Why has the Tory grammarschool row raged for so long? It is glib to suggest, as some have, that it is simply filling a news vacuum as the political world awaits the ascension of...

BRYAN FORBES Idon't keep a diary any more, having decided that my past efforts contained too much that was either libellous or trite. However, leafing through a collection of...

FRASER NELSON Even from his holiday home in Crete, David Cameron will be able to sense the waves of schism and confusion which engulf his party this week. Parliament is not...

CHARLES MOORE The grammar school row is proving not so much a Clause Four moment as a class war moment for the Tories — now it has produced a resignation. It is suggested that...

By Tamzin Lightwater MONDAY Jed away for three weeks on horseback safari in Botswana and nobody knows who's in charge. Nigel says it's The Three Georges, Poppy reckons it's Mr...

James Forsyth talks to insiders in Washington and London about the biggest dilemma facing the next Prime Minister — and finds that, as much as Brown might like to break free of...

Antony Sher talks to Tim Walker about growing up in South Africa, pretending to be straight, and the fading of his urge to hide behind the characters he plays At the Prince of...

Shambo looked like a finalist for 'best in show', not a condemned invalid Jeremy Clarke visits the Skanda Vale community of monks and nuns, where karmic law has collided with...

Leo McKinstry sees parallels between Rosebery and Gordon Brown: nervous, enigmatic, capable of epic feuds, Calvinistic, and kept in the waiting-room by long-serving predecessors...

Mary Wakefield is impressed by Labour's rising star, as he talks about his famous family, Pink Floyd, Bleak House and global ethics Sitting opposite Ed Miliband MP in a large...

Not hell, but drunkenness, is other people. This insight was vouchsafed me in the London Underground the other evening. I had just passed a notice from the Mayor of London...

Rod Liddle is appalled by the case of Tulbahadur Pun, the 84-year-old Nepalese who has been denied entry to the UK because of 'regulations from London' Rifleman Tulbahadur Pun...

Harry Mount says that Britishness doesn't get you very far in New York: if you want to be a player you can't afford to behave like a self-deprecating gentleman amateur Sometimes...

PAUL JOHNSON Istudied with interest the recent photo of Prince William and Prince Harry attending a military occasion in mufti. For officers in the Foot Guards and the Household...

Major achievements Sir: I enjoyed and applauded Matthew Parris's piece (Another voice, 26 May). It is indeed time that Sir John Major's legacy was recognised and that he be...

Vaccination risks Sir: Doctors Elliman, Bedford and Hamilton (Letters, 26 May) dismiss Prof. Gordon Stewart's evidence, but there was a Medical Research Council-funded study...

Sir: In response to Rod Liddle (The BBC should be less opinionated', 26 May), the MS Society would like to point out that MS is not a terminal illness. It is a lifelong...

Sir: It's all very well Boris Johnson writing about the new Puritans (The purpose of life is happiness', 26 May). Perhaps he and his colleagues could start opposing some of the...

Sir: When Rian Malan's book, My Traitor's Heart, was shortlisted for a non-fiction prize awarded by the (South African) Sunday Times, of which I was then editor, I ventured the...

Sir: Why is the grammar school debate so heavily focused on the few who pass rather than on the great majority who fail the selection and go to secondary modern schools? As the...

Matthew Lynn says the legendary deal-maker Bruce Wasserstein has failed to drive Lazard to the top of the investment bank league — but has made a huge personal fortune Ivhen...

Elliot Wilson says the Games aim to show off China's new economic might — but it could all go badly wrong No official visit to China's capital is complete these days without...

Allister Heath says it's becoming harder to fight inflation with interest rate rises — so we should expect more of them 1 nterest on debt grows without rain, said the old...

Jonathan Mirsky WASHINGTON'S WAR: FROM INDEPENDENCE TO IRAQ by Michael Rose Weidenfeld, £14.99, pp. 212, ISBN 9780297846987 £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Isaw Jeremy...

M. R. D. Foot THE QUEEN'S KNIGHT by Martyn Downer Bantam, £25, pp. 452, ISBN 9780593054857 © £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Martyn Downer had the task of selling at...

Allan Mallinson NAPOLEON IN EGYPT: THE GREATEST GLORY by Paul Strathern Cape, £20, pp. 496, ISBN 9780224076814 © £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Another book on Napoleon, or...

Peter Oborne MORE THAN A GAME by John Major HarperPress, £25, pp. 433, ISBN 9780007183647 © £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Three out of the last ten prime ministers have...

