been suspended for more than a year; 'A democrat will not sit down with armed gangsters and murderers to negotiate the future of this country,' said the Revd Ian Paisley, the...

o n Monday the Employment Equality Regulations 2003 came into force, making it an offence, subject to an unlimited fine, for employers to discriminate against their staff on the...

story of the midEighties famine for the Mirror. The story was complicated by the fact that we had Robert 'Mercy Mission' Maxwell for company. I was summoned to the presence for...

T he intelligent case for voting for Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001 was simple and very compelling. Only New Labour could bring about deep-seated reform of British public...

Ancient Freedoms. This great patron of letters is a man with whom liberty-loving Spectator readers and opponents of the nanny state everywhere can find common cause. He was once...

Rachel Royce says that the rules and regulations now governing police procedures are putting victims' lives at risk H ave you noticed that whenever there is an armed siege...

The US army claimed to have killed 54 insurgents in a gun battle in Samarra this week, but, says Julian Manyon, it turns out that only eight died, and some of them were...

Tom Fort goes to St James's, Piccadilly, and hears Michael Meacher and others warn that the end is nigh T he handsome church of St James's in Piccadilly is a lively, friendly...

It is routinely said to be better that 99 guilty men should escape the noose than one innocent be hanged. As the capital punishment debate starts again, an ancient might ask...

Socialist policies impoverish health and education — so Diane Abbott and her fellow socialists go private, says Leo MeKinstry ypocrisy has always been the handmaiden of...

Dean Godson on the background to last week's elections in Northern Ireland 1, hat's another fine mess you've gotten me into,' quipped David Trimble with black humour as he...

'What? What! What?!' said my husband with a provoking profligacy of punctuation. 'What?' I said before I could stop myself. 'Buttonhole,' he said. 'You say here it's nothing...

The Iraqi tyrant's translator tells Philip Delves Broughton that his master — 'a kind, patient man, ready to be contradicted' — was writing a novel on the eve of war Paris ess...

the triumph of Western capitalism over Eastern communism — although sometimes you begin to wonder. After 50 years, China has thrown off the yoke of socialism and embraced...

Michael Yardley describes his bitter experience of how the licensing people get their information about who owns a TV set 1 , n pre-Velvet-Revolution Czechoslovakia they used to...

A s the days pass, more and more people are assuming that Hollinger International will be forced to sell the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator. Of the...

p essimism is the 'ism' which has succeeded Marxism in occupying the vacant space in the minds of the slobbering classes. Nowhere has it established a more feverish grip than...

mi r riting from the Commons for the Daily Telegraph this week, though alluding to him, I went to tortuous lengths not to name the MP whom a Sunday newspaper had exposed as the...

From Andrew Jones Sir: Mark Strauss's analysis of the new antiSemitism (Who hates the Jews now?', 29 November) is a chilling reminder that the far Right and the...

From Barbara Field Sir: Rod Liddle's assertion (Women who won't', 29 November) that women who choose to stay at home are merely lazy and idle is. . . spot on in my case. I...

and fell off my chaise-longue when reading Rod Liddle's preposterous claim that some women who stay at home are bone-idle. Only this very morning my channel changer's...

19 of this week's issue together so that my husband won't get to read Rod Liddle's blasphemous article. I've been lounging about at home — cosy out of the rain, feet up, eating...

my eyes this morning with his radical theory on working women, or rather non-working women. In general practice the situation is even worse. The vast majority of male GPs work...

From Christopher Booker Sir: The 30 sentences of John Laughland's 'review' of our book The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union (Books, 29 November) contain...

From Fiammetta Rocco Sin While researching The Miraculous Fever Tree, my recent book about malaria and the discovery of quinine, [learnt that one of the main reasons France...

From Professor Sir Michael Howard Sir: I read with interest Mark Steyn's proposal that the United States should now liberate five more countries (These five regimes must go', 29...

From Sir Peregrine Worsthorne Sir: In rebuttal of my complaint that Martha Gellhorn was unsympathetic to the victims of Soviet tyranny, John Hatt (Letters, 29 November) cites...

From Frances Marshall Sir: On reading Mary's advice (Your problems solved, 21 November), I took immediate action. I used Mary's information to acquire the 'Gone Away' hunting...

November) in his failure to reveal if any of Richard Desmond's minions had the presence of mind to utter the obvious response to the distinguished publisher's enquiry, 'I wonder...

Philip Hensher EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES: THE ZERO TOLERANCE APPROACH TO PUNCTUATION by Lynne Truss Profile, £9.99, pp. 228, ISBN 1861976127 S ome g reat writers just can't...

John de Falbe HER NAME WAS LOLA by Russell Hoban Bloomsbia,, £15,99, pp. 207, ISBN 0747570248 At s Max comes out of Russell Square tube station on the way o meet Seamus for...

Paul Ferris THE BANK MANAGER AND THE HOLY GRAIL by Byron Rogers Aurum, £12.99. pp. 271, ISBN 1854109499 T he only journalist I ever knew who wrote pieces remotely like the ones...

Barry Unsworth CALIGULA by Allan Massie Sceptre, £17.99, pp. 279, ISBN 0340823135 T he field is crowded, but among cruel and wicked dynasties the Julio-Clauclians must take...

Michael Horowitz THE BEST LOVED POEMS OF JOHN BETJEMAN John Murray, £8.99, pp. 112. ISBN 0719565456 I n Against Oblivion: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Poets, Ian Hamilton...

