S ince the words ‘credit crunch’ entered the public lexicon last summer, many politicians and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic have maintained a state of blithe denial...

or an obsessive love of counting, so much so that to escape a vampire you just need to throw loads of cloves of garlic on the floor and the vampire can’t resist counting them,...

I t was easy to forget during Gordon Brown’s trip to India and China that he has actually been Prime Minister since June. His speeches were filled with export targets and...

World Economic Forum in Davos this week. The global titans of banking and politics are not looking good: to be photographed having fun with them would be a provocation. Not...

snapping by a tabloid photographer of Sam nipping out for late-night essentials on the mean streets of west London! We first planned for her to be caught buying fairtrade...

The PM is about to unveil his comprehensive National Security Strategy. Con Coughlin says the best idea to import from America is not a National Security Council but a new...

Allister Heath says that Brown’s poll tax on Britain’s 114,000 non-domiciled residents will drive away talent when our economy most needs it. Shame the Tories would do the...

In the week of the World Economic Forum Rani Singh talks to Angel Gurria, head of the OECD, who has sharp words on capitalist ‘schizophrenia’ and a coded warning for Gordon...

Lloyd Evans Iran was in the cross hairs last Tuesday. At the Intelligence Squared debate the mellifluously worded motion, ‘It’s better to bomb Iran than risk Iran getting...

Bryan Forbes says that the government’s ruling that incandescent light bulbs be phased out is a symptom of a world indulging its political lunacies — and it makes it too...

Rod Liddle says that the Home Secretary’s admission that she would not feel safe walking the streets after dark reflects not candour but arrogance and aloofness T here is a...

Sir: I was longing to disagree with Rod Liddle that organ donation should continue to depend upon a positive act to opt into the programme (‘Hands off my organs’, 19...

Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 12 January) contemplated the banning of church bells in Oxford by politically correct cowards unwilling to turn down the application...

Sir: Irwin Stelzer’s article (‘The true impact of Brown’s policies’, 19 January) makes a host of valid points, which the likes of the PM will doubtless ignore. That...

Sir: Charles Moore is wrong to condemn Ann Widdecombe’s remarks on Blair’s ‘conversion’ to Roman Catholicism (The Spectator’s Notes, 12 January). Blair’s government...

Sir: Sniglet, Matthew, is the answer to your problem (Another voice, 19 January). Sniglet is a word to describe a much-needed word which does not exist. It was coined at least...

Sir: So Diana Rigg ‘can’t bear’ fat people, although she should be told that it is not only the hugely obese who wear those horrible leggings which do none of us any...

L ast week, in my digital dealings with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, I experienced something truly fascinating. Yes, I know. Subjective. Dangerous sentence. Bear...

D o the sources disagree? Of course. And so they should. One of the mysterious aspects of human perception is the way in which eye-witnesses disagree about what they have seen....

Matthew Lynn visits the Bentley factory in Crewe — where Spitfires were once built — and discovers how Volkswagen’s engineers and marketing men have revived the classic...

Cosmo Lush V egas, baby. Ask any self-respecting geek what’s the hottest thing in this town and it isn’t lap-dancers or crapshoots but gadgets and gizmos. Las Vegas is the...

T he archbishop and I — not having been formally introduced — confined ourselves to an exchange of despairing glances. We were at Doncaster, in the buffet car of the 19.13...

Sam Leith POE: A L IFE C UT S HORT by Peter Ackroyd Chatto, £15.99, pp. 170, ISBN 9780701169886 ✆ £12.79 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 W hen Edgar Allan Poe bumped into a...

George Osborne T HE F ORGOTTEN P RIME M INISTER : T HE 14 TH E ARL OF D ERBY , A SCENT , 1799-1851 by Angus Hawkins OUP, £30, pp. 448, ISBN 9780199204403 ✆ £24 (plus £2.45...

Alan Judd L EADERLESS J IHAD : T ERROR N ETWORKS IN THE T WENTY - FIRST C ENTURY by Marc Sageman University of Pennsylvania Press, £16.50, pp. 200, ISBN 9780812240658 M arc...

Matthew d’Ancona J oy D IVISIoN : P IECE By P IECE , W RITING A BoUT J oy D IVISIoN , 1977-2007 by Paul Morley Plexus, £14.99, pp. 160, ISBN 9780859654043 ✆ £11.99 (plus...

Judith Flanders A MERICAN P RoMETHEUS : T HE T RIUMPH AND T RAGEDy oF J. R oBERT o PPENHEIMER by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin Atlantic, £25, pp. 736, ISBN 9781843547044 ✆...

John Martin Robinson G REAT C OLLECTORS OF O UR T IME : A RT C OLLECTING S INCE 1945 by James Stourton Scala, £45, pp. 480, ISBN 9781857595147 ✆ £36 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870...

