H ere is what Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, told a Fabian Society and Progress debate for the Labour deputy leadership contenders on 16 May: ‘For our party audience, if...

take part in a discussion following the showing of a documentary made for BBC4 by Charlie Russell. It’s called The Last Year of my Life . Mine, that is. It was filmed over the...

F or some time, David Cameron has been looking for an unpopular education policy. To be heard, he believes, one needs to be attacked. He has already been denounced for his ‘hug...

grammar schools is, ‘ Why did the Tories, in power for 22 of the 42 years since Labour first tried to make comprehensives compulsory, never bring grammar schools back?’ The...

SUNDAY Most exciting day ever : had to activate the Early Warning System! First time it’s been done!! I knew as soon as I saw the headlines on grammar schools that I would have...

Boris Johnson issues a clarion call against the new Puritanism of the coming Brown era, in which risk, pleasure, bunking off, poetry and all forms of play will be imperilled Y...

Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt , both Conservative frontbenchers, respond to the grammar schools row with a four-point plan to restore hope to the least advantaged W hatever...

Dan McNeill, Nato’s commander in Kabul, tells Heidi Kingstone that even a ‘hard-bitten dude’ faces a struggle to make the liberated country function as an orderly society D an...

We have enjoyed, or not, a certain amount of hoo-ha about whether Scotland should be independent. But independent from what? What is this country called? In 1604 James VI of...

Iain Johnstone celebrates the centenary of the ‘Duke’ and recalls a memorable holiday off the Mexican coast with the toupee-less Hollywood legend H ad he lived, John Wayne would...

expenses. But it should be neutral Rod Liddle says that the Corporation has no right to adopt a position on an issue such as David Maclean’s private member’s bill, and should...

Sir: According to your leading article, ‘The Tory party is a party of aspiration or it is nothing’ (19 May). If this means that the Tory party is a party in the interest...

my membership of the Conservative party. As an ex-grammar school boy, from modest circumstances, who gained a place at Oxford and is now in a professional occupation, I cannot...

Sir: I read Andrew Roberts’s Biggles-like comments in Blair: A Modern Tragedy (12 May) with amazement, given the still-deepening catastrophe in Iraq as reported week by week....

Sir: Whatever the cause, the deaths of Harry and Christopher Clark were a tragedy, as was that of their mother. Their family has our sympathy. Neville Hodgkinson argues (‘What...

Sir: Charles Moore asks what name should be given to the ‘dumbing down’ which threatens to reverse the Renaissance (Spectator’s Notes, 19 May). Then, reborn learning replaced...

C ricket. Aargh. My gorge rises at the very word. Days — months — years of schoolboy misery; long, wretched, empty afternoons of boredom, fear and wasted time. Which is no way...

T hat fierce neighbouring cat, which has killed or scared off our mice, has not yet destroyed our robin. Cats do not enjoy eating robins. If they do so by mistake, they vomit....

Simon Nixon tours the distilleries of Speyside and takes the opportunity to ask whether the Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya was wise to spend £525 million on Whyte & Mackay D...

Julia Hobsbawm The Daily Telegraph estimated last month that roughly a third of the bosses of FTSE 100 companies use a personal coach — ‘and not the guy who tells them to do...

Joanna Pitman visits Maggs, the antiquarian booksellers, and learns how to build a library that will rise in value I magine coming across a book that has lain untouched for 100...

S hortly after the death of John Paul II in 2005, the wise and amiable Father Dominic Milroy, former prior of the Benedictine college in Rome, leant across a dinner table and...

Philip Hensher T HE Y IDDISH P OLICEMEN ’ S U NION by Michael Chabon Fourth Estate, £17.99, pp. 432,, ISBN 9780007150393 V £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T he enjoyment...

D. J. Taylor B ETWEEN E ACH B REATH by Adam Thorpe Cape, £16.99, pp. 419, ISBN 9780224074988 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 E xercised by the need to establish exactly...

Richard Beeston T HE I SLAMIST by Ed Husain Penguin, £8.99, pp. 288, ISBN 9780141030432 ✆ £7.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A bu Suleiman looks back on his time in al-Qaeda...

P. D. James W RITING IN AN A GE OF S ILENCE by Sara Paretsky Verso, £12.99, pp. 192, ISBN 9781844671229 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 S ara Paretsky is one of the...

Francis King W INTERTON B LUE by Trezza Azzopardi Picador, £12.99, pp. 268, ISBN 9780330493505 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A few nights ago I was at a dinner party...

Noble Frankland E NDGAME 1945 by David Stafford Little, Brown, £20, pp. 448, ISBN 9780316727945 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 O f six million Russian soldiers captured...

