the Palestinians to elect their own leaders,' Earlier he had told Parliament that Britain had failed at the European Union summit at Seville to carry a proposal to link the...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 020-7405 1706: Fax 020-7242 0603 FREE IS FAIR B eware the political message which conies printed on T-shirts and...

A n I getting paranoid? During a bookshop talk in New York, I noticed a weaselfaced character in the front row taking notes of everything I said. His expression was...

PETER °BORNE L st Tuesday's ICM poll in the Guardian, showing a ten-point lead for Labour, came as a sharp blow to the Tories. There had been fervent hopes that recent Downing...

Stephen Glover explains the growing assertiveness of the press: newspapers are now dominated by Oxbridge-educated clever clogs MINISTERS believe the press is out to get them,...

A DOLLOP of Trollope again, but only a little one. I mentioned (25 May) that in The Prime Minister there was an adumbration of the modern political cliché of 'spending more time...

Osama bin Laden is dead, says Mark Steyn, but it suits the Bush administration for the Eurosophists to believe he is alive New Hampshire HE's back! Or he will be. Any day now....

No matter how casual fashion becomes, a woman always wants to wear her diamonds. They are, in my view, the only accessory that you can wear around the clock. Whatever the...

The National Trust and its director-general, Fiona Reynolds, are getting a lot of stick from some Tories. It's not fait; says Clive Asiet IMAGINE that you have it in for the...

IT HAS been claimed that beards are now back in fashion. Pogonic fashion certainly changed in the ancient world. For the most part, beards were de rigueur; the difficulty of...

Turkmenistan may not be a free counny, says Katie Grant, but there is no trash culture, no graffiti, and the people are happy BY any standards apart from his own, President...

Dr Jane Goodall thinks apes are almost human, so why, asks Aidan Hartley, doesn't she punish one of her chimps for killing a boy? DR JANE GOODALL, the chimpanzee expert,...

Daniel Hannan says the Eurofedera lists are uying to win over sceptics by seeming to promise tougher asylum policies YOU didn't need to look very far to find the kind of voter...

A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit THE engineering bore who tells his children 'What you want to do is get yourself a trade, my son' is guilty of giving...

Simon Heifer says that Prince Michael of Kent is being maliciously smeared because republicans know that they can no longer take on the Queen NEXT week a shy, modest,...

Sarfraz Manzoor used to fail the Tebbit test — but now he is wrapping himself in the flag of St George IT was a wet Friday afternoon in Luton, and I was standing outside a...

PAUL JOHNSON T his is the time of year when a garden is the greatest of blessings. As a non-gardener, I pay humble tribute to those who create and tend them. I know of none who...

From Dr Wilson Flood Sir: In his excellent article debating the likelihood of global cooling, Andrew Kenny ('Prepare for the big chill', 22 June) stated that we do not know what...

at fix. global-warming scaremongers was a welcome antidote to the sanctimonious claptrap we usually hear on this subject. However, I fear that his view that the 'oil companies...

the weaknesses of the 'global warming' theory, let me add that some of its advocates have been inventive (devious?) enough to suggest that global warming effects will actually...

From Mr Paul Banks Sir: Although Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) frequently assert their impartiality (Letters, 22 June), a comparison of their behaviour in...

From Dr Jenny Taylor Sir: Melanie Phillips's important article (SHow the West was lost', 11 May) contains one serious error of fact concerning the book she cites. Faith and...

From Mr DennLs Outwin Sir: Your campaign against Tony Blair over the Queen Mother's lying-in-state leaves a slightly nasty taste in the mouth. I cannot believe there would have...

the second world war was almost certainly accorded to William Hague, For four unbroken years there was not a sneer, jeer, jibe, insult, mockery, slander, lie or calumny that can...

From Mr Claus von Bulow Sir: Tania Kindersley's analysis ('Why chicks love Becks', 22 June) of her sex's conversion into football fans was eloquent to the point of ecstasy. As...

Sir: After a fortnight in Japan and South Korea, I can confirm that the female love affair with football described by Tania Kindersley is not restricted to Britain. Outside the...

From Mr Graham Hay Sir: PetroneIla Wyatt (Singular life, 15 June) is to be congratulated. Alone among media commentators she has hit upon the root cause of Railtrack's problems:...

From Mr Jocelin Crocker Sir: It is indeed heartening to read Simon Courtauld's praise of the English strawberry (Arts, 15 June), which is not to be confused with the cheap...

From Louise O'Connor Sir: I was always hopeless at maths, especially fractions, so ever since reading Caroline Moore's review of Rosamond Lehmann by Selina Hastings (Books, 15...

From Mr Oleg Gordievsky Sir: I refer you to the final paragraph of Peter Oborne's excellent piece ('Where is Black Rod's killer memorandum?', 15 June). I must correct him on one...

FRANK JOHNSON B oris Johnson wrote a piece in the Daily Telegraph this week commemorating his first anniversary as an MP. Unlike so many other people, I preferred not to go to...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES J ames Bond said that life was six to four against, and a wise City owl now says that it is back-end loaded. They may amount to the same thing, and, for the...