John de Falbe W E A RE N OW B EGINNING OUR D ESCENT by James Meek Canongate, £16.99, pp. 295, ISBN 9781841959887 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A t the centre of...

The following is the address given at his funeral at Kensal Green Crematorium on 2 January W e were all so lucky to bask in Hugh’s generous friendship. He included in this...

D. J. Taylor G RANTA 100 edited by William Boyd Granta, £12.99, pp. 349, ISBN 9781905881000 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T ugging the review copy of Granta 100...

‘Mr Hallé’s Band’ began giving concerts 150 years ago. Michael Kennedy on the great orchestra O n the wet evening of 30 January 1858 in the Free Trade Hall,...

Andrew Lambirth Rose Hilton: A Selected Retrospective Tate St Ives, until 11 May R ose Hilton was born Rosemary Phipps in the Kentish village of Leigh, near Tonbridge, in...

In the swim Charles Spencer T here’s a lovely number by Loudon Wainwright III called ‘The Swimming Song’ that evokes the delights of bathing with both sharp wit and...

Lloyd Evans The Tempest Arts, and touring Brendan at the Chelsea Riverside A Mother Speaks Hackney Empire T ara Arts, a troupe devoted to ‘crosscultural theatre’, are...

Michael Tanner La traviata Royal Opera House The Vanishing Bridegroom The Barbican S omething I didn’t think was possible has happened this last week: I have been strongly...

Robin Holloway I t’s been commonplace ever since the widespread dissemination of sound recording, followed by the rapid growth of broadcasting, to deplore ‘the appalling...

Deborah Ross Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 18, nationwide A fter the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men , I’m not sure a film about a...

Kate Chisholm I t’s been really hard getting used to the idea that there’s no more Bach at eight on Radio Three. After 48 mornings, I’ve found myself well and truly...

James Delingpole Y ou were probably expecting me to review Ross Kemp in Afghanistan (Sky One, Monday) this week but I’m a bit off Afghanistan programmes at the moment. Not to...

Robin Oakley T he actor Bernard Miles, asked once how he liked his eggs, replied, ‘In threes.’ An old chum of mine, in the days when lunch with ministers or MPs was an...

Taki Gstaad I ’ve been watching the Australian Tennis Open on the telly and boring myself to sleep. The modern game is too onedimensional, the players too predictable. The...

Jeremy Clarke T he Methodist church hall could have been a bit warmer. I chose a seat at the end of the row. Because I’d been kept awake for most of the previous night by...

Aidan Hartley Somalia I am in a refugee camp of 200,000 war victims on the outskirts of Mogadishu. The muezzin call to prayer drifts across a sea of plastic tents set among...

Alex James I was outside the Wolseley smoking after dinner, just lighting up my second and peacefully contemplating the relative merits of banana splits and chocolats...

Mark Palmer regrets that the Aston Martin impresses only men ‘W ell done, mate, nice one,’ says a man on the way to work as my Aston Martin DB9 rolls off a giant transporter...

Simon Courtauld visits a battle-scarred memorial to the Spanish civil war F or students of the Spanish civil war, and especially its battlefields, Aragon, visited by few foreign...

Andrey Slivka M aybe I’m not objective, since I always approach Lviv, Ukraine, after a spell in Kiev, where I live, or in other points east amid the relentless dun-coloured...

Dom Joly I went to a French lycée in Beirut when I was a kid and I’m bilingual — at least I thought I was until my New Year’s trip to Quebec City, the capital of French...

Christina Patterson O n my first morning in Shanghai I was woken up by drums. It sounded like a military parade, but the roads I could see from the window of my 16thfloor hotel...

Lucinda Baring I f you want a more intrepid holiday than your usual week on the Costa del Sol, then Peru has it all. But when trying to decide how to tackle an entire country...

a minor blip? I do not know, but things don’t look good. What I do know is that we can offer Spectator readers the magical ‘soft landing’ economists seek, since the wines...

‘S o,’ said the television interviewer, fixing me with an inquisitorial stare, ‘why are you so desperate to be a celebrity?’ This was last week on BBC2, but the question...

It is not fair to blame the Americans for every element of speech that we don’t like, but there are a couple of pieces of syntax that have blown like some New World bacterium...

them from buying the new ultra-thin Apple Air laptop, to which they had become curiously attracted. Delighted to help. In fact anything I can do to deprogramme you from the...

a large number of letters, many of them lengthy, from people I have never met but who knew Daddy (he was 50 when I was born). I am enormously moved by the length of the letters...

cost of petrol has become so high, he is reluctant to accept weekend invitations and suggests that instead we ‘join’ our friends by webcam as they are having breakfast or...

Q. I have an intense dislike of writing letters with anything other than an ink pen, including the address on the envelope. However, with the constantly changing weather, I am...