W hen Her Majesty The Queen delivered her first speech to mark the opening of Parliament after the election of Tony Blair, she said, ‘My government intends to govern for the...

Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center atop Boston University. This is a truly remarkable institution, yet, even in Boston, Mass., surprisingly few people know about it....

T ony Blair’s speech at the Guildhall adroitly placed him ahead of the news. By reiterating his support for dialogue with Iran and Syria on the same day that George W. Bush...

illustrates two problems of our culture. The first is about how institutions work. The modernisers want organisations to work more purposefully, and they are right. But the...

MONDAY Fab write-ups of our top secret meeting with unions. (Another great U-turn!) Of course, what we couldn’t reveal is how embarrassing it was when they told Dave how...

Fraser Nelson reveals the mounting fury within the intelligence community at ministers’ failure to set in place a serious framework for smashing Islamic terrorism. Too little...

Christopher Howse says that the children’s minister’s plans for a policy on nursery rhymes are misguided — these ancient poems are immune to the bland categories of...

In the lovely long summer I started suffering from ‘deckchair hamstring’ provoked by the edge of the frame. I have not seen it described anywhere, and it is my diagnosis...

Melissa Kite is awestruck by Karl Pilkington, superstar sidekick to Ricky Gervais, who tells her that the disappearing cod are just hiding and that we should be proud of pygmies...

Allister Heath talks to Don Brash, leader of New Zealand’s National party, and finds him much more robust than Cameron on tax cuts, welfare and the environment I f you were to...

royalties for ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ Rod Liddle reflects on the Procol Harum case and the stunning pretentiousness of 1970s pop groups that ripped off classical music with...

Tessa Mayes says that the crime of harassment is not being prevented by legislation which enables the police to issue warnings to people when they have simply had a quarrel ‘S...

From Sir Jonah Walker-Smith Sir: When I read the title to Alasdair Palmer’s article, ‘Saddam’s trial shouldn’t be fair’ (11 November), I assumed that it was written...

From Sebastian Calvo Sir: Reading Christopher Caldwell’s analysis of the recent American elections (‘We have lost the war’, 11 November) makes me wonder what exactly...

From Jonathan Headland Sir: J.G. Cluff’s letter (11 November) on The Spectator ’s perceived support for Bush and Blair reinvents history outrageously when he writes,...

From Guy Millard Sir: I am always a great admirer of Frank Johnson’s column in The Spectator , but on this occasion (Shared opinion, 11 November) I should add a correction to...

From J. Davis Sir: Charlie Boss’s article on the reforms of government in Oxford University is dominated by a major misconception (‘Is Oxford about to get rid of its...

From Reinier Botha Sir: P.W. Botha’s death prompts me to record that for many of us P.W. Botha was an embarrassment, as was his foreign minister Pik Botha. There was only one...

From Anne Wareham Sir: Do the crowds which love Tate Modern really ‘have the breath squeezed out of them’ (Arts, 11 November) contemplating English gardens? Does the...

From Nick Wootton Sir: As an Independent Custody Visitor (formerly ‘Lay Visitor’), I can attest to the accuracy of Jeremy Clarke’s article (‘I’ve been arrested for...

From Tom Johnson Sir: I read Sandy Balfour’s review of the A-Z of Crosswords by Jonathan Crowther in last week’s edition of The Spectator with interest. I am sure that...

A t the beginning of this week I was telephoned by the Stephen Nolan programme which runs from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Sunday nights on BBC Radio Five Live, and asked if I would...

‘C an’t see the wood for the trees’ is an old saying and a true one, not only metaphorically but literally. Nature students often look carefully at trees and know a lot...

Simon Nixon says the new rich are eager to give billions away — but that their largesse is best used as ‘social risk capital’, not as a substitute for state welfare A s we...

I can’t get worked up about the news that mortgage lenders have loosened their lending criteria at a time when interest rates are rising: Abbey is now prepared to offer loans...

Allister Heath explains why so many goods and services are offered for nothing — and who ultimately pays for them I t was Robert Heinlein, the libertarian science-fiction...

G laswegians are secretly proud of their new, four-lane bridge across the River Clyde, the first crossing to be built in over 30 years. Seen from either end, it looks like half...

three works of magisterial scholarship in these pages — John Haffenden’s William Empson: Among the Mandarins (OUP, £30), Philip Gossett’s Divas and Scholars: Performing...

Mencken: The American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of the Bad Boy of Baltimore by Marion Rodgers (OUP, £19.99). There was never a journalist like H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)....

of fashion for the moment but cannot entirely be avoided. I found that most of this year’s novels seemed old-fashioned, prelapsarian, as if written for a leisured age...

