I t is bleakly symmetrical that Tony Blair’s tenth anniversary as Prime Minister should have fallen in the same week as the Scottish, Welsh and local elections. But it was no...

I know. She sounded tense. ‘Gyles,’ she said, ‘do you want to come out?’ ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it, darling?’ I replied. ‘I mean, “come out”,’ she said...

F or almost two years, Westminster has been abuzz with what many MPs believed to be an explosive secret. The ringleader of the 7 July London bombings, Mohammed Sidique Khan, was...

MONDAY Jed in terrible mood. He’s been like it since last Wednesday when his bicycle broke down on the way to Stamford Bridge. I must say, I can’t quite work out how a...

Anne McElvoy says that the decline of social mobility is a modern scandal and should be the great battleground of post-Blair politics. The answer used to be grammar schools: now...

Dean Godson talks to Peter Clarke, the Met’s head of counterterrorism, about the Crevice trial, and concludes that the failures it exposed have deeper roots than alleged MI5...

Lloyd Evans is aghast at his decision, in less than six minutes, to buy a tiny home that he and his wife admit is ugly and overpriced I t was pretty barmy ten years ago but now...

Clemency Burton-Hill says that the Chancellor led the way in international development but that the Tories are fighting back with a plan to send MPs into poverty-stricken Africa...

The curious case of the cup has been gripping traditionally minded Catholics for a few years now. I mention the question because a secret text of the new translation of the Mass...

Ross Clark says that new powers taken over British citizens by the US tax authorities are reminiscent of the NatWest Three scandal. Does Uncle Sam want to drive us into...

Patrick Marnham Paris, 1 May B etween two rounds of a presidential election, the city seems untypically calm. But from my observatory, two floors above the campaign...

Rod Liddle relishes the beauty of a Scottish coastal village and senses the deep, inchoate but ineradicable grievance against the English who foot the bill Gardenstown,...

John Laughland reveals that before his notorious act of collaboration with the Nazis, the Norwegian politician was lobbying for a European Confederation T en years ago I wrote a...

Sir: Liam Byrne’s breathless panegyric (‘Rise up, Englishmen’, 28 April) on the glories of being British must have left some of us pretty punch drunk. This is a man who...

Sir: I thank Matthew Parris (Another voice, 28 April) for his courteous response to my article (‘Why there will be no future Pax Americana’, 14 April). However, Mr Parris...

Sir: I’m sure the indigenous peoples of North America would have something to say about your correspondent Katherine Barlow’s assertion that Americans ‘don’t do...

Sir: Allow me, a Frenchman, to express my astonishment and my concern at the thought that the British army could send a royal prince to the front in Iraq. He will immediately be...

Sir: Rod Liddle (‘A normal trip with Worst Late Western’, 28 April) wondered why John Major’s government, in the shape of Michael Heseltine, privatised the railways. It...

Sir: Charles Moore is right about the jokes made regarding the jobs that other people’s parents do (The Spectator’s Notes, 28 April). My father was a professional musician...

Sir: In last week’s Style & Travel section, Victoria Mather gets socially airborne about dog names and breeds. She says dukes have labradors called Purdey, while dustmen have...

T here is a thing that many Scots do when they meet with other Scots. They start to sound more Scottish. Their consonants either grow jagged or fade away all together, their...

A reader complains that in my list of the failings of European countries I omitted Britain, and our national vice: hypocrisy. Are we habitually hypocritical? The accusation is...

Judi Bevan meets Sir Michael Bishop of BMI, who wants to give BA and Virgin a run for their money over the Atlantic — and has no plans to sell out to either of them I n his...

Richard Northedge N ever mind how often the dustbins are emptied, this week’s elections should have been about who empties them. Now that we can choose our phone company and...

Martin Vander Weyer visits a £600 million project which is not only spectacular but also on time and on budget I f you have a long-lost Continental lover, you have a little...

T he heady days of 1999 are back. Once again it’s fashionable to work for an internet start-up, even more so if you’re a part of the so-called ‘Web 2.0’ bonanza. (For...

Matthew d’Ancona says Silverjet makes air travel a pleasure I n his novel The Information , Martin Amis gives the best account I have ever read of plane envy. Richard Tull,...

Sarah Sands B otox is so commonplace now that you would think a six-year-old child could administer it. According to the Parisian cosmetic surgeon, Doctor Nelly GauthierHazan,...

Tanya Gold ‘W hen Brooklyn Beckham wears a new outfit we get telephone calls asking who designed it,’ says Dina Kingsman, the head buyer at the Harrods Baby Department....

Clarke Hayes Y ears ago, when I got my first allotment, friends and acquaintances used to vie and jostle for invitations to dinner, or a barbeque, especially during the summer...

Mark Palmer W e’ve just returned from a short break in Taormina, Sicily, and the person who made our trip so memorable was a tall, wiry man called Steven Ceschia. He’s not...

Anna Arco I t’s a curious fact about 21st-century England that as we get more and more uppity about animal rights, so blood sports (especially pheasant shooting) become more...

Clarissa Tan I wish to write about a place of which I know everything yet nothing, where everything is familiar yet strange, a place where I feel I go too often, but never...

Philip Hensher A USTERITY B RITAIN , 1945-51 by David Kynaston Bloomsbury, £25, pp. 692, ISBN 9780747579854 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 O ne day in July 1945, a...

Andrew Taylor T HE L ITVINENKO F ILE by Martin Sixsmith Macmillan, £16.99, pp. 311, ISBN 9780230531543 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 B LOWING U P R USSIA by...

