCRACY is not dying but changing. The political spasms...

Bruce Anderson says the former editor of the Sun has come a cropper with his sneering portrait of the Tory leader TORIES hate being out of power. No Conservative opposition...

A weekly survey , of the things our rulers want to prohibit LAST week my six-year-old son arrived home with a couple of stick insects which have been nibbling leaves,...

Margaret Beckett tells Clive Aslet why she sees herself as an international statesperson (with special responsibilities for hunting) IT's a grand life, in the morning, I'm in a...

Rachel Johnson explains why so many women are going all the way and saying no to pubic hair ACHTUNG! The subject of this piece is not something one wants to read about over...

PERHAPS it was observing Veronica's practice of grazing — never joining us for breakfast or dinner, but picking up bits and pieces day and night on the hoof — that primed my...

erdi's Il Trovatore has a strong claim to be considered the greatest of operas, if we concede Dr Johnson's point that opera is, by its nature, 'an irrational entertainment'. The...

Asian Babes are middle-aged Tories T he simple question is this: Mr Richard Desmond is prepared to give money to Mr Blair's party, but would he be happy for his daughter to work...

From Mr Steve Olson Sir: Melanie Phillips's article (How the West was lost', 11 May) correctly addresses the problem of using labels from the 1930s to describe the new political...

From Mr Tom Benyon Sir: Neil Clark ('Hanratty deserved to die', 11 May) is wrong to claim that the efforts of left-wing liberals and the Hanratty case were the main cause of the...

From Mr Nicholas Paget-Brown Sir: Kelvin MacKenzie ('Duncan Smith ate my party', 11 May) has lost his touch. Rather than firing crepitatious pot shots at fain Duncan Smith, he...

From Mr IC. Riddell Sir: Reading Peter Hitchens's article ('Keep quiet or face arrest', 11 May) put me in mind of the experience of a supermarket manager who told me of the...

From Mr Dominic Low Sir: While Stephen Glover (Media studies, 11 May) must speak for himself, he certainly doesn't speak for me. I can barely remember when I last watched BBC...

From Mr Nicholas Bagnall Sir: I was sorry to see Stephen Glover (Media studies, 4 May) calling Peter Wilby 'the curmudgeonly editor of the New Statesman'. Readers who know Mr...

From Mr Christopher Ruane Sir: Everybody's favourite fighter (not quitter), Peter Mandelson (Books, 11 May), provides an interesting overview of the transition in the office of...

From Mr John Whitworth Sir: Grey Gowrie (Books, 4 May), in his amusing review of Larkin's girls' school stories, attributes the famous couplet 'I sometimes think that I would...

From Mr Richard Bonnor Sir: I can confirm that the nursemaid mentality unearthed by Ross Clark (Banned wagon, 11 May) is not confined to Letchworth. There is a similar...

From Mr Michael Slipsky Sir: As usual, Mark Steyn's ('Who's ugly now?', 4 May) insights are trenchant, truthful and much needed. I would add to his observations regarding the...

From Mr T. Massey Lynch Sir: How agreeable to read Matthew Parris (Another voice, 11 May) on the River Police determinedly securing 'their' body on the Thames shore. Another...

From Sonia Krimsky Sir: With reference to the word 'amen' in Dot Wordsworth's column (Mind your language, 11 May), the origin is indeed Hebrew. The pronunciation in Hebrew is...

From Mr Robin Moore Ede Sir: Taki enjoyed winding us up with his support for Le Pen (High life, 27 April). I am reminded of the words of (I think) the well-known Rat Packer and...

From Mr Robert Darroch Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 27 April) missed probably the greatest case of cat bias in the English language. It is to be found in the Pocket...

From Mr Guy Bellairs Sir: Robert Gore-Langton (`Flushed with pride', 11 May) amusingly describes China's primitive sanitation practices, but he forgets that Britain is also...

Colin Thubron BAD ELEMENTS: CHINESE REBELS FROM LOS ANGELES TO BEIJING by Ian Buruma Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 368, ISBN 0297643134 T he Chinese dissident, by contrast to the...

Sarah Bradford UNGRATEFUL DAUGHTERS by Maureen Waller Hodder, 120, pp. 402, ISBN 0340794615 I had never thought of James II in the role of King Lear; in his complete lack of...

Francis King LIFE OF PI by Yann Martel Canongate, £12.99, pp. 319, ISBN 184195245 T he cover of this novel makes it clear how difficult it is to define it. 'Hints of The Old...

M. R. D. Foot SPIES BENEATH BERLIN by David Stafford John Murray, £16.99, pp. 211. ISBN 0719563232 N early half a century ago, there was a world propaganda sensation when the...

Alberto Manguel AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH POETRY by James Fenton Viking/Penguin, £14.99, pp. 137, ISBN 0670911003 A fter labouring through the 137 pages (index included) of...

Digby Durrant THE LENT JEWELS by David Hughes Hutchinson, £14.99, pp. 224, SBN 0091794412 D avid Hughes strolls into Carlisle Cathedral and feels an urge to confess something...

