Iv hen Nigel Lawson was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he liked to say that the problem with tax simplification was that you always end up complicating tax, too. The same is true...

Can anyone lend me quid or two? For the first time in my life I'm borrowing money. Mortgaging property. Scrabbling around for cash so I can live my lavish lifestyle. In case any...

!AMES FORSYTH The government's failure to count up the number of foreign workers in this country rightly reinforces the public's fear that control of the borders has been lost,...

CHARLES MOORE This week, Policy Exchange, of which I am the chairman, produced a survey, The Hijacking of British Islam', of literature found on the premises of more than 100...

By Tamzin Lightwater MONDAY Dear me! How are we supposed to have a grown up argument about immigration when silly Lithuanian ambassadors can't see the funny side of a little...

Few noted the significance of the Conservative leader's pledge in Blackpool to import Wisconsin's benefit reforms. But, says Fraser Nelson, the implications of this promise are...

Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that the state visit of King Abdullah dramatised the obeisance of Britain — and the West as a whole — to a country crying out for reform...

Tim Walker talks to Peter Vaughan — made famous by Porridge and still on screen at 84— about Joe Orton, Arthur Miller and Sam Peckinpah, and the actor's longing 'to be real'...

James Delingpole is alarmed to discover he agrees with the rationalist, empiricist position adopted by many revolutionary Marxists against the tyranny of the state. So be it, he...

Capitalism can save the planet (with carbon trading we can solve the climate change crisis without damaging economic growth) 'It's about my cappuccino.' No one expected the...

The recent muliplex blockbuster 300, an historical epic concerning the Spartans fighting King Xerxes's Persian forces at the Battle of Thermopylae was remarkable in one chief...

Lauren Booth tours Beirut as a guest of Hezbollah's media arm and discovers a slick spin operation that still needs to 'drop the Islam stuff for Western journalists' Beintt...

About 20 years ago, while on a business trip to the Gulf, I unthinkingly proposed to a male colleague that we visit the souq together. I told him that I wanted to buy some silk...

The collapse of the mystique surrounding the royal family means that these tawdry allegations are met with a collective shrug rather than a national outcry, says Rod Liddle...

Patrick West says that the science fiction of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report has become alarming fact in the powers given to police to take against people who have committed...

Tessa Mayes draws on the latest research from the US to show that there is no necessary correlation between bans and declining heart-attack trends 1 t's four months since the...

When Gisela Stuart was talking to the dear old editor on the wireless the other morning, she used the phrase 'between a rock and a hard place'. People say this almost as if it...

HUGO RIFKIND St Petersburg The first two things that grab you about Russia are the women's clothes and the health and safety laws. Or, at least, that is what grabbed me. Wander...

Sir: We read once again an attack on Mohamed Al Fayed by Martyn Gregory over the inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed (No "flash before the...

Sir: Paul Bew's generous and perceptive review of my Luck and the Irish (Books, 20 October) gently chides me for inaccurately stating that Vincent Twomey's book The End of Irish...

Sir: Sir Malcolm Rifkind (A trap for Eurosceptic Tories', 27 October) declares that the Conservatives must not offer a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty if it has already...

Sir: What Philip Stevens calls in his letter last week 'a vast amount of unimpeachable evidence' [about the alleged Armenian genocides] was actually produced as part of the...

PAUL JOHNSON Idon't want to know too much about writers. The endless revelations about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes have put me off their poetry. Nothing can shake my love of...

Neil Barnett identifies the hidden hand of Gazprom, the Russian state oil and gas giant, in a takeover tussle between Austrian and Hungarian energy companies vladimir Putin's...

Merryn Somerset Webb Everyone's an expert on agriculture these days. Talk to anyone in the City: when they're not boring you with how much copper wire it takes to build a...

Elliot Wilson says tension between China's rich and poor is increasingly evident in a booming real estate market Hu Bin is your archetypal Chinese real-estate entrepreneur....