John R. G. Turner THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY by Stephen Jay Gould Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, £27.50, pp. 1433, ISBN 0674006135 I HAVE LANDED: THE...

Andrew Barrow THE MAIN CAGES by Philip Marsden Flamingo, £12.99, pp. 264, ISBN 0007136390 T he Main Cages' is the local name for a treacherous and rock-strewn part of the...

Philip Ziegler SIX DAYS OF WAR by Michael B. Oren OUP, .f25, pp. 446, ISBN 0195151747 M ichael Oren's subtitle for his book is 'June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle...

we won — but lost Jane Ridley THE BOER WAR by Denis Judd and Keith Surridge John Murray, £25, pp. 352, ISBN 071955585X T he Boer war was a curious hotchpotch. It began as a...

Maps make you happy! Cradled in their safe grid the ways are plain to the ends of the earth. Beautiful irregularities of coastlines! Broad bulge billowing out from the narrow...

Sara Maitland THE NEXT BIG THING by Anita Brookner Viking, 416.99, pp. 247, ISBN 0670896357 0 ne of the central themes of Brookner's novels has been 'resignation': Is it...

Judith Flanders MARK GERTLER by Sarah MacDougall John Murray, ,f25, pp. 398, ISBN 0719557992 T he painter Mark Gertler, on the fringes of Bloomsbury, fascinated his...

Archie Cotterell LEAVING REALITY BEHIND: THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE INTERNET by Adam Wishart and Regula Bochsler Fourth Estate, £16.99, pp. 359. ISBN 1841155934 E ver since...

Grey Gowrie THE VILLAGE BOOK by Nicholas Freeling Arcadia, £11.99, pp. 224, ISBN 19008506320 T hirty years ago, Nicholas Freeling's sequence of novels about Van der Valk, a...

John Spurting visits the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, now in its 25th year T he argument that history is not made by single individuals is easily disproved by the history of the...

Martin Gaylord I n 1836, John Constable gave a lecture in which, as art pundits are prone, he set about slaughtering a few sacred cows. For the 17th-century Dutch painters of...

Andrew Lamb irth T he Scottish Colourists (a term first used in 1948 to describe a loose association of turn-of-the-century Francophile painters) are now so popular that it is...

Michael Tanner T chaikovsky's The Queen of Spades is in all respects a fascinating work, even in its commonplaces and strange gaps in plot and motivation. His sympathies are so...

Mark Steyn B ig Fat Liar operates in that potentially perilous terrain between cutesy kid pies and noisy teen comedies but does it with enormous likeability. It's a Hollywood...

Toby Young I was quite excited by the prospect of seeing Bombay Dreams. My first ever Andrew Lloyd Webber musical! He can't really he as bad as everyone says he is, can he? I...

Robin Holloway M y intended mixed dip into this month's festivals at Aldeburgh and Spitalfields has been curbed by exigencies of travel, coincidental clashes and a careless...

Michael Vestey B arry Took, who died earlier this year, will be remembered and praised at a memorial service for him in St John's Wood next Wednesday. He was a deeply...

James Delmgpole 0 n my father's first day of National Service in the RAF, the corporal strode into the hut and screamed at the terrified recruits that if ever he came into...

Robin Oakley R ichard Hughes had to ride only one placed horse on the last day of Ascot to pip Johnny Murtagh as top jockey and to put me in the money, having backed him at...

Taki I must he going senile. Last week I wrote about my cricket heroics in the Hanbury-Goldsmith clash of giants in Dorset, the trouble being it was in Devon. Nothing quite...

Jeremy Clarke I was standing in my Mum's kitchen last week when I coughed. I coughed so violently that I retched, and the retch set off waves of nausea. I held out as long as I...

Petronella Wyatt T he other day I was trying to get in touch with the gay relative of an acquaintance of mine. Recently, he had taken me to meet his boyfriend, who was a bit of...

David Lovibond FOR me, even as a child, the idea of going to the Falkland Islands was romantic: to journey to some far place, remote from constraint and interference, and live...

and most exciting London merchants. It includes some classics, a couple of astonishing bargains, and a delicious bottle from a country you might not know makes wine in the first...

Michael Henderson OPINIONS, as Brian Clough, the great football manager, once said, make the world go round — and Cloughy should know. He had a few. When contrasting views...

of a neighbouring diocese. Normally modest and self-effacing, this minor honour appears to have had an adverse effect on him. I understand that he has taken to using a special...

a Holland Park garden. My problem is that the party was too good. At any time I could see at least three people across the crowded garden to whom I desperately wanted to talk,...

would love to know what is happening to her old clothes. I am taller than she was but I daresay I could have some of them adjusted to fit. Have you any inside information,...

on how to discourage uninvited people from ringing our doorbell. We have an intercom through w hich they variously purport to be window-cleaners or to be looking for someone who...