(Picador, 14.99) stays in the mind because of its mixture of history with the personal, which makes the history live. Pre-Mutiny military life in India (the Sikh wars) and a...

like gin to me, and a tonic too, and he should have won the Mann Booker. I absolutely loved Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins (LittleBrown, £18.99), Rupert Everett’s...

Horler (Hodder & Stoughton. Charity shop 50p). Arthur Mee’s Book of the Flag: Island and Empire by Arthur Mee (Hodder & Stoughton, 1941. Charity shop 60p, originally 12s 6d)....

of composers, or half-lives; the second volume of Stephen Walsh’s life of Stravinsky (Cape, £30), and the first volume of John Tyrrell’s life of Janacek (Faber, £60)....

years before most people can face another word on Nelson, but for anyone looking the other way in October 2005 the paperback version of Tim Clayton’s and Phil Craig’s vivid...

Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick by Jenny Uglow (Faber, £20), a definitive biography with dozens of tiny, marvellous illustrations of Bewick; woodcuts reproduced with...

you confess your true reading experience or do you pretend you’ve absorbed a sizeable fraction of the new stuff while maintaining your weekly quotas of Augustan poetry, German...

Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (Sceptre, £16.99) would have been high on my shortlist: a stammering boy grows up in a Worcestershire village against the background of the...

this year is Niall Ferguson’s The War of the World (Penguin, £25). Its subtitle, ‘History’s Age of Hatred’, indicates its subject: the inhumanity of man to man,...

the prize short-lists were Will Self’s The Book of Dave (Viking, £17.99) and Peter Vansittart’s Secret Protocols (Peter Owen, £18.50). Never having liked Self’s fiction...

other a history, but each one proof that good storytelling is a true art. Kate Grenville uses fiction in The Secret River (Canongate, £7.99) to recount the unhappy tale of...

bank vault in Aberystwyth, it is hard to know what to do for an encore. But Byron Rogers has found the perfect elusive quarry in the poet R. S. Thomas, the Welsh poet who...

Winter walks Hello! Welcome to my diary of the delicious and divine. The everyday and exciting. Take the weekend... Geoff has invited Lucy and John up to the cottage for the...

a joy to read, and reread — the perfect match of author and subject. The mix of Anglicanism and doubt, crushes and guilt, Hymns Ancient & Modern and music-hall, fun and fear...

novel Be Near Me (Faber, £16.99) didn’t even make the Booker short-list. I thought it brilliant: a social study which was also a moving personal drama. It was so good I...

Symondson gives us a most satisfying study of the architect, with lovely photographs carefully chosen to explain his work, and a useful gazetteer by Stephen Bucknall for...

almost obscured the radiance of Betjeman (Hutchinson, £20). A. N. Wilson is one of my favourite biographers. After smearing the butter of benevolence on his subjects he...

My Mother’s Lover (Atlantic Books, £14.99). Best described as the literary equivalent of a comic-strip history of the colonialism in Africa, it is like one of the great...

Philip Ziegler K ING ’ S C OUNSELLOR : A BDICATION AND W AR , T HE D IARIES OF S IR A LAN LASCELLES edited by Duff Hart-Davis Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 462, ISBN 0297851551 ✆...

William Skidelsky T HE J C URVE by Ian Bremmer Simon & Schuster, £17.99, pp. 306, ISBN 18004566798 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I an Bremmer, a political risk...

Ed Smith T HE M EANING OF S PORT by Simon Barnes Short Books, £16.99, pp. 336, ISBN 1904977456 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 S imon Barnes, the brilliant writer...

Paul Johnson T HE R ENAISSANCE P OPES by Gerard Noel Constable, £25, pp. 403, ISBN 1845293436 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I t is curious that despite Spain’s...

John Bercow C OMPLICITY WITH E VIL by Adam LeBor Yale, £17.99, pp. 326, ISBN 0300111711 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 O n paper, Adam LeBor boasts excellent...

Alan Coren SEMI-DETACHED by Griff Rhys Jones Michael Joseph, £20, pp. 324, ISBN 0718146263 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 W ere you to look up the word...

The Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize is awarded annually to the writer best able to describe a visit to a foreign place or people, in an essay of up to 3,000 words. The award will...

Nicholas Haslam P OINT TO P OINT N AVIGATION by Gore Vidal Doubleday, £17.99, pp. 277, ISBN 0316027278 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T wo summers ago at La...