Sara Maitland SEA GLASS by Anita Shreve LittleBrown, £12.99, pp. 325, ISBN 0316859095 F or some time I have been baffled about why the contemporary novel is 'failing' its...

D. J. Taylor THE BOSS: THE MANY SIDES OF ALEX FERGUSON by Michael Crick Simon & Schuster, £17.99, pp. 624, ISBN 0743207483 h ere comes a moment in the life of most...

Cressida Connolly A GIRL FROM THE FICTION DEPARTMENT by Hilary Spurling Hamish Hamilton, £9.99, pp. 208, ISBN 0241141656 I f Orwell's biographers are to be believed, his second...

Charlotte Hobson TO CATCH A TARTAR by Chris Bird John Murray, £17.99, pp. 304, ISBN 0719560276 e always were English, and always will be English, and it's just because we're...

Jonathan Sumption MUSSOLINI by R. J. B. Bosworth Arnold, £25, pp. 584, ISBN 0340731443 P olitics and nationality have always got in the way of objective judgment about...

Jane Gardam BLUE: THE HISTORY OF A COLOUR by Michel Pastoureau Princeton, £24.95, pp. 216, ISBN 0691090505 MAUVE by Simon Garfield Faber. £8.99, pp. 224, ISBN 0571209173 B...

David !slakes ELIZABETH AND GEORGIANA: THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE AND HIS TWO DUCHESSES by Caroline Chapman Murray, £19.99, pp. 288, ISBN 0719560446 T his book portrays a world in...

Zenga Longmore MY COUSIN THE WRITER by Paul Binding Dewi Publishing £8.99, pp. 220, ISBN 1899235094 H oorah! A dazzling new novel has appeared featuring a subject hitherto...

Irwin Stelzer THE WORLD WE'RE IN by Will Hutton Little, Brown, £17.99, pp. 320, ISBN 0316858714 I f you are in the mood for an anti-American screed, try The World We're In....

There are no short cuts to becoming a professional singer, writes Henrietta Bredin S inging requires a particular and vaulting sort of courage. After all, you can never be...

Martin Gayford W ho would have thought it?' remarked an American art critic friend of mine whom I ran into on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Scarcely anyone, it...

Toby Young W ittgenstein once said of G.E. Moore that he proved exactly how far you could get in philosophy with absolutely no ability whatsoever. I was reminded of this remark...

Patrick Carnegy T he brilliant artifice of the wit in Much Ado is a dance over an abyss, and yet it needs firm ground if its steps are not to falter, What draws us to the play...

Charles Spencer 0 h yes, as dear old John Major used to say, this is the column read by the stars. Very considerably, in fact. It is true that I'm still awaiting Madonna's Top...

Mark Steyn N ot all French movie-makers have Orivcn away their audience. Francis Veber has had his finger on the commercial pulse since La Cage Aux Folles in 1978, and now, a...

Michael Tanner T here can hardly be any question that the most accomplished and effective opera ever written by an 18-year-old is Korngold's Violanta. It doesn't, in my view,...

Michael Vestey

far more than I would have thought possible a few years ago. This column, for example, was emailed to The Spectator in seconds. One disadvantage cropped up recently when Katie,...

James Delingpole I couldn't quite make up my mind whether The Experiment (BBC 2, Tuesday, Wednesday) was boringly interesting or interestingly boring, but either way I was...

Robin Oakley I magine Stephen Byers stepping up to the despatch box in the House of Commons and declaring: 'Oh, all right then, I did tell a porkie over the Martin Sixsmith...

Alan Judd O nce again, the message seems clear: you want a good car, you buy Japanese. For the ninth successive year the JD Power customer satisfaction survey has put a...

Simon Courtauld W hen the Huguenots, including my family, were driven from France towards the end of the 17th century by Louis XIV's religious intolerance, they took with them,...

Taki T New York here's a whiff of déja vu in the air, déjà vu as in David Dinkins, the first black mayor of Noo Yawk and probably among the worst the Bagel's ever had. Dinkins...

Jeremy Clarke I was on the exercise bike by the window last week. Hill profile. Ten minutes, Level nine. Optimum heart rate — 145 beats per minute. Only two other people in the...

Aidan Hartley 0Lailapia nly rarely does my Anglo-Kenyan breast swell with pride at my British origins. It did the other day, when I came across a British army lorry churning...

Petronella Wyatt W hat has happened to our old people? Recently three pensioners deliberately went missing in France after hiring a holiday villa. They decided they didn't like...

Michael Henderson A CRICKETER in a hundred retired last week: Angus Fraser played for Middlesex for 18 years and represented England 46 times, taking 177 wickets. But those...

wonder if you can explain the following incident. Walking into my grandmother-in-law's drawing-room, I found her snapping shut a book. 'Oh dear, how embarrassing,' she said....

impress a certain royal personage who will shortly be dining at my house? Name and address withheld A. There is currently a revival of interest in vintage varieties of...

taken aback by their reaction to the news that I have a son who boards at prep school. 'Well, I think it's barbaric to send children away to prep school!' they say. 'I would...

understand why he has not been forced to resign. Each time I see him on television, my blood boils. Mary, can you see a way to shift him? M.D., Wiltshire A. Yes, but I would...