T he most perceptive indictment of the Blair era was delivered, in an admirably candid speech last September, by Alan Milburn (interviewed by Fraser Nelson on page 14)....

connections that I discovered while writing a book on the dictator’s early life. Stalin worked for the Rothschilds; he burnt down their refinery and ordered the assassination of...

A sense of stagnation has descended upon the House of Commons. The king is dead, and yet the new king will not be enthroned for weeks. Nothing much can happen in the meantime....

Monday’s appearance by Boris Johnson in a toga was intended to stop, is a little saga of how ‘dumbing down’ works. No one involved set out to undermine the subject, yet that...

MONDAY Am in severe shock. Just put the phone down from the Labour press office. Someone called ‘Bev’ rang to say she had found 15 inaccuracies in stories we briefed to the...

Rian Malan is appalled that Zimbabwe has been put in charge of Sustainable Development by the UN — and says it is symptomatic of the way in which Mugabe is indulged by foolish...

The Blairite ‘outrider’ and former health secretary tells Fraser Nelson that the Tories underestimate Brown at their peril, and says that he never wanted to be prime minister...

In an exclusive interview, Ukraine’s President talks to Mark Leonard about his turbulent country, the Orange revolution, and living up to the ‘romantic dream’ of disillusioned...

Rachel Johnson is saddened by the pop star’s MySpace lament about being ‘a bit chubby’ and tells her to keep fighting the ‘evil machine’ that forces female stars to look like...

Neville Hodgkinson asks why the jury in the Sally Clark trial was told to discount the DTP jab given to her second child, Harry, just five hours before he was found dead S ally...

Rod Liddle explores the subtle etiquette of BBC interviews and concludes that John Sweeney made a protocol error — quiet hostility would have been ample A h, now, this is what...

Sir: Elliot Wilson rails against the alleged bureaucracy, corruption and nepotism that he argues are strangling business opportunities for foreign investors in Kazakhstan...

Sir: The health minister Andy Burnham takes me to task for my piece about the rise of the SNP in Scotland (Letters, 12 May). The average hospital operation wait is a fortnight...

Sir: Paul Johnson’s invocation of the lawn (And another thing, 12 May) as England’s contribution to European vistas was underlined recently when the Italian foreign minister,...

Sir: Hugo Rifkind makes an excellent suggestion regarding Prince Harry entering the emergency services (Shared opinion, 5 May). The modern world probably would indeed ‘go nuts’...

Sir: Edward Norman says in his review of Hans Küng’s Islam: Past, Present and Future (Books, 12 May) that ‘Küng, however, is no professional historian, which becomes clear when...

Sir: Roy Hattersley (Letter from Arcadia, 12 May) has his mid-20th century comedians confused. The ‘over the garden wall’ comic was not Albert Modley. It was the brilliant...

I resisted mouse glue for a long time. ‘Mouse’ and ‘glue’ are words that should not, sanely, sit together. They speak of a world where all the parameters have changed, a world...

A ctive young men, going to work, now sport a new kind of uniform, part oik, part kiddy: trainers with upturned toes, baggy pseudopatch trousers of the kind worn by dustmen,...

Richard Orange says London’s traditional dominance of global dealing in uncut stones is under threat from new players based in India, China and Dubai ‘H ow does it feel to hold...

Matthew Vincent ‘Interests: travel, cinema, country walks, volleyball, volunteering at the pet-rescue centre... ’ Why do CVs make job applicants sound like contestants in the...

C all me a sentimentalist, but when Rupert Murdoch gave a speech here last week telling News Corporation to go carbon-neutral, and to inspire its many millions of viewers and...

Sam Leith F ALLING M AN by Don DeLillo Picador, £16.99, pp. 246, ISBN 9780330452236 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 D on DeLillo really knows how to open a book. The...

Oleg Gordievsky and Boris Volodarsky S PY W ARS : M OLES , M YSTERIES , AND D EADLY G AMES by Tennent H. Bagley Yale, £18.99, pp. 320, ISBN 9780300121988 V £17 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

Philip French C ANNES : I NSIDE THE W ORLD ’ S P REMIER F ILM F ESTIVAL by Kieron Corless and Chris Darke Faber, £14.99, pp. 277, ISBN 9780571230464 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

Jane Ridley F RIENDSHIP AND B ETRAYAL : A MBITION AND THE L IMITS OF L OYALTY by Graham Stewart Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 387, ISBN 9780297646617 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429...