William Brett T HIRTEEN M OONS by Charles Frazier Sceptre, £17.99, pp. 422, ISBN 0340826614 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 C old Mountain , Charles Frazier’s...

Simon Heffer 142 S TRAND by Rosemary Ashton Chatto, £20, pp. 386, ISBN 070117370X ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 R osemary Ashton has rather cornered the market in...

Michael Henderson D OWN A P ATH OF W ONDER : M EMOIRS OF S TRAVINSKY , S CHOENBERG AND O THER C ULTURAL F IGURES by Robert Craft Naxos, £19.99, pp. 562, ISBN 9781843792178 ✆...

W e were in a Béarnais restaurant in Montmartre and a young Canadian novelist and short story writer, Bill Prendiville, was speaking admiringly about Hemingway. This was...

T he luvvies are in uproar. Just listen to the din. ‘Horrified,’ says Dame Judi Dench. ‘Disgraceful,’ spits Sir Peter Hall. Equity’s spokesman is officially...

Andrew Lambirth Critic’s Choice The Art Shop, 8 Cross Street, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, until 23 December T his is an example of the kind of exhibition which flourished...

Roderick Conway Morris Michelangelo and Architectural Drawing Palazzo Barbaran da Porto, Vicenza, until 10 December; Casa Buonarroti, Florence, 15 December–19 March T he...

Michael Henderson T here was a unique event in Amsterdam last week, and the musiclovers who heard it felt a special glow. Bernard Haitink returned to the Concertgebouw, the...

Robert Turnbull on how the Chinese are set to dominate the world of piano-playing T he Chinese city of Shenzhen is vying with its rival Shanghai for cultural and economic...

Michael Tanner Queen of Spades Royal Opera The Long Christmas Dinner; A Dinner Engagement Guildhall School of Music and Drama T chaikovsky was interested in states of mind, but...

Lloyd Evans Two Graves Arts Accidental Death of an Anarchist Hackney Empire The End of Reality The Pit A lways recommended is the Arts Theatre, one of the West End’s...

Deborah Ross Casino Royale 12A, nationwide I ’m sorry, but I’ve never liked a Bond film or even understood why everyone loves and anticipates them so. All that sameness....

Simon Hoggart N ew Hall women always struck male Cambridge undergraduates as being a bit otherworldly, living in their weirdly designed college where the staircases had...

Kate Chisholm P hew! It was a close shave, a very close shave, but we can all breathe a sigh of relief. She did the right thing. Ruth held back from Temptation and kept true to...

Robin Oakley I n a Cary Grant film in which she effectively played herself, Mae West declared, ‘When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.’ Exotic...

Taki New York M y love for Ashley Judd has gone the way of Iraq. Remember a couple of years ago, when a friend of mine offered to take me backstage to meet her and I got cold...

Jeremy Clarke D uring the war, our village was one of a cluster of four coastal villages that Churchill loaned to the Americans to practise on prior to the D-Day landings. The...

Aidan Hartley Mogadishu W e have ten heavily armed bodyguards in Mogadishu, where a bloke called Robin and I are covering the Islamic revolution. Our escort protects us from...

Roy Hattersley I t would cost £470 to hang a new gate in my garden wall. The passage of time, the reason why I need a replacement, is also the cause of the excessive cost. The...

Jemima Sissons says that weddings and wedding lists are not what they were W hen my friend Luke was invited to a wedding this summer, he received some rather unusual directions:...

Victoria Hislop says bridge is much more than a game for the old and staid I have friends who keep their bridgeplaying secret. In case anyone should be prying into their...

Matthew d’Ancona says there’s more to Disneyland now than rollercoasters T he first article I ever wrote for The Spectator , some years ago, was a cinephile’s defence of...

W e’ve got Dickens to thank for turning us into a nation of annual binge eaters. It was when Ebenezer Scrooge made amends by ordering the fattest turkey in town to send to...

FRANK KEATING A perennial sucker for feature films with sporting references, I suppose I’ll drag myself to Sixty Six , in spite of the verdict by the Spec ’s Deborah Ross...

Q. For over 23 years I have rented a beat on a South Ayrshire river. For the last six years the proprietor’s wife has cooked for my party, and her food is delicious. Since the...

we arranged that I would take him to a gallery opening to which I had been invited a few days later. He suggested that he would take me out to dinner in a rather expensive...

in Somerset. He has described this to me as an ‘estate’. Am I correct in thinking that my friend has delusions of grandeur? O.G., London SW8 A. It is widely agreed that for...