New Labour sketchbook M r Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, decided to move in to No. 11 Downing Street after the flat in No. 10 proved too small for his family; there was concern...

So the Tory Parliamentary party finally got its way BRUCE ANDERSON I was wrong. Two weeks ago, I informed the readers of The Spectator that 5 per cent of those who voted Tory...

PETRONELLA WYATT T he trouble is,' the Gloucestershire landowner said, his pigeon-blood complex- ion deepening, 'the trouble is that these Labour people think we're rich.' He...

I cannot bring myself to attack the new Prime Minister — at least not for for a while MATTHEW PARRIS I n a spirit of fair play,' said a wonderfully mischievous colleague to...

William Hague says why he should be the new leader of the Conservative party To recreate that faith in victory, a great many things about our party Will have to change. The...

'THE British government has a con- cern,' the man from British Airways said on the wireless, 'and we have a con- cern.' Then Robert Taylor wrote in last week's Spectator: `Keir...

. . . Anne McElvoy listens to the noise of Tory recriminations THE FORMER government minister, soundly thrashed by his ungrateful middle- class constituents, picked at his...

. . . could really be a war on the poor Robert Taylor on the possible victims of the middle class's election victory THE magnitude of the victory for Tony Blair's New Labour...

Michael Heath

A SOURCE' . . . said the giggling moon-faced Central Office Sloane with the microphone. A.A. Gill on what it was like on an election battle bus ALL together now, 'The wheels...

David Canton misdiagnosed the general election result, but asks that he should be allowed to continue to practise GERALD Kaufman, the distinguished Old Labour MP, took time...

. was one of the maxims of John Junor who died last week and whom Alan Watkins remembers AT 26 I had wanted to be a journalist for three or four years but was becalmed as a...

Finding space for Guido Reni's 'Mayday Massacre of Major's Multitude' PAUL JOHNSON S o that's the end of politics for a bit. I have been catching up on missed exhibi- tions....

The constituents have seized power, so the Tories must search for an unknown prime minister CHRISTOPHER FILDES F rom the wreck of his party, a Conser- vative survivor stared...

Sir: I read Paul Johnson's piece (And another thing, 3 May) on the morning of 2 May and had to smile; so much sound and fury indicating only a burnt-out intellect. He says I am...

Sir: I sympathise with Leanda de Lisle's predicament in not being able easily to find suitable cricket trousers for her son at prep school (Country life, 26 April). She might be...

Sir: Clearly your anxieties about a change of government have unseated your judg- ment. You have printed a piece on racism by Leanda de Lisle (Country life, 3 May) which...

Sir: I'm glad Robin Holloway finds Brahms 'great enough to put him up there with the B's, S's and W's' (Arts, 26 April), but apart from Wagner, who are the W's? Have the...

Sir: With reference to Frederick Forsyth's article ('Impatient with The English Patient', 29 March) and Adrian Scrope's ill-tem- pered reply (Letters, 12 April), no one has yet...

Sir: With Living Marxism's endorsement of Neil Hamilton, and your decision to grant space to an appeal by various literati to support the same in a libel action which ITN is...

Sir: It seems odd that Alice von Schlieffen, great-granddaughter of the architect of the Schlieffen Plan, who has initiated and sus- tained the long correspondence on its...

a nom de plume for Alastair Forbes? Ian Jordan 3 Terrapins, Lovelace Road, Surbiton, Surrey

exists, perhaps she could tell us how she rates Erich von Falkenhayn's Ver- dun offensive which after ten months of bat- tle and a third of a million casualties gained the...

Sir: Your piece about the queer goings-on on Hampstead Heath (`There's something in the undergrowth', 19 April) calls to mind a robust Churchill anecdote. A 'Churchill courtier...

point in the long-drawn- out correspondence concerning her grand- father's plan. His strategy was a repetition of that applied so successfully by the Ger- man Confederation in...

For sale: two Independents and one Observer (reduced) STEPHEN GLOVER T he Independent titles, journalists assume, are up for sale. Barely a day passes without a new rumour....

Why the Tory Eurosceptics do not ring true PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE I f the Tories had won a majority, it would have been made up of Europhobes dedicat- ed to having Britain out...

From the bottom Up Alastair Forbes CYRIL CONNOLLY by Jeremy Lewis Cape, QS, pp. 622 hat is there to say', wailed Cyril Connolly one day, 'about someone who did nothing all his...

Main de Botton THE FAREWELL SYMPHONY by Edmund White Chatto, £16.99, pp. 504 o r many heterosexual men, the most enviable and extraordinary feature of being homosexual is just...

Mary Kenny PROMISCUITIES: A SECRET HISTORY OF FEMALE DESIRE by Naomi Wolf Chatto, £12.99, pp. 272 T he trouble really began when Simone de Beauvoir announced, 'One is not born...

Ra Page LOVE IN A BLUE TIME by Hanif Kureishi Faber, .f8.99, pp. 212 A s any closet romantic will tell you, falling out of love can be an even grander experience than falling...