Raymond Carr LIVING TO TELL THE TALE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cape, £18.99, pp. 483, ISBN 0224072781 G abriel Garcia Marquez, according to a recent poll of prominent literati,...

Alasdair Palmer THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO GIOTTO edited by Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona CUP, .00, pp. 313. ISBN 0521770076 G iotto is very widely regarded as the founder of...

Harriet Waugh UNDESIRABLE GUESTS AND OTHER STORIES by William Charlton Tartarus Press, Coverley House, Carlton-inCoverdale, Leybum, N. Yorks DL 84 AY, email:...

Roy Kerridge PUTTIN' ON THE STYLE: THE LONNIE DONEGAN STORY by Spencer Leigh Finban International, Folkestone, Kent CT20 2QQ, Tel: 01303259316, £6.99. pp. 160, ISBN 0952950022...

Juliet Townsend L ast year, while wrestling to wrap a particularly difficult large model helicopter, whose rotor blades kept bursting out through the paper, I made a mental...

Classic FM spills memories in my car as I drive northwards on the motorway; landmarks fly past with disconcerting speed — but I travel backwards: hear again the muffled boom of...

David Edelsten AUDUBON'S ELEPHANT by Duff Hart - Davis Weidenfeld, £18.99, pp. 192, ISBN 029782967X T here cannot be many for whom the name Audubon means nothing, nor many who...

Kim Wilkie THE GARDEN OF COSMIC SPECULATION by Charles Jencks Frances Lincoln, £35, pp. 256, ISBN 0711222169 A t Portrack Maggie Keswick and Charles Jencks have designed one of...

Montagu Curzon FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND OURS: THE KOSCIUSKO SQUADRON: FORGOTTEN HEROES OF WORLD WAR TWO by Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud William Heinemann, £20, pp. 428, ISBN...

Jonathan Keates RIVERS OF GOLD: THE RISE OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE by Hugh Thomas Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 604, ISBN 0297645633 W hen John Donne apostrophised his mistress with the...

Harry Eyres wonders if our sense of awe at nature in sublime mode has gone for ever C an you make art about nature any more? About nature, I mean, not 'nature'. For the...

Andrew Lambirth Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe Sackler Wing, Royal Academy, until 22 February 2004 M anuscript illumination...

Mark Glazebrook Jean-Jacques Lebel: Works from 1960 to1965 Mayor Gallery 22a Cork Street, London W1, until 19 December I t would seem that the 1960s, like the poor, are always...

Ursula Buchan A week ago last Saturday, at 10 o'clock n the morning, I stood in a wood in Northamptonshire, prey to a succession of dreadful anxieties. I was picking up on a...

Peter Phillips Q ne of the pleasures of going to art ‘...igalleries is to look at the people looking at the paintings. I rather sympathise with those who clearly know nothing...

Mark Steyn Brother Bear LI, selected cinemas D isney's latest animated feature, Brother Bear, is the usual New Age mumbojumbo with a generalised Native American gloss: the...

Toby Young Mourning Becomes Electra Lyttelton The Secret Rapture Lyric The God Botherers Bush T was dreading Mourning Becomes 1 Electra. A four-and-a-half-hour epic set in New...

Michael Tanner The Turn of the Screw Royal College of Music Twilight of the Gods Barbican 7 r he Turn of the Screw is this autumn's Benjamin Britten Opera School's...

Marcus Berkmann H as 2003 been a good year for pop music? Ask me in a few years, and even then I probably won't know. It has only recently dawned on me what a great year 2000...

James Delingpole ornetimes I feel ever so slightly guilty Oabout the huge areas of TV that I never bother to review: police procedurals such as Frost. Taggart and Prime...

Michael Vestey T he lunacy of excessive litigation in certain American states was explored in a rather disturbing Crossing Continents on Radio Four last week (Thursday). In...

Charles Moore I have never much liked the idea of huntling a hare. This is an aesthetic point, not a moral one, for the means of death is not cruel. The fox appears always in...

Taki Palm Beach W hen William Paley died aged 90, 14 years ago, he was referred to as being middle-aged in the Palm Beach press. Paley would have liked that. He had panache...

Jeremy Clarke I n a fit of madness the other day I bought a book of selected passages from John Donne's sermons. The thunderous sermons, with titles such as 'Terrible Things',...

PetTonella Wyatt Virginia T he waitress, attired in a frilly cap and a tight bodice, slapped a platter of food down on the trestle table, which was gleaming like a nut in the...

week at the Portland Hospital on Great Portland Street. Absolutely adorable. The hospital, that is. Sure, the baby is delicious — those little toes. with perfect nails as tiny...

T he Book of Genesis tells us nothing of the sanitary arrangements provided in the Garden of Eden, but in that perfect, prelapsarian Paradise Adam and Eve could have got by...

Ross Clark O nepolicy above all is credited with winning the 1979 general election for the Conservatives: the right to buy. Britain in the 1970s was a country where the...

MICHAEL HENDERSON E ven the best performers have difficulty in knowing when to go. Particularly the best, one might say, because, having scaled the heights, they imagine they...

shake hands with strangers. After a burly oaf at a smart luncheon party shook my hand with unseemly force, I was barely able to hold my knife. The pain and fear that he had...

participate in a brisk social life accompanied by a certain increased degree of formality — doubtless due, in part, to the seniority of those involved. However,! recently...

peer, on which hangs a case of champagne. It concerns dinner table etiquette. To whom should a man talk for the first part of a dinner party? I maintain that he should talk to...