to learn, was deputy chairman of the Conservative party, had the whip withdrawn and was told by Mr Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, that he could not stand for...

T othe minds of many reasonable people the punishment meted out to Howard Flight, MP for Arundel and the South Downs, has been of unwarranted severity. No one — not even the...

have told everyone who asks that we are going to Marrakesh. We haven’t bothered booking, of course, because we are disorganised and thus choose to believe the oft-repeated lie...

J im Callaghan, who died last Saturday, was the last British prime minister in the commonly accepted sense of the word. After him several factors — the degradation of the...

on Sunday and his failure in that attempt were so moving. On the day which, of all days, affirms life, John Paul II must particularly have longed to speak. As he struggled to do...

Simon Heffer condemns the spiteful attacks on Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles and says that she will make a perfect Queen for the future King Charles O urs would be a grim age if we...

The defence establishment has convinced us to live in fear, says Paul Robinson , but in fact there are fewer wars and fewer terrorists than ever before ‘W e are facing the...

When Sajid Badat, formerly of Gloucester, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to conspiring to blow up an aeroplane with a crude shoe-bomb device (before bottling it), there was an...

Jane Kelly watched a drunk fall in the path of a Tube train, apparently in a half-hearted attempt at suicide. Everybody got a bit hysterical I t was a good Saturday in London. I...

Rachel Polonsky says Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is a prisoner of conscience, and his show trial stands as an indictment of the country’s criminal justice system Moscow I...

‘Nigel Planer’s beaming scoutmaster of a Wilberforce becomes absurdly jejeune when he talks of Heaven,’ wrote Benedict Nightingale in the Times last September, reviewing Darwin...

Leo McKinstry says that the campaign against free trade is heaping misery on the Third World F ree trade used to be seen as a progressive, liberalising force. By spreading...

Mark Steyn on the bitter divisions created in American society by the case of Terri Schiavo New Hampshire D o you remember a fellow called Robert Wendland? No reason why you...

A Lithuanian girl arrived in England looking for work and was promptly sold for £4,000 to an Albanian. He raped her and put her in a brothel. She escaped, was recaptured, sent...

From Dr Michael Pravica Sir: Regarding Anthony Browne’s ‘Church of martyrs’ (26 March): one of the foremost examples of Christian persecution which was not mentioned in his...

From Josephine Quintavalle Sir: I too share Stuart Reid’s absolute position against all abortion (‘Abortion humbug’, 26 March). I am not, however, happy with his dismissal of...

From Eric Brown Sir: I note with interest the minister for Europe’s suggestion (Letters, 26 March) that The Spectator should produce ‘a 28page, tabloid-style version of the...

From Philip Hensher Sir: What Paul Levy originally said about Lord Redesdale, in his explanatory notes to Lytton Strachey’s letters, was: ‘He was seriously unhinged and, when a...

From Miriam M. Reik Sir: I immediately recognise the experience and background of Miriam Gross because it is almost exactly the same as mine (‘What it means to be Jewish’, 26...

From Rodney Atkinson Sir: Congratulations to Charles Moore for defending Conservative candidate Adrian Hilton against the obnoxious attack from the Catholic Herald and the...

From Anne Dawson-Shepherd Sir: The piece by Rod Liddle contains the erroneous use of the terms ‘illegal’ and ‘bogus’ for asylum-seekers (‘The seeds of hate’, 19 March)....

From Claus von Bulow Sir: In his review of Maria Full of Grace (Arts, 26 March) Mark Steyn mentions Colombia and its capital Bogota six times and yet he makes the mistake of...

From Damian Thompson Sir: Terence Monaghan (Letters, 26 March) is cross that I accused the left-wing Catholic magazine the Tablet of printing a sour article marking the death...

From Alasdair Finlayson Sir: To create a warm, local atmosphere in telesales from far-flung parts (Paul Johnson, And another thing, 26 March), operatives are schooled in UK...

Sir: It is a sound convention that authors do not take issue with reviewers. But part of the same convention is that reviewers refrain from inaccurate or misleading accounts of...

T he trouble with a referendum, as Kenneth Clarke noted, is that people do not always answer the question you ask them. You want to know if they favour a bimetallistic approach...

I t couldn’t happen here, they say. We are unlike the Americans. The English are viscerally sceptical of religious enthusiasm — always have been. Waves of evangelism in our...

W hen spring finally reached London after those Arctic weeks with the bitter wind from the east, I hurried out to Kew to see what was happening to Nature. And there it all was:...

Iain Murray on tropical storms in the Caribbean F or all I know, there may be those who go to the Caribbean to broaden their minds, to absorb the local culture and to stretch...

Lucy Vickery S ara could see it in her mind’s eye: the carpet of her dreams understated, restrained even, with just a hint of a wild, bohemian past. Ibrahim, so he told us, was...

Neil Clark F or Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the trek to the South Pole was ‘the worst journey in the world’. If Captain Scott’s associate had ever travelled on a Eurolines coach...

Matthew Reid B etween the tawny wilds of Exmoor Forest and the grey band of the Bristol Channel sits the town of Minehead in Somerset. It’s not a pretty town, and when I...

John Laughland A mong the greatest cultural glories of East-central Europe are the region’s German cities. From Tallinn (‘Reval’ in German) on the Baltic to Brasov...

