Kenneth Clarke is a great modern jazz fan T he British and Irish governments issued a paper on the decommissioning of arms and policing of Northern Ireland that they called...

T he wisdom of sending British troops to Sierra Leone was always questionable, but for Anna Homsi the military adventure has left her particularly aggrieved. Her partner, Brad...

BRUCE ANDERSON G Moscow reatness can come in strange guises. In August 1991, a man looking like a bear that had slipped its chain climbed on top of a tank, roared defiance at...

0Los Angeles n the face of it, Los Angeles isn't a very romantic place to go on honeymoon. Even from the point of view of an ordinary tourist, it leaves a lot to be desired. It...

Brass Eye, Intimacy, EastEnders . . incest, adultery, public copulation. Anything goes these days, but Jane Shilling wonders whether our own epoch is uniquely degenerate 'ARE...

Graham Stewart attended a session of the International Criminal Tribunal to watch the new world order in action The Hague THERE is not much room in Court Room One. so I make a...

In spite of the shocking brutality in Genoa, says Nicholas Farrell, Italian policemen tend to be reasonable — and flexible —fellows Predappio THE Italian police have not had...

Larry Siedentop says we should wake up to the yawning democratic deficit across Europe IT IS the best of times, it is the worst of times. We are living through the crisis of...

Andrew McKie has been to Ostend to look for tobacco importers — the new heroes of freedom-loving Britons AT the top of my street in south-east London there is a hoarding...

PAUL JOHNSON U nlike some people I know, I admire women authors because they are gutsy and have a much harder time of it than men. They have to lead double lives. I have just...

FRANK JOHNSON A friend who takes television seriously, and thinks we print people are in a dying medium, challenged me the other day to say who Mr Alan Yentob was, and what he...

STEPHEN GLOVER T he BBC is no longer Reithian, and nowhere is this more evident than in its attitudes towards the lifestyles of its own staff. Divorcees are welcome, partners...

From Mr Robin Haig Sir: Daniel Johnson ('The sordid isolation of Great Britain', 28 July) is to be congratulated for pointing out the sordid practices such as cloning and...

From Mr Jonathan Agnew Sir: I would like to respond to Peter Oborne's article about Test Match Special ('Special pleading', 28 July), and his disparaging observations about me...

From Mr Paul Shallard Sir: Am I missing the point about the nuclear threat to the USA? The 'nuclear deterrent' seems to have worked by dint of the mutual fear of destruction it...

From Mr Peter Macdonald Sir: Regarding James Delingpole's television criticism (Arts, 21 July): the BBC programme Reputations about Florence Nightingale was a typical hatchet...

From Mr Keith Wedmore Sir: Are we really to watch the decline and collapse of Oxford and Cambridge without lifting a finger (`Eviscerating Oxford', 14 July)? The silence of...

From Mr John Woodward Sir: Your diarist Charles Moore (28 July) will find that sending a letter of explanation to the television licensing authorities will not stop them...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES D o as I say, not as I do. The government's White Paper on competition is a bad example in itself, for why should there only be one of it? 'People of the...

Philip Hensher SILENCE IN OCTOBER by Jens Christian Grundahl (translated by Anne Born) Canon gate, £6.99, pp. 288 ISBN 1841951781 THE PROCEDURE by Harry Mulisch (translated by...

Jane Gardam INSTANCES OF THE NUMBER THREE by Salley Vickers Fourth Estate. £12.99, pp. 307, ISBN 1841156582 S alley Vickers' first novel, Miss Garnet's Angel. was joyously...

Peter Porter MARGINALIA by H. J. Jackson Yale, £19.95, pp. 324, ISBN 0300088167 A collector friend once explained to me that the only way to get the better of a book is to buy...

Margaret Forster AUGUST by Gerard Woodward Chatto, £12.99, pp.308, ISBN 0701171111 A ugust is a wicked month: this is certainly a wonderfully wicked novel. It starts off so...

Bevis Hillier RELIABLE ESSAYS: THE BEST OF CLIVE JAMES by Clive James Picador, £14.99, pp. 349, ISBN 0330481290 EVEN AS WE SPEAK: NEW ESSAYS, 1993-2001 by Clive James Picador,...

Jane O'Grady KANT by Manfred Kuehn CUP, £24.95, pp. 576, ISBN 0521497043 A philosophical theory, said Nietzsche, is the personal confession of its author, and a kind of...

Eric Christiansen HENRY I by C. Warren Hollister, edited by Amanda Clark Frost Yale, .E25. pp. 554, ISBN 0300088582 A 1 last the definitive account of the reign of Henry I...

In the paradise of word games, Imagine a stranger pair of names; And after the drunks in Soho Square The peace inside was doubly rare. So visiting London, I went back, And said...

Alberto Manguel EYEWITNESSING: THE USES OF IMAGES AS HISTORICAL EVIDENCE by Peter Burke Reaktiort Books, £25, pp. 224, ISBN 1861890923 B ack in my Buenos Aires high school...

Martin Gayford on Tate Britain's thrilling exhibition of paintings by Michael Andrews T he late Bruce Bernard relates that he once asked Francis Bacon what, in his opinion, made...

Owen Wingrave (Channel Four) Ingeniously inventive Michael Tanner O pera on television has always seemed inherently problematic, to the point where I have sometimes felt that...

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (PG, selected cinemas) Cyber challenge Mark Steyn A film doesn't have to be good to be significant. You wouldn't want to slog through The...

A hall to thrill Peter Phillips I n the recent celebrations of the anniversaries of the Wigmore Hall (100 years) and the Royal Festival Hall (50 years), inevitable comparisons...

My One and Only (Chichester) Where's Charley? (Open Air, Regent's Park) Musical treats Sheridan Morley T his is fast becoming an astonishingly, maybe unprecedentedly, rich...

Julius Caesar (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford) Enhanced resonances Patrick Carnegy N ot so long ago Ruggiero Raimondi arrived at Covent Garden to sing, as he had often...

Channel hopping James Delmgpole H ave you ever discovered how much better life is if you don't watch any television? I've been experimenting with this recently and I can...

Renaissance man Michael Vestey F or me the most delicious radio moment of the week was hearing Jonathan Miller praising the late Philip Larkin on With Great Pleasure on Radio...

Wondrous powers Simon Courtauld 0 n visits this summer to several grand gardens — Buckingham Palace, Highgrove, Hadspen, to drop a few names — I have noticed that all have...

Courage and class Robin Oakley T he preliminaries, as the actress said to the bishop, can sometimes be as good as the real thing. On Diamond Day at Ascot, I always get to the...

Indomitable and proud Taki ICoronis t seems like yesterday when I was last in this private island paradise off the Peloponnesian coast one year ago. My how time flies when...

Sweet dreams Petronella Wyatt S ome things never leave you. I arrived back from Budapest last week to find that I had been followed. The house was full of Hungarian women of...

OFFAL. Yes, in an act of supreme selflessness — the reasons for which will shortly become apparent — I've decided this week to devote myself entirely to offal. Offal! Do you...

OUR high-summer offer comes from C.G. Bull and Taylor, a long-established firm which, for some reason, is now located opposite Battersea Dogs' Home. So if you drink too much of...

Simon Barnes RACING is about ever-widening circles of ownership. Its basic concern is the deep, atavistic urge that lurks in the breasts of so many: a profound need to look at...

Dear Mary. . . Q. Having retired to France midway between the Channel ports and Spain, we find that many friends/relations stop off en route for free B&B. Naturally, they all...