Peter Levi TALES FROM OVID by Ted Hughes Faber, £14.99, £7.99, pp. 256 I t must be 100 years since Maurice Baring remembered in print how an Eton master, enquiring what class...

Kevin Myers FIFTY DEAD MEN WALKING by Martin McGartland Blake, £16.99, pp. 248 T he informer as hero is not, to put it mildly, a literary device popular in Ireland. If ever an...

Ian Thomson LONDON: THE NOVEL by Edward Rutherfurd Century, £16.99, pp. 829 T here should be an Achievement Award printed on the last page of this book for anyone patient...

Tom Hiney GREAT APES by Will Self Bloomsbury, £15.99, pp. 404 i ll Self is the writer who was sacked by the Observer for failing to deny that he had taken heroin on the Prime...

Mark Archer THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH NONSENSE by Noel Malcolm HarperCollins, £18, pp. 329 E nglish nonsense verse has been asso- ciated for so long with Edward Lear and Lewis...

Allan Mallinson DRAGONSTRIKE: THE MILLENNIUM WAR by Humphrey Hawksley and Simon Holberton Sidgwick, £16.99, pp. 368 T he editor of this magazine, writing in the Daily Telegraph...

Mark Girouard THE FALL AND RISE OF THE STATELY HOME by Peter Mandler Yale, £25, pp. 622 Here we are and here we have got to stay, mouldering on in this blasted barrack of a...

Is Hitchcock's reputation deserved? No, says Michael Harrington. He was a light entertainer of great professional skill but no 'genius' A fred Hitchcock's reputation is a mys-...

Martin Gayford talks to the painter Euan Uglow about his work L ooking at the world .. . ' I start to say, but Euan Uglow finishes my sentence for me, `... is magic.' And when...

Kolya (12, selected cinemas) Anaconda (15, selected cinemas) A fun ride Mark Steyn 'Ater the Velvet Revolution,' said the Czech director Jan Sverak, explaining what...

Who listens? Peter Phillips S ince psephology seems to be a legiti- mate part of the news at the moment I thought I would undertake my own poll of how people are getting along...

David Hackney (Annely Juda Fine Art, 23 Deri.ng Street, London W1 , till 19 July) All change Edward Lucie-Smith D avid Hockney's twin shows at Annely Juda, Flowers and Spaces...

Royal Ballet Triple Bill (Covent Garden) Mixed bag thannandrea Poesio A though many 20th-century choreog- raphers have successfully demonstrated that the ballet vocabulary...

Frankly Scarlett (King's Head) Dona Rosita the Spinster (Almeida) Out Cry (Lyric Hammersmith) Frankly terrible Sheridan Morley T he funny thing about farces is how very...

Tannhauser (Opera North, Leeds) Sabotaging a fine evening Michael Tanner E veryone, beginning with the composer himself, feels that Tannhauser is Wagner's least satisfactory...

Terry's special Simon Hoggart I watched the great landslide in Austria, where we were visiting friends. Perhaps surprisingly the local television devoted the whole evening to...

Court jester to Bohemia Michael Vestey I n the eyes of some, Cyril Connolly is one of the great literary figures of fun of the 20th century, 'smarty boots' according to his...

No surprises Robin Oakley W hen a trainer or jockey tells you that 'this one can eat them all for breakfast on the gallops', you should normally be as careful as when a...

Willing and skittish Alan Judd L ast month I summarised uxorial dis- cussion concerning the kind of open- topped car my wife might favour, if any. This month one arrived. Not...

Rights and wrongs Taki T hey say that bragging about getting an election result right is on a par with boast- ing about the conquest of a lady — but they are wrong. Pundits...

Farewell to a fighter Jeffrey Bernard I n a couple of hours time I have to go to the funeral of a friend of mine, Mick Tobin, whom I wrote about here a short time ago. I have...

Save us from the Europhobes Leanda de Lisle A few days before the election a farmer from the Loughborough area told a right-wing shires MP that he thought the Conservatives...

Play boldly Andrew Robson BEING one of the world's truly great play- ers involves more than just brilliant tech- nique. Enough confidence in one's table- feel to disregard the...

I FORGET which worthy it was, if indeed I ever knew, who suggested that to get the best from British cooking one should eat breakfast three times a day, but I can cer- tainly...

IN-THE-STRAND SIMPSON'S IN-THE-STRAND Oblueterated Raymond Keene TALK of the town is Garry Kasparov's rematch against IBM's Deep Blue Mark II computer. The silicon beast,...

URA uRA 11%lt 441.0101%HW COMPETITION Bouts-rimes Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1981 you were invited to write verses with a given rhyme- scheme. The rhyme-scheme was the...

A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1991 Port for the first correct solution opened on 27 May, with two runners-up prizes of £20 (or, for UK...

Australia unfair Simon Barnes 'IN ALL this Australian team there are bare- ly one or two who would be acceptable as public school men.' That was C.B. Fry in 1938; if the...

Dear Mary. . . Q. I am an expatriate living in a beautiful Art Nouveau apartment building where I am the only English-speaker. Recently my neigh- bour modernised his apartment...