M ost great artists begin as mimics. They do not, as Clara Schumann claimed Brahms did, come into the world ‘ready-made’. Manet prided himself on painting ‘straight from...

D. J. Taylor T HE I NDIA H OUSE by William Palmer Cape, £16.99, pp. 249, ISBN 0224072978 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 D efying the geographical promise of its title,...

Anne Applebaum T HE S OVIET C ENTURY by Moshe Lewin Verso, £25, pp. 416, ISBN 1844670163 I n the last several years, Englishspeaking readers have been treated to a plethora of...

Harriet Sergeant T HE B LUE -E YED S ALARYMAN by Niall Murtagh Profile, £16.99, pp. 216, ISBN 1861977247 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 I was sitting in a Japanese...

Nicholas Harman C HILDREN OF W AR by Susan Goodman John Murray, £20, pp. 330, ISBN 0719561221 ✆ £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 O UT OF H ARM ’ S WAY by Jessica Mann...

Toby Lichtig RAPIDS by Tim Parks Secker, £12.99, pp. 246, ISBN 0436205599 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 I n his 12th novel, Tim Parks revisits a subject that has been...

Douglas Johnson S HAKESPEARE G OES TO P ARIS : H OW THE B ARD C ONQUERED FRANCE by John Pemble Hambleden & London, £19.99, pp. 240, ISBN 1852854529 S hakespeare was the great...

John Martin Robinson E ARLY G EORGIAN I NTERIORS by John Cornforth Yale, £60, pp. 400, ISBN 0300103301 T his posthumous book is the summation of a lifetime’s research into...

James Buchan T HE M IDDLE E AST IN I NTERNATIONAL R ELATIONS by Fred Halliday CUP, £16.99, pp. 392, ISBN 0521597412 F or many people in the West, the Middle East is a source of...

Stephen Abell P IECES FOR THE L EFT H AND by J. Robert Lennon Granta, £10, pp. 213 I n a 1925 essay, Freud unearthed an important linguistic truth about the concept of the...

Fiction: The Master by Colm Tóibín (Picador, £7.99) The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier (Virago, £7.99) The Dream by Emile Zola, translated by Michael Glencross,...

Andrew Lambirth finds plenty to enjoy at the V&A’s Arts and Crafts show, despite the gloom I nternational Arts and Crafts is the third of the V&A’s major 19th/20th century...

Peter Phillips I often find myself day-dreaming about how the Tallis Scholars might resemble other and more glamorous artistic outfits. As we uncurl on to the stage, I imagine...

Michael Tanner Parsifal Staatsoper unter den Linden, Berlin Ti he latest vogue in Wagner production n Germany is to have the works directed by people who have had little or...

Charles Spencer ‘ Y ou’re not going to write about them, are you?’ said my wife contemptu ously, when I announced that I was going to devote this month’s column to the Grateful...

Mark Steyn The Ring Two 15, selected cinemas I hate to dismiss entire genres, but I’m not sure I get the whole Americanisation-ofJapanese-horror-movies thing. In the Japanese...

Lloyd Evans Hedda Gabler Almeida Medeamaterial (etc.) Theatro Technis The Girl with Red Hair Hampstead T o make boredom exciting is one of the riskiest theatrical effects. The...

Patrick Carnegy Sir Thomas More; A New Way to Please You Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon T he RSC celebrates the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot with four...

Giannandrea Poesio Royal Ballet Triple Bill Royal Opera House E nigma Variations is, arguably, one of Frederick Ashton’s most complex works. Created in 1968, the ballet...

Michael Vestey W hen I spotted that the conservative American writer and wit P.J. O’Rourke was giving two 20-minute talks on Radio Four, the first on Easter Sunday, I rubbed my...

Simon Hoggart T wo very popular drama series came back this week. Hustle (BBC1, Tuesday) is entirely formulaic, and none the worse for that. In each episode the villains are...

Robin Oakley A s departure hour for a reception or a dinner party approaches, the Oakley residence comes to resemble the opening scene of Four Weddings and a Funeral . Years of...

Taki N emmersdorf is a village in East Prussia that was overrun by the Soviets in the autumn of 1944. After seizing the village, the Russkies raped all the women, regardless of...

Jeremy Clarke T o a book launch on Tuesday, hoping and praying there would be a fight. ‘O Lord!’ I prayed, ‘please let it all kick off big style.’ The book was Top Boys by Cass...

Aidan Hartley Swat, Pakistan T he Swat valley’s apple orchards are in blossom even as the snow still lies thick on the mountains. It’s been the harshest winter in memory. I...

kept amused because, on the whole, boys of this age are like Labradors: unless you give them some kind of run every day they will eat the furniture. In fact, come to think of...

FRANK KEATING U ntil the 1980s, England vs Northern Ireland was a calendar annual. Then the ‘Home’ championship was brutally abandoned. So to those of a certain generation last...

for dinner. Invariably the numbers are not equal, but I go to immense pains to get a mixture of guests who will find each other interesting, and also try to cook something...

presents to commemorate the second marriages of older people. Sadly these would be superfluous for the royal wedding I am about to attend. I have been told there is no need to...