England voted in a referendum on whether they wanted a regional assembly; they didn't. Fortyseven Labour rebels voted for a complete ban on parents smacking when the Commons...

Nv hile the world's eyes have been on polling booths in the back streets of Ohio, the British political scene may appear to have been becalmed. But it isn't so. In the past week...

0 n Friday morning I was drinking a cappuccino in the Pia77a del Gesu in Naples with my friend Angus. The sky was free from clouds, the streets were free from other tourists,...

PETEk UtiOktiL N ot long before midnight on Tuesday, a mood of dogmatic certitude overcame the throng of British MPs, ministers and journalists assembled at the traditional...

I t's that Florida 2000 feeling all over again', said the BBC anchorman at breakfast on Wednesday. It wasn't. George Bush was well ahead in the popular vote nationally and...

America is a conservative country, says Mark Steyn. John Kerry was defeated by the President's determination to expand liberty abroad and promote opportunity at home New...

John Bercow says it's time the Conservative party undertook to raise aid to developing countries W e want more British aid to be distributed from London and less from Brussels....

Jane Kelly on the sudden disappearance of her fat, drooling but beloved cat I feel like Job. Everything of significance is being stripped from me. In August my flat in west...

If you can't get a straight answer from your MP, says Rod Liddle, it is because he has been reading too many evasive job ads H ere's a job advertisement which appeared in the...

'Whodunnit?' asked my husband mildly as I threw The Da Vinci Code into the cardboard box intended for kindling, next to the hearth. 'Whyreadit? That's the question.' The Da...

Radek Sikorski says Russia is using strong-arm tactics to see that its man is returned in Ukraine's presidential elections T he architecture of Independence Square in central...

go to heaven? If the three-foot-tall hominids of Flores were rational, did they have immortal souls? asks Christopher Howse vhi hen they showed on television the cave on the...

patients Managerialism is corrupting medicine, says Theodore Dalrymple, and keeping sick people out of hospital T he corruption of modern Britain is not a matter of money passed...

James Mumford visits the tenth circle of hell — a Spanish shanty town for drug addicts — and finds hope there 0 n the outskirts of Madrid, on the other side of the M40 from the...

CHRISTOPfiLk HLLL R elax. You are under no obligation to read the small print. There is a clause in Europe's constitution about bringing our economic policies — money and tax —...

T he decision to kill off the broadsheet Times is a momentous one. The Times a tabloid! Who would have believed it two years ago? The paper has been almost exactly the same...

MATTHEW PARRIS U nlike forks in the road, important junctures in human affairs are often identified only in retrospect: often years after the event. An example, I believe, is...

From Deborah Maccoby Sir; Anton La Guardia CA just wall', 30 October) is spot-on in pointing out that Israel's brutal wall is pushing the Palestinians 'into reservations'. I...

From Herb Greer Sir: Quite a week for the Harold Pinter family. First Mrs Pinter makes a prat of herself by joining the laughable Guardian campaign to write idiotic anti-Bush...

From Martin Hogg Sir: Brendan O'Neill is assuredly correct when he asserts the rightful position of anger as a positive emotion in some circumstances (`The anti-angry brigade',...

From Lizzie Slater Sir: I read Ross Clark's article on the government's recycling initiatives with a sense of profound weariness ('Rubbish policies', 23 October). In between the...

From Francis King Sir: In his review of Neville and June Braybrookes' Olivia Manning (Books, 30 October), Philip Hensher takes me to task, as editor, for not having 'done...

From Lesley Taylor Sir: While I agree with most of Rod Liddle's article on supermarkets ('Free market my eye!', 23 October), I must take issue with him in one respect. Ile says...

From Francis Bean ion Sir: I am an Englishman living near Exeter. I was interested to learn from Jane Gardam's review of Doris Lessing's Time Bites (Books, 23 October) that the...

From Jeffrey Bout well Sir: Is Rian Malan from the 'no need to check facts, let's just make it up' school of journalism? In his letter (2 October) he alleges that the Pugwash...

From T. T. King Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 23 October) asks whether any reader knows if Proust wrote a longer sentence than Victor Hugo's 823 words mentioned by...

PAUL JOHNSON S o autumn has come again, with her blushing and animating hand, searing and spotting, tinting and flaming, making hectic and encrimsoning, concealing decay, death...

Elisabeth Luard investigates the allure of the truffle I t can't be all in the mind. No one would pay silly prices for a lump of subterranean mushroom whose scent is not so...

Christopher Howse T he man from the electricity company, before making a dive for the meter under the stairs, looked at my shelves and said, 'Have you read all these books,...

Neil Clark T he past 20 years have not been happy times for lovers of pure, unadulterated glamour. The global hegemony of Anglo-Saxon culture has done to style what the...

Cruel but delicious Dominic Prince ii — n most people the mention of foie gras provokes either horror or delight — there is little middle ground. On the one hand, the...

Fever pitch David Lovibond 0 dd, really. As a ten-year-old I attended Anfield Road primary school, a corner kick from the Kop. As a teenager, I must have spent hundreds of...

Old masters David Lancaster p icture the scene: you are cresting a hill on a clear summer's morning and the road ahead is blissfully clear. Your senses arc alive to...

Alan Judd PATRICK O'BRIAN: THE MAKING OF A NOVELIST by Nikolai Tolstoy Century, £20, pp. 512, ISBN 0712670254 rt £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 THE FINAL, UNFINISHED VOYAGE...