MARTIN VANDER WEYER Rail delays are a daily fact of life, but Grand Central's ghost train has set new records. Due to depart from Sunderland last December, it has yet to pass...

Michael McMahon on the extraordinary and varied uses for lavender 'Let's go to that house, for the linen looks white and smells of lavender; and I long to lie in a pair of...

Jack Wakefield Collecting art on a budget can be daunting. The galleries are snide, the auctions confusing, the whole apparatus seems to have been set up as a conspiracy against...

Harry Mount o you remember that ad for the Citroen 2CV years ago? It was along the lines of: number of wheels — four; number of steering wheels — one; top speed — the British...

Molly Watson How much should a sensible woman pay for a hairdo? £20? £50? In most provincial salons one would be hard pushed to spend much more than £80 on even the most...

Rebecca Jed This year, the prize for the most lavish hamper goes to Fortnums for their £20,000 compilation of inessentials. Nothing in moderation here. 'For one year only, we've...

Mark Palmer T am buying a pair of shoes. And this is 1 something I have never done before. Not really. Not at a Savile Row tailors where the shop assistant asks you questions...

Martin Vander Weyer Sir Roy Strong's eyes widened; his nostrils twitched; his pen hovered as though the horror of what confronted him had momentarily robbed him of the power to...

KIPLING SAHIB: INDIA AND THE MAKING OF RUDYARD KIPLING by Charles Allen Little, Brown, £20, pp. 426, ISBN 9780316726559 £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 He was a noisy boy...

Tim Congdon THE AGE OF TURBULENCE by Alan Greenspan Allen Lane, £25, pp. 531, ISBN 9780713999822 £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Seated next to her at dinner, I was prepared...

Mary Keen NORAH LINDSAY: THE LIFE AND ART OF A GARDEN DESIGNER by Allyson Hayward Frances Lincoln, £35, pp. 287, ISBN 9781845132576 £28 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Norah...

Jonathan Keates POLANSKI by Christopher Sandworth Century, £18.99, pp. 480, ISBN 9781844138791 £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 As the biopic comes back into fashion —...

Andro Linklater OLD MEN IN LOVE by Alasdair Gray Bloomsbury, £20, pp. 311, ISBN 9780747593539 £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Not even the Akond of Swat in all his whoness,...

Charlotte Moore THE ALMOST MOON by Alice Sebold Picador, £16.99, pp. 291, ISBN 9780330451321 £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's first novel,...

Marcus Berkmann WHY NOT CATCH 21? FIFTY BOOK TITLES AND THEIR ORIGINS by Gary Dexter Frances Lincoln, £9.99, pp. 228, ISBN97807611227965 E7.90 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 And...

Jane Gardam THE MAN IN THE PICTURE by Susan Hill Profile Books, £9.99, pp.160, ISBN 9781846680755 © £7.90 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Susan Hill knows exactly how to please....

David Caute THROUGH THE DARKNESS: A LIFE IN ZIMBABWE by Judith Garfield Todd Zebra Press, £14.99, pp. 460, ISBN 9781770220027 £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 This is a...

Harriet Sergeant SHANGHAI TANGO: A MEMOIR by Jin Xing, with Catherine Texier Atlantic Books, £10.99, pp. 195, ISBN 9781843546320 £8.79 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Rows of...

William Boyd A LIFE OF PICASSO: VOLUME III: THE TRIUMPHANT YEARS, 1917-1932 by John Richardson Cape, £30, pp. 555, ISBN9780224031219 © £24 (plus £2.45p&p) 0870 429 6655 1 t's...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft DIAMONDS, GOLD AND WAR by Martin Meredith Simon & Schuster, £25, pp. 569, ISBN 9780743286183 £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 When the second half of the...

Molly Guinness WHERE THREE ROADS MEET by Salley Vickers Canongate, £12.99, pp. 195, ISBN 9781841959863 £1039 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 GIRL MEETS BOY by Ali Smith...