Leanda de Lisle T HE N OBLE R EVOLT : T HE O VERTHROW OF C HARLES I by John Adamson Orion, £25, pp. 742, ISBN 9780297842621 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 J ohn...

William Brett T EARING D OWN THE W ALL OF S OUND by Mick Brown Bloomsbury, £18.99, pp. 502, ISBN 9780747572435 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I n 2003, two days...

Frederic Raphael L ENI : T HE L IFE AND W ORK OF L ENI R IEFENSTAHL by Steven Bach Little, Brown, £25, pp. 386, ISBN 9780316861113 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 S...

James Buchan T HE O CCUPATION OF I RAQ : W INNING THE W AR , L OSING THE P EACE by Ali A. Allawi Yale, £18.99, pp. 518, ISBN 9780300110159 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870...

Robert S. C. Gordon A T RANQUIL S TAR by Primo Levi, translated by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli Penguin, £20, pp. 164, ISBN 9780713999556 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

Robert Stewart P ANAMA F EVER : T HE B ATTLE TO B UILD THE C ANAL by Matthew Parker Hutchinson, £20, pp. 444, ISBN 9780091797041 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 F rom...

Stuart Wheeler T HE L UCIFER E FFECT by Philip Zimbardo Ebury, £18.99, pp. 551, ISBN 9781844535776 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 W ould you ever torture...

Blair Worden D ECENCY AND D ISORDER : T HE A GE OF C ANT , 1789-1837 by Ben Wilson Faber, £25, pp. 400, ISBN 9780571224685 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 ‘P...

Mary Kenny , a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, revisits The Women’s Room after 30 years T he Women’s Room (being a correction to the concept...

Andro Linklater M ALVINAS R EQUIEM by Rodolfo Fogwill, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson Serpent’s Tail, £14.95, pp. 154, ISBN 9781852429652 A rmadillos dig,...

Marcus Berkmann explains how he has survived 20 years as The Spectator’s pop critic I t suddenly occurs to me, with a jolt, that I have been writing about pop music for The...

Andrew Lambirth Clear Skies and Storm Clouds: Visions of Buckinghamshire between the Wars Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury, until 2 June The Flower Paintings: Ivon...

Mark Glazebrook Y orkshire Sculpture Park is the first and best of the breed in the British Isles. Since 1977 it has activated 500 acres of undulating land between Barnsley and...

Lloyd Evans Kindertransport Hampstead Rafta, Rafta Lyttelton Called to Account Tricycle H olocaust art must be approached with care. There’s a worry that by finding fault...

Deborah Ross The Upside of Anger 15, Nationwide T he Upside of Anger stars Joan Allen (the wonderful, wonderful Joan Allen, that is) as Terry Wolfmeyer, a Michigan housewife...

Giannandrea Poesio Triple Bill Royal Opera House I wish the term ‘ballet-theatre’ had not already been snatched and (mis)used by dance historians, for there is no better...

Peter Phillips T he issue of downloading classical music from the BBC for free represents a typically modern dilemma. On the face of it, why shouldn’t the BBC offer back to...

Michael Tanner Owen Wingrave Linbury Studio B ritten’s penultimate opera, Owen Wingrave , has always been the Cinderella in that area of his work, and the production of it...

Kate Chisholm A teasing approach to the topical problem of immigration was aired on Radio Three late on Sunday night. ‘Denis Thatcher, my father, brings early tea./ Margaret...

James Delingpole V ictoria’s Empire (BBC1, Sunday) is the BBC’s new Palinesque travelogue series in which comedienne Victoria Wood goes from exotic location to exotic...

Taki New York I t’s been a hellish week for Pug’s Club. A week in which I was unable to lend my good offices against the violent outbreak of disapprobation and...

Jeremy Clarke O f the 35 wedding guests, one other person, I noticed, was wearing a suit. On the strength of our being the only men in suits, I went over as the cake was being...

Aidan Hartley Gobi Desert W hen tourists from the world’s crowded cities first encounter Mongolia’s steppe, an ocean of grass empty of humans, they frequently turn...

keeps winning awards as the best independent wine merchant, and I’m not surprised. There’s a nimbleness to these smaller companies; chaps (or chapesses) whizz off to...

he’s my brother’s friend, but my brother lets his friends be mine, as he knows I’ve always struggled to make any of my own. Anyway, Nick says he’d like to take me to...

James Waldron luxuriates in a new breed of shaving unguents I ’ve never been one to look on the morning shave as a chore. We males have few rituals to enjoy, and those few...

Tom Norrington-Davies says pies should be elevated from junk-food status W hen is it hip to be square? When you are a pie of course. On a wintry Friday lunchtime, Square Pie’s...

Jonathan Ray succumbs to the charm of America’s past T hey call it Virginia’s Historic Triangle, this tiny corner of the United States bounded by Jamestown, Yorktown and...

FRANK KEATING I n those fresh, expectant springtimes of long ago, the last week of April was the very quintessence of the changeover the week he would have bid adieu to the...

men who have the opportunity to meet her. She wants a boyfriend but her work brings her into contact with virtually no single heterosexual men and she has exhausted the...

Yorkshire. We love going to stay with them in their charming and rambling old house, but we are soft southerners and Yorkshire seems to be freezing all year round. There is a...

diabetes and now has to eat at seven o’clock in order to maintain his blood sugar level. Help, Mary, what should we do about having dinner with Top People? J.F., London SW12...