Matthew Dennison W HEN W E W ERE B AD by Charlotte Mendelson Picador, £12.99, pp. 320, ISBN 9780330449298 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I n a large house in north...

Lee Langley I NDIA ’ S U NENDING JOURNEY by Mark Tully Rider, £14.99, pp.288, ISBN 97818460401717 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T he unending journey of this book...

Cressida Connolly O UR F ARM : A Y EAR IN THE L IFE OF A SMALLHOLDING by Rosie Boycott Bloomsbury, £15.99, pp. 304, ISBN 9780747588979 ✆ £12.79 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655...

Caroline Baum was the last journalist to interview the writer Lesley Blanch, who died earlier this month Y ou can hardly blame a woman of 102 for being a bit hazy when it comes...

W riting a novel is a voyage into unknown territory. (Reading one is also, of course.) The author explores possibilities. To some extent even those novels which seem far removed...

A large portrait of Mark Elder hangs backstage at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. It’s not a flattering representation; in it the Hallé’s music director looks tired,...

Mary Wakefield meets Kay Saatchi and learns about her new exhibition H ow do you react to the news that Kay Hartenstein Saatchi, ex-wife of Charles, the woman who helped to...

Andrew Lambirth A Slap in the Face! Futurists in Russia Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, London N1, until 10 June F uturism was originally an Italian manifestation in...

Robin Holloway A n officially commissioned company history: recipe for yawns! Most such hardly amount to more than an exercise in corporate piety with surreptitious...

Lloyd Evans Three Sisters Barbican Big White Fog Almeida Terre Haute Trafalgar Studios S trange business walking into the Three Sisters at the Barbican. A vast new temporary...

Michael Tanner Macbeth Glyndebourne Acis and Galatea St John’s Smith Square Amadigi di Gaula Barbican T he Glyndebourne season began this year in a striking fashion, with a new...

Deborah Ross Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 12A, Nationwide T he first two Pirates films were such huge worldwide successes — together, they grossed more than $1.5...

Kate Chisholm I t’s your last chance this afternoon to catch one of the best programmes on Radio Four, guaranteed to come up each week with something a bit different: an...

Simon Hoggart W hen we lived in Washington, the local NBC News always ended with Bob Ryan’s Weather . Not God’s weather, or even the more modest ‘Bob Ryan’s Weather Forecast’....

Robin Oakley S adly the racing season both for purebred Arabians and even for camels was over when I was in Qatar last weekend. But I did discover that Arab mums, like British...

Taki New York T he funny thing about Sarkozy being president of France is not his size, but his family. His father, Pal Sarkozy, used to frequent the same nightclubs as I did...

Jeremy Clarke O n the last day of the football season we were away to Manchester United and we wanted at least a draw to be safe from relegation. Lose, and we were cast off...

Roy Hattersley L ast weekend Arcadia was en fête . The annual flower festival in the church was, as always, quietly dignified and demonstrated both the artistic ingenuity and...

grubby Dalston and exactly opposite a vast estate that is so boarded up it’s not so much ‘sink’ as ‘sunk’. ‘Oops,’ I think, as we park up. I am with my brother and my...

Rachel Johnson gets high on food in San Francisco I have just returned from San Francisco. I loved everything about it. I loved Castro, the men in leather vests and sex shops...

Jenny Wilhide rides the classical way in Portugal O n weekends my husband and I haul our legs from under our desks and spend a few hours on horseback in the country. It’s a lot...

James Delingpole explores the hidden, unspoilt treasures of the Costa Blanca ‘D o you think we’ve made a terrible mistake?’ I said to the Fawn as we studied the map of Spain’s...

I f you take the red-eye flight from London to Moscow you’ll arrive at 4.55 a.m. local time, but it’s worth it for the empty drive from the airport at Domodedovo into the city....

Molly Watson I think you can rate the success of any trip abroad by how relieved and happy you feel to be home as your plane makes its final approach to land you back in...

Michael McMahon There are two invaluable rules for a special correspondent — Travel Light and Be Prepared ... remember that the unexpected always happens. Evelyn Waugh, Scoop...

FRANK KEATING F asten your ear-muffs for a deafening weekend — din and dissonance, vrooms and fumes. Around Silverstone, lock up your dogs and daughters while the leaning,...

Q. I will be celebrating a ‘milestone’ birthday this summer and marking the event with a cocktail party for 60 one evening and a dinner for 100 on another. Having lived in...

good wine costing £40 a bottle. They drank it without commenting. I wonder whether there was any way in which I could have made them pay greater attention to what they were...

If they do take them, they leave them at school and then get caught in cloudbursts on the way home. I have asked the school to insist that the pupils are wearing their...