in Swansea: 'In 1938 Chamberlain was a hero when he brought back the Munich agreement. And he did it for the best of motives. He had seen members of his precious family, people...

H aving had a peek through the gates of Downing Street, the next item on a tourist's itinerary is a short stroll across Horse Guards Parade to the Cabinet War Rooms, from where...

Y ou once said something I remind myself of at least twice a day,' Alan Rusbridger said to my excitement, over our lunch at Flaneur. 'You told me never to go on TV or radio.' I...

ROD LIDDLE T he government is considering a new law which would make it illegal to kill women, no matter how annoying they may have become. Men should lose recourse to the...

MATTHEW PARRIS T he Prime Minister is right. The whole credibility of the United Nations is at stake this week. If the Security Council buckles under the US blackmail to which...

Peter °borne on why undergraduates dunked Andrew Marr in a Cambridge pond, and why such an outrage would not be perpetrated today TWENTY-FIVE years on, Andrew Marr recollects...

A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade TWO weeks ago, this magazine warned of the consequences if well-meaning scientists and equality campaigners were...

Julian Manyon on the bitter hostilities in northern Iraq Erbil ON the road to ancient Nineveh, now signposted Mosul, I stood with a group of Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers...

Mark Steyn says the US is defeating the terrorists — but still has trouble on the home front New Hampshire TIMING is everything. Last week, President Bush received an 'open...

THE EU has recently proclaimed that, for the purposes of its statistical analyses, Britain is not an island. That poses an interesting question: when did it become an island? It...

In the French catechism, gluttony is given as 'gourmandise'. Philip Delves Broughton says virtuous French gourmands want it changed Paris BEFORE his death last year in a...

IN the days when relations between men and women were not so fluid or elastic that they left some room for the only cement that holds civilisation together, namely hypocrisy, it...

DR C.M.W. Tang writes from Georgetown. Guyana, to say that an English lady professor of his acquaintance was perplexed when she was admitted to a hospital there and had to tick...

Sir Bernard Crick on the tests that immigrants must pass to achieve citizenship THE foreign hotel register demands: 'Nationality?' By 'nationality', of course, the hotel means...

is alcoholic grape juice. And a great Burgundy, red or white, has a style and flair and perfume and finesse and depth and richness which can't be found anywhere else. On the...

The government insists that the reconviction rate among young offenders is falling. But that's not true, says Theodore Dahymple THERE is nothing a professional pessimist hates...

PAUL JOHNSON W riters oscillate between the poles of criticism and creation. A divine few — such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo and Mark Twain — are at home equally as...

From Mr Lawrie Brownlee Sir: Lord Howe's article ('Balancing the ticket', 22 February) confirms my view that the Conservative party is doomed in its present form. What is...

went to a black-tie dinner hosted by a residents' association on the Hyde Park Estate in London — a bastion of Tory tribalism. During the dinner I understood from the...

embracing the term 'Tory'? In modern usage it is most often a left-wing term of abuse. In origin it was first applied to Irish bog-trotters and robbers, and then in around 1680...

From Lady Butler Sir: Peter °borne (Politics, 1 February) uses the word 'disgraceful' in alluding to my husband's political career. I learn that he is referring to the time of...

From Laura Thompson Sir: Anne Chisholm (Books. 1 March) is of course entitled to her alarmingly low opinion of my book about Nancy Mitford, Life in a Cold Climate. But she is...

From Mr Royce MacGillivray Sir: Frank Johnson (Shared opinion, 1 March) convincingly argues that the Iraq crisis is not Munich or Suez, but Sarajevo in 1914. It is worth...

From air G. Marshall Sir: Conservative councillors throughout the country will recognise the truth of Ross Clark's exposure of the government's latest tax scam Of it's Tory, tax...

From Miss Susan Clarke Sir: I read with interest Charles Moore's column (Hunting, 1 March). Mr Moore's articles on foxhunting in your magazine are one of the highlights of my...

From Captain C.J. Allen Sir: While thousands of British troops build up in Kuwait to join our US counterparts at the direction of our Prime Minister and for the continued...

From Mr Anthony G. Phillips Sir John Laughland's perceptive article (Hands off Northern Cyprus', 22 February) concludes with a sentiment which could equally apply in many parts...

From Mr William Shawcross Sir: Your correspondent Tom Palmer ('Hothouse of hate', 22 February) is quite wrong to dump all over the Eden Project in Cornwall because of a few...

From The Revd Canon Methuen Clarke Sir: Born early last century, I have been a Spectator reader since the Thirties and for the first time in those years I was truly shocked by...

STEPHEN GLOVER 0 ur old friend Peter Mandelson is alleged to have engineered the removal of Harry Blackwood, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, a newspaper in Mr Mandelson's...

Philip Hensher PERSIA IN THE GREAT GAME by Anthony Wynn John Murray, £25, pp. 346, ISBN 0719564077 I have to register a strong complaint about the misleading and opportunistic...

Gabriele Annan JUDGE SAVAGE by Tim Parks Secker, £16.99, pp. 442, ISBN 043620598X J udge Savage is a dashing mixture of thriller, social comedy and dysfunctional family saga....

Sebastian Shakespeare THE LIGHT OF DAY by Graham Swift Hamish Hamilton, £16.99, pp. 243, ISBN 0241142040 W e have had to wait seven years for Graham Swift's latest novel. Was...

