F or many people, watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics will be like trying to enjoy a party above the din of police cars taking away uninvited guests. However...

filming abroad, when suddenly you have the opportunity not only to visit, but actually to work somewhere else; to feel temporarily part of another city’s fabric rather than...

O ne Cabinet minister described it to me with dark wit as the ‘Eden Project’: the idea being that, after a summer of reflection, Gordon Brown is gently or notso-gently persuaded...

knowing any Russian, I cannot judge his prose style, but when people complain that he was unrelentingly serious, they are applying the wrong criteria. Solzhenitsyn was...

Monday Not happy. In fact I would say my GWB is at a record low. Among the deeply troubling unanswered questions I am wrestling with: Why was I not informed about Mr Simpson’s...

The measures on ‘gas-guzzling’ cars, policing of wheelie bins and surcharges on plastic bags are based on scientific fads and, often, the government’s greed for taxpayers’...

Owen Matthews says that the great literary prophet has been attacked on the internet by Russians who associate him with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The truth still hurts...

In the latest of his occasional series, Martin Rowson talks to Bob Marshall-Andrews, serial Labour rebel who had the entertaining cheek to accuse Miliband of disloyalty W hen I...

Michael Prescott — who was a passenger on the King’s Cross train on 7/7 — applauds a movie inspired by the terrorist attacks. But why is nobody keen to distribute it? T he...

The genocide publicised by movie stars is over, says Justin Marozzi . What must now be resolved is a civil war with unlimited breakaway factions — and Hollywood cannot help I t...

Sir: I noted with interest the article about ‘lazy firemen’ (‘Britain’s firefighters are underworked and inflexible’, 26 July). I am Lincolnshire’s Chief Fire Officer with more...

Sir: I was distressed to read Aidan Hartley’s account in Wild life (26 July) of how he dealt with what was presumably a ground hornbill pecking at the window of his new house —...

Sir: Toby Young is correct to expose the vitriol thrown at him by readers responding to his articles by email (Status anxiety, 2 August). He gives a few explanations as to why...

Sir: Robert Beaumont neatly explains that Laos is a great place for buying suits and enjoying a pizza, but his comments about the American bombing of that country are ignorant...

Sir: Since my last visit to Beijing in 2006, when all with whom I had contact were later arrested, imprisoned and several tortured, I have been following the persecution of...

Sir: Matthew Parris refers to ‘the atheist Bertrand Russell’ (Another voice, 2 August). I clearly remember hearing Russell, on the radio, describe himself as an agnostic....

S o it was 2018 and the government was in trouble. Real trouble. In newspapers and magazines, on Dame Emily Maitlis’s Newsnight and Davina McCall’s Today programme, one question...

T he wonderful thing about language, and especially English, with its enormous vocabulary, is the existence of groups of words with broadly similar meanings but each of which...

After years of financial struggle, say Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid , the Paris theme park has finally found a path to profit — just as the European economy hits a downturn...

Sam Leith L USH L IFE by Richard Price Bloomsbury, £12.99, pp. 455, ISBN 9780747596011 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I t’s pretty seldom that, only a few pages into a...

P.J. Kavanagh C RoW C oUNTRY by Mark Cocker Cape, £8.99, pp. 216, ISBN 9780224076012 ✆ £7.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 C oRVUs : A L IFE WITH B IRDs by Esther Woolfson...

Simon Baker O UR S TORY B EGINS by Tobias Wolff Bloomsbury, £18.99, pp. 379, ISBN 978 0 7475 9727 8 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his book contains ten new stories...

John de Falbe 24 FOR 3 by Jennie Walker Bloomsbury, £9.99, pp. 144 ISBN 9780747597926 ✆ £7.90 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his short novel was first published in a tiny...

M. R. D. Foot 1918: A V ERY B RITISH VICTORY by Peter Hart Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20, pp. 552 ISBN 9780297864529 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A wide gap has opened up...

Andrew Taylor T he Murder Farm (Quercus, £8.99) is Andrea Schenkel’s first novel and has been hugely successful in her native Germany and elsewhere. Based on a real case, it is...

L ate one night many years ago I was in a bar round the corner from the Roman offices of the newspaper La Stampa . After a few grappas I gave my friend Anthony something I had...

Lloyd Evans on the esotericism of the Festival and the ragamuffin risk-taking of the Fringe H ere we go again. Like some vast, hairy, attention-seeking arachnid, the Edinburgh...

Andrew Lambirth Vilhelm Hammershoi: the Poetry of Silence Royal Academy, until 7 September Supported by OAK Foundation Denmark and Novo Nordisk 2008 Season supporters...

Giannandrea Poesio National Ballet of China: Swan Lake Royal Opera House M y first article for The Spectator was a slightly long-winded analysis of the state of Swan Lake on...

Lloyd Evans Her Naked Skin Olivier Elaine Stritch At Liberty Shaw I n 2004 Rebecca Lenkiewicz got the black spot from the Critics’ Circle. Sorry, I mean she was voted ‘most...

Michael Tanner L’Incoronazione di Poppea The Proms G lyndebourne’s visits to the Proms are usually highly successful, which can seem odd considering that the home auditorium...

Deborah Ross Elegy 15, London and Key Cities E legy is about an ageing professor (Ben Kingsley) and a beautiful young woman (Penelope Cruz), and it is based on the Philip Roth...

Charles Spencer M rs Spencer and I are just back from a few days in Tuscany where I was bullied into as punishing a round of culturevulturing as I have ever endured. The...

Kate Chisholm I t’s a topsy-turvy world at the moment, with New Labour tearing each other apart like Old Tories, and brothers Will and Ed transmogrifying into each other on The...

Robin Oakley O bserving a short-eared owl beating over the marshes like a huge, predatory moth, an osprey finishing off the fish meal he had snatched a few minutes before from...

Taki On board S/Y Bushido S ailing into Athens, renamed ‘cementopolis’ by green-loving Athenians, can be a traumatic experience, for one’s crew, that is. Coming in from the...

Jeremy Clarke A s we went in, our hostess mentioned that the restaurant had three Michelin stars, but at 78 years of age the chef felt he would rather live without the daily...

Alex James

of it but it was only about five miles away, between where I got married and where the reception was. Colin was the guy behind the British Mars shot a few years back — Colin...

Fleet Street. Lawyers and the crustier type of journalist drink there, usually selecting wines from the old reliables: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne. Château Thames Embankment...

Oscar Humphries explores Naples and the Amalfi coast S ee Naples and die. Grand Tours often ended in Naples. By the time the young aristo arrived in this beautiful Italian city...

A t first, I thought the reason the British Consul General in Los Angeles had agreed to have lunch with me was because he knew who I was. Before setting off on my annual...

Those Miliband boys are clever. I was trying to discover what they stood for, and I thought I’d found something interesting in a speech by Ed Miliband. Then I realised I was...

T oby Young in last week’s Spectator remarked on the peculiar malice, as he saw it, of the online comments posted in response to his articles. He has a point. The people who...

to live with me while her new house is being made ready. Today a parcel arrived with the usual sort of impenetrable wrapping which needs to be cut through with secateurs. I...

situation in which I found myself recently. I was attending a meeting that was preceded by a wine reception. On entering the reception room I spied a glamorous and elegant...

who wished to avoid travelling to bridge parties with an alarming driver, I have the opposite problem. I am almost the only person at my university who does not drink so I am...