A n Englishman’s home is his castle, but his wheelie bin is not far behind as a symbol of domestic independence. So it is no surprise that the spread of fortnightly, rather than...

Notting Hell , so the dateline above this diary should read ‘New York, Dallas, Washington D.C, Chicago, Denver, L.A, San Francisco’ which would be a first — for me, anyway. In...

known to modern theories of governance. It is considered disgraceful, for example, that the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, who is a government minister and was made a peer by...

MONDAY Phew! We’re back to just the one good-looking, charismatic David. All I can say is thank goodness for that! My mental health will be all the better for it and no doubt...

Fraser Nelson takes to the road and finds voters turning to whichever parties will maximise the mutiny against Blair and Brown. The SNP is now a party of protest, not separatism...

Don’t be fooled by the country’s apparent polarisation over Sarkozy and Royal, says Patrick Marnham . The ancien régime of the French state will survive this presidential...

Rod Liddle says that, Iraq aside, New Labour has got nothing so catastrophically wrong as its railway policy: the very means of transport it is supposed to be encouraging L ast...

Liam Byrne says the English must be less apathetic about the United Kingdom, and about the threat of Scottish independence that looms in next week’s elections A s another...

Hywel Williams says that 3 May may end Labour’s hegemony in Wales, ushering in an era of liberal capitalism and paving the way to eventual independence O ne party rule sums up...

Simon Sebag Montefiore says that the Russian leader was both hero and buffoon, a democrat who failed to safeguard freedom against the return of the KGB in the form of Vladimir...

Christopher Howse meets Mary Douglas, Britain’s foremost anthropologist, and learns the connection between ritual taboos and al-Qa’eda’s cells ‘I t’s no good attacking...

Sir: Just a thought. Has anyone ever considered the possibility that, if all citizens were armed, the Columbine and Virginia Tech perpetrators would have been shot long before...

Sir: Melanie Phillips makes virtually no credible claim in her article on the ‘missing’ WMDs (‘I found Saddam’s WMD bunkers’, 21 April). Most of the ‘explanations’ offered are...

Sir: Can Anne Applebaum really complain that the Russian government went ahead and printed posters of ‘fat British capitalists in bowler hats squashing Russian workers with...

Sir: Mark Palmer’s description of the proposals for Sloane Square (‘Sloane Rangers! Unite’, 7 April) has little to do with the actual design by the architects Stanton and...

Sir: The Conservative party’s problem in Scotland cannot be solved by simply juggling with the identity of their Scottish party (‘The Tories’ plan to separate’, 7 April). David...

Sir: Charles Moore is not the only one to object to the unsolicited use of his first name by total strangers, frequently in a business context (The Spectator’s Notes, 21 April)....

T he hottest months are July and August, though the summer solstice, when the sun is highest, is in June. There’s a time-lag. Thus it is with empires, too. By the time they burn...

W e are imprisoned in space and time and there appears to be no obvious way of escaping from them. Indeed if, like Richard Dawkins and other neanderthals, you do not believe in...

Jonathan Davis says that if Britain’s ancient universities want to remain world-class, they should take tutorials from Harvard and Yale in how to invest their endowments D...

Richard Northedge F rench democracy is in full swing, but the spirit of Revolution is alive and well sous la Manche . Eurotunnel’s small shareholders, having seized control of...

Elliot Wilson says corrupt bureaucrats are driving foreign investors out of Borat’s oil-and-mineral-rich homeland R ussia may have set the bar pretty high, but Kazakhstan still...

M iddle-class Delhi-ites have fallen in love — with supermarkets. The ‘Organised Retail’ concept has exploded here, as mini-chains such as Big Apple, Food Bazaar and Reliance...

Ross Clark investigates London’s wealth of empty houses T he list of nominations for the title of London’s shabbiest street would be a long one. But of all of them, one would...

Norman Miller M aybe it’s because London is finally too big for comfort that everybody suddenly seems desperate to move to the south coast of England. But where to buy? No one...

Ferdinand Mount S HAKESPEARE THE T HINKER by A. D. Nuttall Yale, £19.99, pp. 428, ISBN 9780300119282 F or some reason, snootiness I expect, I had never been to...

Anne Applebaum A S MALL C ORNER OF H ELL : D ISPATCHES FROM C HECHNYA by Anna Politkovskaya University of Chicago Press, £9, pp. 224, ISBN 9780226674339 A R USSIAN D IARY by...

Simon Baker ENGLEBY by Sebastian Faulks Hutchinson, £17.99, pp. 342, ISBN 9780091794507 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A t the beginning of this novel, Mike Engleby,...

Philip Ziegler I NDIA A FTER G ANDHI by Ramachandra Guha Macmillan, £25, pp. 688, ISBN 9780230016545 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his is a success story. In the 60...

Andrew Taylor A ny new novel by John Harvey is cause for celebration. He produces beautifully written, solidly engineered crime stories that probe the flaws and sensitivities...

Charles Moore N ext month, the Literary Society will celebrate its 200th birthday. The monthly dinner at the Garrick Club will be bigger than usual, but otherwise there will be...

A . N. Wilson, in his admirable biography, concluded that Belloc was more remarkable as a man than in his writings. No doubt he was, and his case is not unusual. The same has...

Jeremy Clarke S haron’s chucked in her job as a child protection officer and gone to live in Birmingham. She’s met a chap there who measures up to her ideal, and she wants to...