T he foreign prisoners scandal has revealed nothing less than a crisis of governance: the fundamental incapacity of what ministers feebly call ‘the system’ to respond to a...

T hird-world airports are more satisfactory than ours in every department. They are more efficiently run. There is no need to walk several miles to your departure gate. They...

W hen the last Conservative government sacrificed its reputation for competence, it was at least for a worthy cause. On Black Wednesday, British monetary policy was rescued from...

the local elections will be, but it seems safe to predict that the turnout will not be high. Politically minded people tend to worry about low turnout because they find it hard...

THURSDAY The government is in ‘meltdown’ and we are marking the occasion with lots of glacier jokes (Steve not amused) and by gazing at our collective navel. Much argument...

Austen Ivereigh , who is leading the battle against the movie of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code in this country, reveals how its principal target — the controversial Catholic...

Mary Wakefield visits one of the group’s halls of residence and meets not albino assassins but a more pious version of Trinny and Susannah A fter three hours with Opus Dei...

Republicans are bitterly divided about immigrants, and the public is blaming the President for high petrol prices. Irwin Stelzer reports on ugly times in Washington D on’t...

On BBC television’s Newsnight they have got one of their reporters to live for a year ‘ethically’. By this they do not mean that he must remain faithful to his wife,...

David Rennie says that the euro has been a public relations disaster because consumers associate it with the rising price of ordinary goods Ioannina, Greece L ike a penitent...

Rod Liddle say that — whatever his political failures — the Deputy Prime Minister is the victim of a deplorably hypocritical press assault I spent Bank Holiday Monday trying...

No, we’re far too nice Tom Stacey , a prison visitor for 30 years, says that jails devote scandalous resources to ‘diversity’. No wonder the Home Office has so little...

From William MacDougall Sir: I hope Fraser Nelson is mistaken in his talk of a ‘Lib Dem Test’ for Tory policies (‘Cameron’s secret plan’, 29 April). Of course the...

From Colin Broughton Sir: Rod Liddle is right in suggesting that the fiction of the BBC’s impartiality should be addressed by more openness (‘BBC staff’s views should be...

From Frederick Forsyth Sir: Lord Tebbit (Letters, 29 April) is quite right to rebuke idle journalism which relentlessly repeats untruths instead of analysing the meaning of the...

From Sir Simon Day Sir: I was most interested by the article by Lord Ashcroft to mark the 150th anniversary of the Victoria Cross (‘Conspicuous bravery celebrated’, 22...

From William Oddie Sir: Roger Scruton (‘An unhappy birthday to Sigmund the Fraud’, 29 April) could have quoted G.K. Chesterton, who prophetically warned against most of the...

From Steve Spurrell Sir: Allow me to clear up Jason Boatright’s misunderstanding about the ‘strange criticisms’ Europeans so often make of Americans (Letters, 22 April)....

From Timothy Williams Sir: Frederic Raphael writes: ‘Papon was tried and condemned for war crimes only as an old man, in the late 1990s, and died in prison’ (Books, 29...

M ost of us know what it is to finish a task undertaken for the first time, having made every mistake in the book, and regret we are unlikely ever to have to do this job again....

I would love to have been a fly on the wall — or a butler — at the US embassy in New Delhi in March 1963 when Milton Friedman, champion of laissez-faire, came to lunch with...

W andering through the Vale of Taunton recently, I reflected that few places on earth could be more fair in April-time. The trees were still mostly bare but the blossom was out...

Ferdinand Mount J OHN O SBORNE : A P ATRIOT FOR U S by John Heilpern Chatto, £25, pp. 528, ISBN 0701167807 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T he heart starts to sink...

in infancy, was christened at St Martin’s in the Fields by ‘the Reverend Dick Sheppard, the England star cricketer’. In fact, David Sheppard, the great batsman, later...

Cressida Connolly A M UCH M ARRIED M AN by Nicholas Coleridge Orion, £12.99, pp. 464, ISBN 075285254X ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A nyone baffled by the...

Sitting at the window shelling peas into a battered colander between my knees (sweet, pod-swollen peas of early May) till suddenly I find I’ve slipped away sixty years and...

