Brown, unveiled a £1 billion scheme to help first-time buyers purchase shares of new homes. He also announced plans to ‘cut red tape’ by merging 29 regulatory bodies into...

C onservative MPs and candidates have spent the last four years campaigning against two connected evils of the Labour style of government. In innumerable speeches and press...

not being good male role models to our sons, of which we have three apiece. It was all very well taking them around National Trust properties, teaching them chess and explaining...

I n the normal course of events the start of a new parliament is marked by a strong sense of energy and purpose: new MPs finding their way about; freshly appointed ministers...

Monday, I heard the voice of Kenneth Clarke, talking about Dizzy Gillespie. Another shameless plug by the BBC, I thought, for the man they are always trying to make Tory leader....

Martin Vander Weyer says that social mobility has declined under New Labour, and blames misplaced egalitarianism and hostility to competition W hat with Jamie Oliver dictating...

Mark Steyn says that complacent Europhiles just love the status quo, but the EU is a solution to yesterday’s problems New Hampshire When to the moment I shall say ‘Linger...

Rod Liddle believes that glamorous BBC presenters are not having a terribly difficult time making moral decisions about whether to cross the picket line T he Tolpuddle Martyrs...

Theodore Dalrymple on a grisly exhibition in Bucharest that reveals the megalomaniacal mediocrity of the late dictator Y ou can tell how much Romania has changed even at London...

A soldier is killed in Iraq and someone has to be blamed. A police station cannot put out flags for ‘health and safety’ reasons. Sir Digby Jones, director general of the...

Leo McKinstry reveals that not even the disabled are spared the attention (and fines) of the Disability Rights Commission ‘E very profession is a conspiracy against the...

Andrew Kenny says the real killer in Africa is the ban on DDT, not the ban on condoms T he sun set on the 20th century more than four years ago but you can still see a blood-red...

An unquiet correspondent sends a ‘breath of rage’ all the way from Burrum Heads, Queensland. ‘I do wish you could manage to educate some of your fellow columnists,’...

M uch nonsense is being written about new ways for the Conservative party to choose its leader. The plan being floated — that MPs might offer constituency chairmen a shortlist...

H ere we are at the moment of truth, if such a term can be applied to a French referendum. Last time round, the result was swung by boxes of Oui votes flown in from France’s...

I t is always a delight when scientists talk sense. The Guardian quotes the gynaecologist Robert Winston saying last week that science and religion are ‘essentially both the...

From Lord Tebbit Sir: Peter Oborne (Politics, 21 May) finds it curious that British and French opponents of the European constitution find precisely opposite faults in what it...

about the Whit Monday holiday tells only part of the story. None of the pay for work done on that day was to go to the worker. All of it was to be snaffled for a fund in aid of...

From Tom Carter Sir: If you really think that first-past-thepost is as brilliant as all that (Leading article, 21 May), please consider what happened in Northern Ireland in the...

From Gerald Hitman Sir: I wonder which Belarus Julian Evans visited to prepare his article (‘Is Belarus next in line?’, 14 May). In the one I know, schools are without...

From Allan Massie Sir: In what is on the whole an admirable and perceptive review of Leo McKinstry’s Rosebery , Jane Ridley asserts that ‘There has never been a full...

From Christopher Chetwode Sir: In his article about Lord Cardigan and D.H. Lawrence (And another thing, 21 May), Paul Johnson wishes that there was a book about the great steam...

From Bernard Hassan Sir: King Carlos of Portugal may have published a book on tuna (‘Food for thought’, 21 May), but two other reigning monarchs have published extensively...

Martin Gayford examines the extraordinary lives — and deaths — of great artists and suggests that there is a link between manic depression and creativity I n the summer of...

Sam Leith 1599: A Y EAR IN THE L IFE OF W ILLIAM S HAKESPEARE by James Shapiro Faber, £16.99, pp. 429, ISBN 0571214800 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T here is...

Neel Mukherjee T HE H ISTORY OF L OVE by Nicole Krauss Penguin/Viking, £12.95, pp. 180, ISBN 0670915548 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T here is a dizzying...

John de Falbe T HE R ULES OF P ERSPECTIVE by Adam Thorpe Cape, £12.99, pp. 340, ISBN 0224051873 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T he Rules of Perspective is set in...

Paul Routledge T HE F ARM by Richard Benson Hamish Hamilton, £15.99, pp. 229, ISBN 0241142229 ✆ £13.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 M oving to a farm cottage 700ft up in...