Lloyd Evans SEND: THE HOW, WHY, WHEN AND WHEN NOT OF EMAIL by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe Canongate, £9.99, pp. 241, ISBN 9781841959948 © £7.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429...

I cannot wholly decide about my father's resolve not to speak or seek out texts or make arrangements except perhaps to the pillow and the blankets. Was it for him, or for us,...

Victoria Glendinning VIRGINIA WOOLF: THE PLATFORM OF TIME edited and introduced by S. P. Rosenbaum Hesperus, £14.99, pp. 222, ISBN 9781843917090 © £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870...

Leanda de Lisle RETURN OF THE KING: THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES II by Charles Fitzroy Sutton, £20, pp. 252, ISBN 9780750946353 © £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 The return of...

Christian House THE UNSEEN WAR by Noble Frankland Book Guild, £17.99, pp. 297, ISBN 9781846240881 £1439 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 ew have done more than Noble Frankland to...

John Bercow A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS by Khaled Hosseini Bloomsbury, £16.99, pp. ISBN 9780747582977 £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 The Kite Runner, said to be the first...

Kate Grimond on her father, Strix, former columnist of The Spectator Strix would have been 100 on 31 May. Before he had decided on a screech owl as his nom de plume, he had been...

Sir Edward Elgar was born 150 years ago today. Michael Henderson celebrates his legacy This weekend, as the orchestras of England celebrate the 150th anniversary of this...

Andrew Lambirth Antony Gormley: Blind Light Hayward Gallery, until 19 August Sponsored by Eversheds LLP Poets in the Landscape: The Romantic Spirit in British Art Pallant House...

Marcus Berkmann It's always a problem, comparing a new band with others who have gone before. Critics have to do it, defining the new in terms of the old, because there has to...

Michael Tanner Death in Venice Coliseum t last ENO has come up with a production which can be greeted almost without reservation, and of a treacherously tricky opera, Britten's...

Peter Phillips The news that Andrew Carwood has just been appointed 'Organist' of St Paul's Cathedral is some of the brightest to come out of the Anglican choral world in a very...

Richard Cork Euan Uglow Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street Wl, until 1 June; Marlborough Gallery, 6Albemarle St, Wl, until 15 June. Right until the end of his life, Euan Uglow...

The Catto Gallery, 100 Heath Street, London NW3, is holding an exhibition of work by Philip Jackson (born 1944), whose sculpture of Bobby Moore has just been unveiled at the new...

Power and might Lloyd Evans In Extremis Globe Streets Paved with Gold Oval House Here's a thing. Shakespeare's Globe isn't half as Shakespearean as it's cracked up to be. For...

Deborah Ross Water 12A, selected cinemas Water opens with a beautiful little Indian girl sitting on the back of a cart joyously chewing on sugar cane. She has luscious hair,...

Kate Chisholm Dorothy Wordsworth did it to escape her brother. Dr Johnson used it as a weapon against the black dog of depression. Dickens said it cured his insomnia. They all...

James Delingpole erysadly I couldn't get hold of Sea of Fire (BBC2, Friday), the (reportedly superb) drama documentary about the destruction of HMS Coventry in the Falklands...

Taki The mother of my children rang me from Deauville and for probably the first time in her life asked me to retract something I had written. It was about Pal Sarkozy's wife,...

Desperate measures Jeremy Clarke Uven when you are in love, it's always a i good policy to have some other potential love interest simmering away on the back-burner in case of...

Aidan Hartley Kenya T have hated flying since 1989, when I was 1 in a Boeing 737 that crashed into an Ethiopian mountain, lost its wings and burst into flames. Surviving that...

Charlotte Metcalf says we should stop snapping and start living Ivhen my daughter, Deia, turned one, her father commissioned a portrait of her and me. A friend recommended...

James Delingpole on the best music festival in the universe Theo and Louise Fennell are about to lose their Glastonbury virginity this year and I'm feeling very jealous. They...

A day at the races Tom Norrington-Davies horses about in Siena Iv hen I heard you could now take a train to Lhasa I wondered, glumly, if there was any such thing as a forbidden...

) ) I .` :11.i SOU] Dear Maly Q. I have had a boyfriend, of whom I am very fond, for some time now. There is, however, one slight problem. On special occasions when he comes to...

Statuesque FRANK KEATING Is any new sporting arena fit for purpose without a statue to adorn it? Critics of the apparently workaday new Wembley Stadium reckon the most striking...