John de Falbe CONVERSATIONS IN BOLZANO by Stindor Marai Viking, £14.99, pp. 294, ISBN 0670915343 It £12.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 0 ne of the strangest successes of...

Rupert Christiansen STEPHEN FRY'S INCOMPLETE AND UTTER HISTORY OF CLASSICAL MUSIC by Stephen Fry, as told to Tim Lihoreau Boxtree, £16.99, pp. 320, ISBN 0752225340 (t) £14.99...

Eric Hobsbawm FROM BLUES TO RAP by Roy Kerridge Finban International (Folkestone, Kent CT20 2QQ, tel: 01303 259316), £1.99, pp. 20, ISBN 0952950049 cti £1.99 (plus £2.25 p&p)...

David Hughes PuBLIC ENEMIES by Bryan Burrough Allen Lane, £20, pp. 624, ISBN 0713998288 (e) £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 B illed on the cover as 'The True Story of...

Byron Rogers ADRIAN MOLE AND THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION by Sue Townsend Michael Joseph, £16.99, pp. 460, ISBN 0718146891 (C) £14.99 (plus £1.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 I t has...

Mick Brown AN END TO SUFFERING: THE BUDDHA IN THE WORLD by Pankaj Mishra Picador, 117.99, pp. 422, ISBN 0330392786 £15.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 N obody could accuse...

Lloyd Evans WINNER TAKES ALL by Michael Winner Robson Books,f1 7.95, pp. 360, ISBN 1861057342 6 £15.95 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 S ad to report, but this book is a gem....

John Mortimer OLD FILTH by Jane Gardam Chatty, £15.99, pp. 276, ISBN 070117756X (6£12.99(plus 12.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 0 Id Filth is a barrister, a QC and unlike Trollope's...

Colette Clark MARGOT FONTEYN by Meredith Daneman ,C20, pp. 654, ISBN 0670913375 £16 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 I thought at first that this was going to be a truly...

John Grimond LETTER FROM AMERICA, 1946-2004 by Alistair Cooke Allen Lane, £25, pp. 503, ISBN 0713998342 re, £23 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 H ow did he do it? To listen to...

John McEwen on the work of Paula Rego, whose latest exhibition is at Tate Britain T his is the first in a series of short sharp shows devoted to leading British artists which...

Laura Gascoigne Still Life in 20th Century Italy Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, until 19 December A s i a teenager in Cambridge, I used to ave tea with a blind...

Beyond words Peter Phillips S itting in the Globe Theatre towards the end of last season, I began to have one of those out-of-mind experiences which only music is supposed to...

Charles Spencer y ou're probably sick of reading about John Peel, the Radio One disc jockey who died of a heart attack last week and whose passing was marked with the solemn,...

of Peel's death, I have found my thoughts repeatedly turning to him. It's no exaggeration to say that for several years in my teens and early twenties, I loved John Peel...

From crisis to crisis Lloyd Evans How To Lose Friends Arts Becket Theatre Royal Haymarket Love Me Tonight Hampstead H ere's the problem. A friend and col/league has turned...

Tale of doom Mark Steyn The Grudge 15, selected cinemas The Grudge has a marvellous opening. / Bill Pullman, looking more harassed and floppy-haired than he did even after...

Looking good Michael Tanner Les Paladins Barbican Don Giovanni ENO R ameau's Les Paladins, which arrived briefly at the Barbican Theatre, was spectacular, amazing. Or rather...

Stuart Nicholson J azz and classical music represent two self-contained musical cultures which have, for the most part, studiously avoided each other's orbit. But there's...

Fast track Michael Vestey I t goes without saying that contemporary Formula One racing drivers are extremely brave people. Driving at speeds that can reach 200mph between...

Simon Hoggart O ld formulae are desperately reworked in order to fill the endless hours of television time. (Did you know that the BBC broadcasts five hours of TV every hour,...

Robin Oakley TL didn't start well at Lingfield on 'Saturday. I discovered too late that on my walk across the field from the station I had been dribbling 1.1 coins, carefully...

Taurine France Simon Courtauld I t has been whispered this season that the still young prodigy Julian Lopez, El Juli — he had his 22nd birthday last month — may be past his...

Taki New York Dn . & Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney's .0 breakthrough opus focusing on New York City yuppies, was published 20 years ago this month, and some of his idioms —...

Incredible journey Jeremy Clarke M y boy has an undeniably boring life. He's either at school or standing behind a small-town cheap-jack grocer's till. The child who cornered...

Scrambled eggs Petronella Wyatt I don't mind rude letters, really I don't I don't mind much, actually, which probably illustrates a fatal weakness in my character. But I do...

Jaspistos In Competition No. 2365 you were invited to supply a piece, written in the style of a fashion editor, expressing enthusiasm for either see-through trousers for men or...

T here are whole department stores in Britain that have not yet put up their Christmas lights, yet here we are at the Wine Club with the first of our two Yuletide offers. This...

FRANK KEATING W ise guys steer clear of soccer till the clocks go back. The long muddy slurp and slog of winter are now properly under way. Mind you, this time autumn's warm-up...

Dear Maly Q. My wife and I were recently delighted to receive what appeared at first glance to be an invitation to the wedding of the eldest son of friends. On closer...