sign a declaration against exploiting racialist themes during the election; it then began to post on its Internet site the name of those who declined to sign. The declaration...

M any free-born Englishmen will be frothing this weekend as they are forced to fill in, under pain of a £1,000 fine, 20 pages of personal questions posed by the Office for...

BRUCE ANDERSON A though the two main parties would appear to be at opposite ends of the popularity spectrum, they have a common problem. Neither is confident in its...

A Paris funny thing happened to me on the way to l'Opera the other day. I was taking a break in the Café de la Paix. Perhaps a curious choice, but I've always wondered if the...

As Timothy McVeigh prepares to die, the crusading British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith explains why he decided not to represent him and why he believes that the world is...

OONA KING, MP, the daughter of a professor, has a hobby of learning languages. So I took the more note of her pronunciation of the word plethora on the wireless the other day....

William Cash on how naive Westerners are tricked into buying the ,freedom' of slaves THE SIGHT of the Etireno 'slave ship' being greeted at the rickety old West African port...

Andrew Roberts on a man who gained a criminal record after his whippet barked at a couple of police horses IN P.G. Wodehouse's masterpiece The Code of the Woosters, PC Eustace...

Bridget Storrie visits the oil explorers of Arctic Alaska and can't see why the greens are being beastly about Bush Juneau NEVER volunteer for anything, especially if it...

A HALIBUT eight feet long and weighing 20 stone has been landed off the coast of Sutherland. The Roman satirical poet Juvenal (c. AD 60-130) would have known what to do with it...

Michaela Young went on a management course and discovered that boys will be nasty but that girls can be cows I WORK for a high-street bank and I recently attended a three-day...

Jewellery: minimal. Clothes: never anything that might look like evening wear. Cardigans should be avoided — you might be mistaken for a secretary, Make-up: discreet. As...

IT IS reassuring to know that, contrary to what is often asserted by certain ill-disposed people, the forces of law and order in this country are sometimes extremely vigilant...

Edward Heathcoat Amory finds that the BBC is biased in favour of EU integration even when it is straining to be impartial TWO months ago there was a curious meeting in a...

A week l y survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit THE foot-and-mouth crisis has spawned plenty of cod theories about agriculture, but few quite as dramatic as that...

Our busy Home Secretary grants another interview, and Anne MeElvoy discovers what gets his goat JACK STRAW is the New Labourite that a certain breed of stout Tory secretly...

PAUL JOHNSON T his is a most distasteful subject. All genteel readers are asked to turn the page now. Still with me? Right, then. The other day I overheard two women talking at...

From Mr Brendan Donnelly Sir: Peter °borne upbraids his journalistic colleagues for not checking their stories (1 - low they invented a Tory plot', 21 April). If he had...

From Professor Kader Asmal, MP Sir: R.W. Johnson (Pride becomes prejudice', 31 March) constructs a picture of a South African higher-education system that is disintegrating. In...

From Mr Tom Burkard Sir: Your leading article (21 April) suggests that the best way to ease the consciences of middle-class parents who opt for independent schools is to issue...

From Mr Colin Bullen Sir: Nigel Farage's strictures on Conservative MEPs (`The wimps of Strasbourg', 21 April) would carry considerably more conviction had his party remained...

From Mr Laurence Raw Sir: I would like to thank Professor Stone for drawing readers' attention to the consequences of the recent economic crisis in Turkey ('The sick man of...

From Mr Matthew Stadlen Sir: Impressed as I was by your article linking the Aeneid to the Middle East conflict ('Virgil's message for the Middle East', 7 April). I feel bound to...

From Q.G. Daniel Sir: While anyone with sense must deplore the attitude of the Scottish football fans described by Tim Luckhurst (`Scotland the terrified', 12 April), it seems...

From Mr Andrew Macdonald Sir; Matthew Parris's arguments for eating less meat (Another voice, 21 April) are as timid as they are flawed. One of the issues he neglected to look...

From Mr Robert Low Sir: Jonathan Freedland must be easily surprised if he finds it 'curious' that 'the leading anti-American voice in Europe today is . the Gaullist President of...

FRANK JOHNSON A few years ago, Lord Tebbit announced his 'cricket test'. He said words to the effect that the real test of whether a Briton of immigrant origin owed ultimate...

STEPHEN GLOVER T he BBC has not had much luck with its blockbuster dramas recently. Audiences have been disappointing. So the corporation is investing a great deal of hope in...

Caroline Moorehead UNDER HIS VERY WINDOWS: THE VATICAN AND THE HOLOCAUST IN ITALY by Susan Zuccotti Yale, 119.95, pp. 408, ISBN 0300084870 THE DEFAMATION OF PIUS XII by Ralph...

Anthony Gottlieb WITTGENSTEIN'S POKER by David Edmonds and John Eidinow Faber, £9.99, pp. 267, ISBN 057120547X P icture the scene. The place is Athens and the time is around...