Gary Dexter THE FIXED PERIOD (1881) by Anthony Trollope The Fixed Period is the most un-Trollopian thing Trollope ever wrote. It is a firstperson futuristic narrative set in the...

Mary Wakefield on why Tom Hollander is about to put himself through a terrifying ordeal again Act one, scene one The curtain opens on the offices of The Spectator magazine,...

Andrew Lambirth Renaissance Siena: Art for a City National Gallery, until 13 January 2008 Sponsored by Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena The latest exhibition in the grim dungeon...

Jane Rye British Vision: Observation and Imagination in British Art 17501950 Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, until 13 January 2008 This stunning, and constantly surprising,...

Michael Tanner Siegfried; Gotterammerung Royal Opera Siegfried is in some ways the most complex of the Ring dramas, showing us alternately, and then simultaneously, the old...

Lloyd Evans The Country Wife Haymarket Rent Duke of York's Ararity at the Haymarket. A new production of a straight play. Such is the despair over the creeping musicalisation of...

Anyone who likes the work of Craigie Aitchison will appreciate the nuanced colour fields of Milton Avery (1885-1965), one of the subtlest of American modernists and as such one...

Peter Phillips Vanity publishing is all the rage these days. Not long ago the idea of putting out something by yourself under an independent label, owned by yourself or one of...

Poor Cate Deborah Ross Elizabeth: The Golden Age 12A, Nationwide Already, the word is out that Elizabeth: The Golden Age isn't up to much, and it isn't. It may even be a dog's...

Marcus Berkmann With ever longer gaps between albums, it's becoming difficult to identify which rock stars are just having a quick lie-down, and which are actually missing in...

Giannandrea Poesio New Art Club: The Visible Men The Place: Robin Howard Theatre Andreja Rauch: Weavers Greenwich Dance Agency According to Tom Roden, one half of New Art Club's...

Kate Chisholm There's an endless amount of 'chat' on radio and TV, but how much 'conversation'? A recent book by an American, Stephen Miller, reminds us of the difference...

James Delingpole peter Kosminsky's Britz (Channel 4, 1 Wednesday and Thursday) was heavily flagged beforehand as a drama that was going to annoy a lot of people. Naturally, I...

Taki ‘Nobody would be happier than me if, in 50 years' time, the Prime Minister, the Archibishop of Canterbury, the Poet Laureate, the Lord Chief Justice, the Regius Professor...

Jeremy Clarke The estate agent was hopelessly late — stuck in traffic, she said — so I gave the couple the tour of our home instead. It was clear that they had no intention of...

Aidan Hartley Ihad an epiphany at 5.30 a.m. the other day in a Shanghai club packed with gangsters, prostitutes and flat-bellied Thai transsexuals. I watched a little guy, in...

Melissa Kite The curtain of my upstairs neighbours' flat has been hanging by a single hook for three weeks, and if something is not done about it soon I am going to call the...

Richard Sennett ince I wrote in The Spectator a fortnight ago about the 'Say no to foie gras' campaign, my email has been flooded with protests. Animal-rights groups have...

Tim Heald goes to Brisbane and discovers an excellent chef with a smart city attached The question has, over the last few years, been persistent and the answer elusive. Bruno...

Puzzling times Sinclair McKay lets the pieces fall into place When I was a lad, in the tawdry, tatty 1970s, a jigsaw was a thing of thin cardboard that came in a big box and...

TOBY YOUNG at are the two words guaranteed to fill any parents of young children with terror? School fees? Chicken Pox? Gina Ford? The answer, I'm afraid, is half term. My...

Dear Maly Q. We live in a small flat and when we have visitors for a weekend or a few days we arrange for them to sleep in a spacious bedroom made available by a neighbour, who...

FRANK KEATING With league fixtures into double figures, the autumn's general-excuseme overture has finished and the long winter slog is really underway. The eightsome reel at...