M. R. D. Foot A L IFE IN S ECRETS : T HE S TORY OF V ERA A TKINS AND SOE’ S L OST A GENTS by Sarah Helm Little, Brown, £20, pp. 496, ISBN 0316724971 ✆ £18 (plus £2.25...

Stephen Abell N EW W RITING 13 edited by Toby Litt and Ali Smith Picador, £8.99, pp. 354, ISBN 0330485997 N ovelty alone — with writing as with condoms — should not ever...

Vernon Bogdanor D EMOCRACY AND P OPULISM : F EAR AND H ATRED by John Lukacs Yale, £16, pp. 244, ISBN 0300107730 V £16 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T hose who can, do; but...

A. N. Wilson B ASIL H UME : T HE M ONK CARDINAL by Anthony Howard Headline, £20, pp. 342, ISBN 0755312473 ✆ £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 B asil Hume, when a young...

David Caute L OVE , P OVERTY AND W AR : J OURNEYS AND E SSAYS by Christopher Hitchens Atlantic Books, £14.99, pp. 475, ISBN 1843544512 ✆ £12.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft recalls Alastair Forbes N ot long after Alexander Chancellor had been appointed editor of The Spectator in 1975, and had then lightheartedly or pluckily...

Susan Hill H ow much money have you got? £1.50 in small change? ‘I finally got through the barbed wire, and found myself among the ruins. And under the glorious December...

Intrigued and impressed by The Da Vinci Code , Lloyd Evans mingles with the Codeheads in Paris P eople read it on the Tube behind paper wrappers. Distinguished professors have...

Andrew Lambirth George Rowlett — Paintings 2005 Art Space Gallery, 84 St Peter’s Street, N1 (020 7359 7002), until 4 June Robert Dukes — paintings and drawings Browse &...

One of the factors which doubtless contributes to this vivacity is Dukes’s appreciation of other art. His openness of response extends from Veronese to Craigie Aitchison, via...

Tom Rosenthal Max Ernst: A Retrospective Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 10 July V isiting this large (172 works) retrospective for Max Ernst (1891–1976) at the...

Russell Chamberlin T hroughout a newly affluent Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, and under the spur of a technological revolution, people — country people, in...

Michael Tanner The Knot Garden Barbican I t seems a strange way to celebrate the centenary of Michael Tippett’s birth, as many people have remarked, to have multiple...

Robin Holloway B oulez at 80: the iconoclast who, par excellence , hardens into Establishment, ensorcelled by power, throwing crystal balls from within his glass laboratory to...

Mark Steyn Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith 12A, selected cinemas V engeance is mine, saith the Sith, whith thoundth like Violet Elizabeth Bott. No such luck....

Lloyd Evans The Tempest Globe Blood Wedding Almeida Sun Dance Hackney Empire T he Globe is now eight years old. Mark Rylance starts his last season in charge with...

Michael Vestey T he strike on Monday by BBC journalists and technicians over proposed job cuts pushed news and current affairs programmes off the air, to be replaced by a...

Simon Hoggart T he most affecting programme of the week was Lost in La Mancha , a film shown as part of the Storyville series on BBC 2 (Sunday). It was about Terry Gilliam, who...

Robin Oakley E verybody seemed to have the lawnmower out on my way to Lingfield on Saturday. If the poet Adrian Mitchell’s observation that the suburbs are where sex is a...

Taki New York T o Roxbury, Connecticut, a tiny, beautiful village covered in leafy verdure and straight out of a black-and-white film from the Forties depicting white,...

Jeremy Clarke M y boy’s mother’s boyfriend is in his mid-fifties, works his arse off six days a week as a builder’s labourer and spends next to nothing on himself. He’s...

Jonathan Ross plugging his latest cookery book, Gordon Ramsay Makes It Easy , which is readily available from most bookshops, unlike Ramsay Makes It Hard which, I’m guessing,...

FRANK KEATING A friend, a particularly mordant romantic, reckons the saddest thing about first-class cricket’s frantic attempts to ‘get with it’ — and appeal to...

Sometimes I let the cottage, at other times I allow friends to stay there. I employ a local cleaning agency to come in on Monday mornings to clean up after each occupancy and...

rules and regulations about serving rosé? I have to admit that this fragrant pink drink is one of my very favourites but I gather not everyone shares my enthusiasm. B.H.,...

eyes almost fully shut and his eyelashes fluttering. He is not the only person who does this — I think people sometimes do it because they are concentrating on what they are...

moment and am about to brief a property search agency to do the groundwork for me. Can you tell me what is the distinction between a vicarage and a rectory? N.M., London W8 A....