David Pryce-Jones B LACK S HIRT : S IR O SWALD M OSLEY AND B RITISH F ASCISM by Stephen Dorril Viking, £30, pp. 717, ISBN 0670869996 ✆ £24 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655...

Noble Frankland B LOOD , S WEAT AND ARROGANCE by Gordon Corrigan Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 495, ISBN 029784623X V £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 C HURCHILL ’ S S ECRET W...

Martin Vander Weyer A DAM S MITH AND THE P URSUIT OF P ERFECT L IBERTY by James Buchan Profile, £14.99, pp. 198, ISBN 1861979053 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I...

John Laughland R OUSSEAU ’ S D OG by David Edmonds and John Eidinow Faber, £15.99, pp. 405 ISBN 0571224059 ✆ £12.79 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 ‘I n London, if a...

Digby Durrant A S TAIN ON THE S ILENCE by Andrew Taylor Penguin/ Michael Joseph, £12.99, pp. 343, ISBN 0718147499 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A ndrew Taylor...

Alistair Irwin D USTY W ARRIORS by Richard Holmes HarperCollins, £20, pp. 385, ISBN 139780007212842 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 H IGHWAY TO H ELL by John Geddes...

T owards the end of the Seventies I was asked to write a short, critical study of Muriel Spark’s novels. I accepted, with some trepidation and misgivings. At least I hope...

Andrew Lambirth on exhibitions focusing on the life and times of Shakespeare and Bellini H ere in London are two historical exhibitions which treat more of human identity,...

Peter Phillips T he war on terror means little to a lot of people, but to the itinerant musician at an airport it means ever-increasing hassle, rough treatment and delay. In...

Alan Powers T wenty years ago, Britain was gripped by an architectural battle of styles. The Lloyd’s building in the City opened, representing the hopes for a resurgence of...

Olivia Glazebrook Confetti 15, selected cinemas I don’t know quite what came over me during the screening of Confetti . I was well prepared: I had curled my lip and rolled...

Giannandrea Poesio Companhia de Danga; Deborah Colker The Barbican D ance and eroticism have long gone hand in hand. For centuries, moving bodies have been regarded as...

Charles Spencer M y sister and I never had pets as children, or rather we had them but they didn’t tend to last very long. Indeed, no sooner had some dumb animal entered the...

Michael Tanner King Canterbury Cathedral T here can’t be many more tantalising prospects for an operatic composer than writing an opera about the murder of Thomas Becket in...

Lloyd Evans Paradise Lost Watford Palace Trainspotting Hackney Empire, and touring Psychosis 4:48 Arcola G ood and evil slug it out in Paradise Lost . Good triumphs, just...

Michael Vestey A lthough I don’t buy it often, I’ve always liked the New Yorker magazine, not only for its good writing but also for the humour. The cartoons are...

Simon Hoggart I greatly enjoyed The Impressionists (BBC1, Sunday) in spite of clunky lines such as ‘This is Paris, in 1862,’ and ‘Cézanne! Do you know everybody?’...

Robin Oakley ‘T he unexpected ones are always the sweetest,’ said J.P. McManus after his Hasty Prince had followed half a dozen duck eggs by running out the 14–1 winner...

Taki New York I ’m in the middle of rereading Storm of Steel , Ernst Jünger’s account of his first world war experience, which was published in 1920 and immediately made...

Jeremy Clarke O n Saturday morning I woke early. I was in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar bedroom, fully clothed, with my shoes on. Curled up beside me was a woman I didn’t...

FRANK KEATING B lossom by blossom, the season changes. So should the headlines. Fat chance. Weird times: roll up, roll up for a Lord’s cricket Test even before the mudlarks...

lost a much loved and very expensive Georgina von Etzdorf scarf. And I’m afraid that when I couldn’t find it I suspected one of the other guests — who’d admired it and...

when people at parties surge up to me, faces aglow, leading me to believe they feel some joy in seeing me, and then proceed to make it clear as soon as they open their mouths...

grass courts and a few hard courts. Now that the season has come round again people are starting to say to me, ‘We must play tennis’ and I am aware that one of the reasons I...