Michael Glover DARKMANS by Nicola Barker Fourth Estate, £15.99, pp. 838, ISBN 9780007193622 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his curious and wearisomely long novel,...

P. J. Kavanagh B Y H OOK OR B Y C ROOK : A J OURNEY IN S EARCH OF ENGLISH by David Crystal HarperPress, £16.99, pp. 314, ISBN 975007235582 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429...

Donald Michie A NIMAL A RCHITECTS by James R. Gould and Carol Grant Gould Basic Books, £15.99, pp. 323, ISBN 9780465027828 ✆ £12.79 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 S tudents of...

Is the Cultural Olympiad in jeopardy from budget cuts and poor planning? Mark Fisher investigates A n estimated one in three of the world’s six billion people will watch the...

Andrew Lambirth talks to Sir Peter Blake about his forthcoming Tate retrospective S ir Peter Blake is much in demand. A popular figure since he rose to fame with his...

Martin Gayford on food and identity in the Yellow House in Arles H aving spent a chunk of my life living, mentally, in 1888 with Vincent van Gogh in Arles I find that I still...

Mark Glazebrook G iven his interest in the merging of blue with green, David Cameron would presumably feel at home in the United Arab Emirates while Sharjah’s 8th Biennial is...

Susan Moore ‘ t is a compelling moment in the art I world,’ says Robin Woodhead, Sotheby’s executive vice president and chief executive, Europe and Asia. ‘There has been a...

Lloyd Evans A Matter of Life and Death Olivier Vernon God Little Young Vic Sizwe Banzi Is Dead Pit I s the National Theatre a cemetery? Its administrators seem to think so....

Michael Tanner Second Movement: Triple Bill London Film Studios Angela Gheorghiu Barbican Pelléas et Mélisande Royal Opera House S econd Movement is a young opera company which...

Deborah Ross Magicians 15, Nationwide D avid Mitchell and Robert Webb star in the Channel 4 comedy Peep Show , which is beautifully conceived, original and funny whereas this...

James Delingpole T here’s a really horrible stage you go through as a writer when you’re working on a new novel, and I’m in the middle of it right now. It’s called the...

Kate Chisholm Y ou may have caught an extraordinary programme of interviews with Peckham’s Lost on Radio Four a couple of weeks ago. Winifred Robinson (of You and Yours ) went...

Ursula Buchan O nce, a long time ago, when I was a horticultural student at the RHS Gardens at Wisley, I helped to stage an exhibit of pelargoniums at the Chelsea Flower Show....

Alan Judd W hen I was a child Bristol was a port somewhere beyond Kent. Later on I discovered that in the plural — as in a nice pair of — it referred, mystifyingly, to...

Taki New York A hmet Ertegun was the greatest Turk since Kemal Ataturk, but unlike Mustafa Kemal he never killed anyone, especially a Greek. In brief, Ertegun was the supreme...

Jeremy Clarke M y father was a tyrant at the dinner table. A family member briefly leaving the table to refill the water jug, perhaps, would be furiously denounced as ‘hopping...

Richard Sennett M y kitchen cupboard is full of abandoned dreams. The electronic icecream maker can turn out tomato–dill sorbet, crème St Petersbourg , and guava icecream;...

SIMON HOGGART N ow, pay attention. We have a lot of wines to get through and not much time, so if you don’t mind, I’ll crack on. All the wines come from the famous City firm of...

Jenny Wilhide finds that every picture sells a story ‘T o collect photographs is to collect the world,’ said essayist Susan Sontag. Judging by auction results at Christie’s,...

Alex Bilmes cleans up in Japan T okyo, I am not the first foreign visitor to observe, is a city obsessed by cleanliness. The streets are clean, the cars are clean, the buildings...

FRANK KEATING W i th no international competition this summer, football’s curtain comes down with a clamorous abruptness in Athens on Wednesday, when Liverpool meet AC Milan in...

party has been given for me by the mother of my daughter’s best friend at school. She invites a handful of other school mothers, and as we leave for the school run she says,...

been invited to Ibiza, I found out that some friends of my parents are going out by NetJets to stay with the same people. Naturally, I wanted to blag a lift, but instead of...

a semi-famous racing driver. Now she regularly accuses me in front of others of having leaked stories about this affair to the tabloids. This is not something I would do. For...