F rom their vantage point in the celestial senior common room, John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith must be observing current events, if not with pleasure, then at...

Booker Prize and a fine novelist herself, said it best. Novelists, she remarked, are generally shyish, observing sorts of people; pushing them on stage, or under a spotlight, is...

F ew would dispute that, in the last fortnight, Gordon Brown has shown why he has been a fixture for so long at the very apex of British politics. His economic model has...

Spectator campaigned for all Hong Kong people to be given British passports. Part of our argument was that, if they all had the passports, very few of them would want to come...

Charles Leadbeater , the acclaimed innovator and new media analyst, predicts a transformed landscape: a new ‘networked’ capitalism in which the state plays a part but cannot...

The Prime Minister has triumphed for now with his grand rescue plan, says Irwin Stelzer . But that is no reason to blame the crisis on America. It may be a reason for an early...

Rod Liddle says that the magnificently horrid England defender exemplifies the greed, lack of respect for the fans and whining self-regard that is ruining football A n important...

In the banking chaos, we should recall the words of the American president Thomas Jefferson: ‘The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of...

The financial crisis is affecting the nominations for the inaugural Spectator Readers’ Representative with Vince Cable receiving more support than a semi-nationalised bank. Dr...

James Delingpole asks second world war re-enactors what they think of the green agenda: the answer is very different to the consensus around the pine tables of metropolitan...

In about a month’s time I’m hitting the boards in Austin, Texas as a support act for Dame Edna. She’s not a happy lady about it because we’ve never hit it off, or got it...

escape from charging elephants to tell. I have one myself, but I know from experience that such stories are usually more interesting to the teller than to the told. They are...

Sir: Your political editor writes (‘Peter v . George is the key battle’, 11 October) that Peter Mandelson’s conversation on Corfu where he ‘dripped pure poison’ about...

Sir: Charles Moore warns against the danger that a new inquiry into police racism by the Metropolitan Police Authority might ‘feed the monster’ of racist lobbying (The...

Sir: The Malayan counter-insurgency campaign was not alone in its success (High life, 11 October). In Oman, in the 1970s, a handful of British officers masterminded and led a...

Sir: Thurber himself (And another thing, 11 October) commented on his cartoon ‘This is the present Mrs Harris. That’s my first wife up there’ — a naked woman on all...

Sir: Denis MacShane (Diary, 13 October) asks why someone doesn’t produce a novel on the Blair–Brown years. Five years ago I penned a pastiche which I thought might come well...

Sir: In the Spectator’s Notes (13 October) we learn how to write a cheque, including ‘the Geoffrey Wheatcroft technique of sending it promptly but omitting the date’. I...

Sir: Dot Wordsworth (Mind your language, 11 October) wrote Lord Kitchener off too soon. It might have been he who headed the force that relieved Khartoum from the Mahdi’s...

T he grimmest assessment of the world economic meltdown that I have seen came not from a banker or a politician or a pundit, but from Kristian, a 53-yearold Icelandic fisherman...

M y attitude to money is simple. I want to think about it as little as possible. So I have arranged my life with this end in view. I work hard and spend less than I earn. I put...

The unravelling of the great buy-to-let scam Ross Clark says speculators and fraudsters saw easy money in buying city-centre flats with borrowed money — but investors and...

Richard Northedge T o anyone born before 1980, the idea that the state would own a large part of the economy was normal. The ‘mixed economy’ was a typically British...

L ast week’s global stock market panic, the overture to this week’s astonishing round of state interventions, was in part provoked by fear of humongous losses in something...

Ben Wilson T HE A GE OF W ONDER by Richard Holmes HarperPress, £25, pp. 380, ISBN 9780007149520 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 William Herschel’s 40-foot...

James Buchan O RIGINS : A M EMOIR by Amin Maalouf, translated by Catherine Temerson Picador, £16.99, pp. 404, ISBN 9780330442480 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T...

Anne Applebaum S EARCHING FOR S CHINDLER by Thomas Keneally Sceptre, £20, pp. 312, ISBN9780340963258 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 W hich would you rather read, The...

Sarah Burton A S TRANGE , E VENTFUL H ISTORY : T HE D RAMATIC L IVES OF E LLEN T ERRY , H ENRY I RVING AND T HEIR R EMARKABLE FAMILIES by Michael Holroyd Chatto, £25, pp. 590,...

Revisited, I picked up the novel, opened it at random, and then, some two hours later, a good part of my working evening was gone. I suppose it is now Waugh’s most popular...