Archie Cotterell GREENBACK: THE STORY OF THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR AND THE INVENTION OF AMERICA by Jason Goodwin Hands* Hamilton, £14.99, pp. 299, ISBN 0241140986 I t is a seductive...

Alan Wall A HOUSE BY THE RIVER by Sid Smith Picador, f15.99, pp. 262, ISBN 0330481231 T his is a remarkable novel. Written in a beautifully crafted prose, its theme is the...

Jonathan Fryer THEN AGAIN by Irma Kurtz Fourth Estate, £15.99, pp. 360, ISBN 1841156930 D iaries, like snapshots, can be hostages to fortune. Anxious to capture a first...

his horse Tom Pocock THE SABRE'S EDGE by Allan Mallinson Bantam, £16.99, pp. 320, ISBN 0593047281 T hose who prefer their history straight may look askance at the historical...

Jonathan Cecil PLAYING LEAR by Oliver Ford Davies NHB, £14.99, pp. 211, ISBN 1854596985 A sked who was the greatest French poet Andre Gide famously replied, 'Victor Hugo,...

Charlotte Mitchell THE VICTORIANS: THE OXFORD ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY, VOLUME 8, 1830 - 1880 by Philip Davis OUP, £30, pp. 648, ISBN 0198184476 J onathan Bate, the general...

Fiona Maddocks PUCCINI: A BIOGRAPHY by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz Northeastern University Press, $30, pp. 384 ISBN 1555535305 PUCCINI: HIS LIFE AND WORKS by Julian Budden Master...

Robert Edric THE TIME OF OUR SINGING by Richard Powers Heinemann, £14.99, pp. 631, ISBN 0434060626 T he Time of Our Singing is the story of a mixed-race marriage in post-war...

Robert Macfarlane WATSON AND DNA: MAKING A SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION by Victor K. McElheny Wiley, £18.99, pp. 365, ISBN 0470854294 J ames Watson has all the makings of a great...

D. J. Taylor BROKEN DREAMS: VANITY, GREED AND THE SOURING OF BRITISH FOOTBALL by Tom Bower Simon & Schuster: £17.99, pp. 342, ISBN 074322079X FOOTBALL CONFIDENTIAL: SCAMS,...

Juliet Townsend DEAN FARRAR AND 'ERIC' by Ian Anstruther Haggerston Press, Barlavington Estate, Petworth. Sussex GU 28 OLG, Tel: 01798 869260, Fax: 01798 869401, £19.95, pp. I...

Andrew Lambirth on the Tate's new exhibition, a cross-section of British contemporary art D ays Like These is only the second Tate Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary British...

Bruce Boucher A ly exhibition of Leonardo's drawings is an event, and the one now on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum is no exception. More than 100 works by Leonardo...

Henrietta Bredin braves the backwaters of Venice for a production of Katya Kabanova G oing to the opera in Venice these days is quite a business. Everything that would have...

Mark Steyn I can't remember the last time I saw Hogan's Heroes. It must be on somewhere right now, as you're reading this, if only because just about every piece of extant...

Lloyd Evans T revor Nunn's sumptuous production of Love's Labour's Lost is almost faultless. The staging and the design attain a high level of professionalism. The company...

Michael Tanner B efore I went to the latest revival of Jonathan Miller's production of Richard Strauss's most popular comic opera at the Coliseum. I intended to begin my review...

Peter Phillips P erhaps it would be fun to hold a Most Influential Composer competition. It could be undertaken by one of our glossier magazines as a distraction from the...

Ursula Buchan T he property bubble may be finally popping, but for people like me, who like staying put, the recent hike in house prices, in the cities especially, has been...

Michael Vestey A friend who went for a secretarial job at Buckingham Palace was asked if she could spell, as the nature of the correspondence sent out was such that accuracy...

Simon Hoggart I s there something in the water in Grantham that creates such extraordinary offspring? Why are the famous people from this pleasing but modest market town so...

Taki JParis ust before I left Gstaad, I acted as auctioneer for a charity started by a lady who lost her young son to brain cancer. Things were not exactly hunky-dory as the...

Jeremy Clarke M y boy was on half-term holiday last week so I renewed our family railcard and we went up to London for a day out. We left Devon at nine and arrived at three:...

Pe tronella Wyatt T here hasn't been much in the news recently to cheer about, eh what? Apparently, we lack vaccines against chemical weapons. a terror exercise is to he staged...

SO, to Hakkasan, the first Chinese restaurant ever to win a coveted Michelin star, which can be found down a surprisingly seedy, dimly lit alley off Tottenham Court Road. Then,...

Michael Henderson Port Elizabeth THERE is no sporting event in the world quite like a cricket match between India and Pakistan, for reasons that require no exposition. The...

a bit like crêpe paper, even though I am only 15. I am always slathering on moisturiser, but then the skin goes back to looking cfepey again a couple of hours later. E.F.,...

I had a distant cousin in France who had a similar problem with his shoulder because of a first world war injury. His tailor's solution was to envelop his upper torso in what...

matter of English etiquette. My wife and I correspond periodically with an English couple — old friends whom we met many years ago while working abroad. On occasions, I...

of the 'social sheath' you mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Of course, this may be evidence that I am too old to make the machine work for me, but although I watch carefully for...