Piers Paul Read THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: A SHORT HISTORY by Hans Kiing, translated by John Bowden Weidenfeld, £14.99, pp. 237, ISBN0297646389 h e nearest our Prime Minister, Tony...

Bronwyn Rivers WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL by Michael King Picador, £16, pp. 583, ISBN 0330352768 L iterary biographies, particularly those of living subjects who, like Janet...

Miranda Seymour MYSTERIES OF PARIS: THE QUEST FOR MORTON FULLERTON by Marion Mainwaring University Press of New England, $30, pp. 327, ISBN 1584650087 M orton who? A few...

Anne Applebaum POLAND: A TRAVELLER'S GAZE .12 FEER by Adam Zamoyski John Mut-ray, L16.99, pp, 301, ISBN 0719557720 T here are countries where it is easy to be a tourist, and...

Lucy Hughes-Hallett LOST LION OF MPIRE by Edward Paice HatperCollins, £19.99, pp. 470, ISBN 0002570033 I n 1900 Cecil Rhodes wrote an introduction to a book by a young man...

Anita Brookner ON GREEN DOLPHIN STREET by Sebastian Faulks Hutchinson, £16.99, pp. 341, ISBN 0091802105 C ontinuing his remarkable investigations into the history of the 20th...

David Profumo MAPPING THE DEEP: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF OCEAN SCIENCE by Robert Kunzig Sort of Books, £8.99, pp. 345, ISBN 0953522715 A lthough I spend much of my life...

Jonathan Mirsky HOTEL HONOLULU by Paul Theroux Hamish Ham Won, 116.99, pp. 492, ISBN 0241141303 I n 1997 Paul Theroux published Kowloon Tong, a novel many readers in the colony...

David Ekserdjian TITIAN: THE COMPLETE PAINTINGS by Filippo Pedrocco and Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel Thames & Hudson, £50, pp. 344, ISBN 0500092974 T his is the kind of...

Mark Ryan believes a new green paper on culture and creativity is funny, sad and dangerous O n almost any day of the week, Tate Modern is thronged with school children, herded...

Capital attraction Angela Summerfield I f one was to conduct a popular poll of London, somewhere amongst the polarised views of the metropolis would be a reference to London's...

Lost on stage Michael Tanner T he commemoration of the centenary of Verdi's death is slowly getting under way in the United Kingdom — about time, since the Battle of the...

It's deghastly Sheridan Morley T he trouble with Anything Goes is that nothing does. At the start of a six-month tour, this new production (which I caught in its Wimbledon...

Bungled assignment Mark Steyn T he Mexican is like The Maltese Falcon. Well, okay, it's not like it at all really, except in two respects. First, the title role is one of...

Robin Holloway T he most famous example of a Composers' Collective, wherein an invited miscellany pools its resources to vary a given theme, will always remain Diabelli's 1819...

James Delingpole I t came as quite a surprise to me that the British soldiers who fought in 1951 at the battle of the Imjin river could be described in a Korea Remembered...

Michael Vestey In recent years the standard of radio comedy has been abysmal to the point where I stopped listening or switched off soon after the latest offering came on. I...

Robin Oakley A pologies first to any of the fellow regulars in the Tote Credit Room at Newbury last Saturday who were deafened by a demented figure shouting home the 12-1...

Taki T o New York the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue, natch, for the Costume Institute's annual ball at $3,500 smackers per person. My hostess, the great designer Carolina...

Toby Young I have a word of advice for any men out there thinking of getting married: don't go to Verbier, With the exception of the Playboy Mansion, I can't think of a better...

Leanda de Lisle I n Northamptonshire one of England's most important country houses is falling into ruin. Apethorpe Hall has a long and romantic history dating back to the 15th...

Petronella Wyatt I nearly killed the dog the other day. It was early in the morning and we had been walking in Hyde Park. The mist had yet to ascend and it covered the park...

HAPPY Easter? Thanks for asking but not especially, no. I've become rather obsessed with medical sites on the Internet and, in particular, typing in any symptoms I might have —...

Ross Clark IF THERE is one group of people who should be bursting with enthusiasm to reelect the government, it is the chartered surveyors. Never exactly the most popular group...

Simon Barnes AT the end of a bad week at the office, the well-adjusted man is supposed to kick the cat. Roy Keane, the captain of Manchester United, kicked Alfie Haaland....

an enthusiastic `Swiss kisser' — i.e., I greet ladies with whom I am moderately familiar on an equal or quasi-equal basis with three proper kisses on the cheek, in the sequence...

(sic) noted, 'Two languages are universally understood: love and gaffes.' Anyway, you're the lucky one — you will know just how to excuse it. Lower John Street, London W1 A....

versity friends. Since some of them had to travel a long way home by train, I happily offered my house for the night to a few, so that they could take the journey at a less...