A hundred chorus girls sashaying through a Busby Berkeley musical. Bugs Bunny munching nonchalantly on a carrot. Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone in Hollywood’s greatest...

Bronwen Maddox T HE A MERiCAN F UTURE by Simon Schama The Bodley Head, £20, pp. 392, ISBN 9781847920003 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his is the most exhilarating...

This will go down on the permanent record. A night is nothing if not its own reward. The foxgloves corked with bees. The snail outlining a life of ease. The black things...

H ow to write about the cinema of Terence Davies? Words just don’t stand a chance. I could deploy every superlative going, and reduce every one of the three short films and...

Michael Tanner Partenope English National Opera I n his introduction to Handel’s Partenope in the programme book of ENO’s new production, John Berry, artistic director of...

Lloyd Evans No Man’s Land Duke of York’s Mine Hampstead S low, fractured, monumental, ineluctable, No Man’s Land lurches at you like a disintegrating ice shelf. The...

Giannandrea Poesio Compagnie Beau Geste Parsons Green Toilet Tango Bathstore, Baker Street Stephen Petronio Dance Company Queen Elizabeth Hall Australian Ballet Sadler’s...

Andrew Lambirth Gerhard Richter: 4900 Colours Serpentine Gallery, until 16 November Lucian Freud: Early Works, 1940–58 Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, 38 Bury Street, London SW1,...

Deborah Ross Burn After Reading 15, Nationwide B urn After Reading , a ‘comedy thriller’, is the latest Coen brothers movie, their first after No Country for Old Men , and...

James Delingpole T he problem with this wretched crisis is that it infects even TV. There I was on Sunday night, trying to enjoy some soothing, mellow quality time with dear...

Kate Chisholm N ews announced last Friday that the recent series of economic earthquakes has forced Channel 4 to withdraw from its plans to launch a digital radio network has...

Robin Oakley W as that the chairman of Coutts I saw emptying his pockets of wads of twenties round the Ascot betting ring on Saturday? Was that the CEO of HBOS in front of me...

Ursula Buchan W e can all think of discoveries, which made little impact at their first introduction, but which changed the ways people worked or lived for ever, nevertheless....

Taki New York P eggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and is a graceful essayist and good Catholic lady who happens to be a political conservative. I haven’t seen...

Jeremy Clarke I owe English Heritage an apology. In last week’s column I was scornful of the content of the short historical documentary they show every half hour on a screen...

Alex James I was in a meeting a year or so ago about a charity record for Darfur. Mick was on board. Bono was confirmed. It was all looking good — good for Darfur, as the...

Simon Hoggart W e rejoin one of our favourite partners this month. Robin Yapp, the firm’s founder, has now retired, but his son Jason and stepson Tom continue to run Yapp...

Exuberant displays of wealth give a hint of India’s future, says Charlotte Metcalf I t is largely forgotten that, until 1954 when the government banned the import of cars,...

The real adventure of India is to be found in the cities, writes A.A. Gill A fter independence and partition, tourists going to India had a one-wish destination and the Indian...

Jeremy Clarke RAJASTHAN M y memories of it seem too farfetched. Perhaps I only dreamed I went to Rajasthan for five days. The fabulous hotel at Jaipur, for example — did I...

Juliet Nicolson JODHPUR A fter flying to Rajasthan with a woman’s big toe wedged halfway up my nose, I was delighted to find some relief from the claustrophobic intimacy of...

Mimi Spencer PUNJAB T here are few more fashionable pursuits these days than detoxing. It’s a pastime perfected by people like Cindy Crawford and Jennifer Aniston, along...

The world chess championship is now underway in Bonn, with the first game having taken place on 14 October, too late for inclusion in this article. What are the respective...

I have been reading with interest the articles in the press about the Afghan family that is supposedly living in a £1.2 million council house. You see, the house in question is...

I had not realised that T.S. Eliot was a Sherlock Holmes fan until I thought to look up the word grimpen , which occurs in ‘East Coker’, in the Four Quartets : ‘On the...

Rory Sutherland L ast month I bought from eBay a strange little electronic gadget called a Chumby, an item not yet on sale outside the United States. It worked happily for ten...

Dear Mary Q. When my 16-year-old son has friends round I fill the fridge with beer for them. The other night, for example, ten boys came over. I know for a fact that only five...

no luck with casting agents. I have made endless showreels to demonstrate my ability and versatility — and without wishing to sound arrogant, I have it on good authority that...

first baby and I would appreciate some suggestions on suitable names for grandparents. There can only be one Granny, and as the grandmother on the father’s side I am happy to...