T he juxtaposition of the sacred and the unholy is always shocking. This week, as we attend carol services, decorate our trees and prepare for Christmas with a levity of spirit,...

TAMZIN LIGHTWATER MONDAY Now I know why they call it the unhappiness agenda. Am suicidal. I never want to have anything to do with ‘social justice’ again. I shouldn’t have even...

DAVID FURNISH L ast week, after years of the best possible intentions, I finally managed to make my virgin visit down under to sunny Sydney. With Elton fully ensconced in a...

I ain Duncan Smith must have dreamed about the moment he would stun the Blair government into silence. Derision was the government’s main response to his interventions when he...

CHARLES MOORE F or most of my life I have disliked the run-up to the British Christmas, on religious grounds. Advent is intended to be like Lent, a time of abstinence. Your...

Christmas reminds us how deeply Christian our society is and yet how quirkily tolerant of other faiths, of difference and contradiction. This, says Rod Liddle , is the historic...

While other religions — especially Islam — celebrate their resilience, writes Jonathan Clark , Christianity has become muffled by secular embarrassment and cultural confusion C...

Boris Johnson says that we should not sneer at awards ceremonies which help struggling trade publications survive financially and spread joy to those who pick up the gongs H as...

Rachel Johnson was not convinced at first by the vogue for footwear based on the physique of African tribespeople A t first I was not convinced. Not at all. As I trudged my...

Irwin Stelzer suggests an agenda for the year ahead to George Bush: stand by Iraq, stop China’s theft of intellectual property, oppose Russia’s entry to the WTO — and help Blair...

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor pays homage in this Christmas meditation to Santa Maria sopra Minerva, a glorious architectural fusion of ancient beauty and timeless faith O ne...

Last year, John Humphrys set up a trust to help small charities. A little bridge costing only a few thousand pounds, he writes, makes a greater difference than the speech of a...

The Northern Ireland Secretary has cynically put his own interests and those of Blair and Brown before the needs of Ulster and its people, writes Ruth Dudley Edwards T here are...

Hell is waiting in a call queue for a NatWest telephonist, writes Rian Malan , whose branch is still in Notting Hill. There are advantages to living in a backward country Cape...

This year’s Threadneedle/ Spectator Campaigner of the Year talks to Fraser Nelson about his bid for the Labour deputy leadership and his mission to fend off the BNP J on Cruddas...

Fergal Keane remembers Patrick Kavanagh, who died in 1967 and was a friend of his father’s. His festive verses recalled the frosted poverty and resilient joy of old rural...

David Rennie gains access to the Belgian ‘Brotherhood’ of sprout-farmers, and unravels the secrets that lie behind the cultivation and cooking of this most festive of vegetables...

JOAN COLLINS H aving toured all over the East Coast of North America for the past four and a half months, I am more than a touch jetlagged, but incredibly impressed with the...

A word hound from Leeds has sent me a basketful of unconsidered truffles. ‘Are you aware of the increasing use of the word über ,’ asks Mr Donald Adams, ‘with or without the...

PRUE LEITH T he opening scene in Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It has our heroine distressing supermarket mince pies with a rolling pin in the hope that other...

J ournalists are paid to be thought-provoking, but something very odd comes over them when they unfold their thoughts on the subject of Latin. Neal Ascherson, for example, once...

From R.F. Clements Sir: Richard Dawkins might be convinced of the existence of God (‘A man who believes in Darwin as fervently as he hates God’, December 9) by ‘a large-scale...

Sir: I believe that Rod Liddle has overlooked the most powerful weaponry of the Dawkinsian approach. A faithor beliefbased system brooks no counter-argument, no matter how...

Sir: Terror certainly seems to have worked on Melanie Phillips (‘A terror so great we forgot it at once’, 9 December). So desperate is she that we take the Islamist maniacs at...

From Janet R. Jacques Sir: It was hard for me when Gordon Brown revealed that his son Fraser had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, because my son, too, has CF; and because...

From James Young Sir: Rereading Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop recently, I noticed that William Boot’s immortal intro ‘Feather-footed through the splashy fen passes the questing vole’...

T he last time I was in Chile it was the anniversary of the accession to power of General Augusto Pinochet. I had been unaware of the holiday. My companions and I had walked...

A friend of mine recently sustained terrible injuries to his hand when his shotgun blew up. Such accidents fill me with horror, not least because they remind me how important...

‘Companies are beginning to address the risks and opportunities of climate change. We don’t have to explain why it matters any more.’ Michael Rea, Carbon Trust Director of...

Low carbon technologies are attracting more and more investment for a range of reasons. It’s a feel-good alternative to traditional investment sectors — but the low carbon case...

ideas from the laboratory to the market place.’ Tom Delay, Chief Executive, the Carbon Trust The need for new technologies to create a low carbon economy was a key theme of Sir...

commercialisation.’ Dr Garry Staunton, Head of the Carbon Trust’s Applied Research team The potential for solar power may not be obvious during Britain’s short December days,...

by Peter Ackroyd T he three of us were sitting around a table in the parlour of a small public house. The pub had an old-fashioned appearance, one of those strange survivals...

Will 2007 repeat the madness of 1987? Richard Northedge looks back on a year in which it was all too easy to separate fools from their money — and wonders whether we’re heading...

Allister Heath H ere’s a provocative thought for Christmas. Instead of buying your nearest and dearest one of those charity goat-for-Africa cards, it would make far more...

Joanna Pitman suggests some his’n’hers Christmas gifts that offer the added advantage of holding their value C hristmas is almost upon us and you still haven’t sorted out that...

Judi Bevan meets Philip Richards, who believes faith, charity and making serious money can go hand-in-hand P hilip Richards is an extreme investor. His willingness to bet...

T hink of this as a two-for-one Christmas special, a City Life column gift-wrapped inside Any Other Business. The city is Istanbul, where I am on a mission — in the steps of...

Claire Tomalin C ITY OF L AUGHTER : S EX AND S ATIRE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON by Vic Gatrell Atlantic Books, £30, pp. 697, ISBN 1843543214 ✆ £24 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429...

Philip Hensher H ANNIBAL R ISING by Thomas Harris Heinemann, £17.99, pp. 336, ISBN 0434014087 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 H annibal Lecter is, surely, a fictional...

Bevis Hillier A S T HEY S AY IN Z ANZIBAR : P ROVERBIAL W ISDOM FROM A ROUND THE W ORLD by David Crystal Collins, £17.99, pp. 717, ISBN 000721202X ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

I ’m at Washington airport on a book tour. My escort, an agreeable man whom I have encountered on several previous occasions, says farewell and then asks, ‘Are you still...

Christopher Howse T HE N ATIVITY : H ISTORY AND L EGEND by Geza Vermes Penguin, £7.99, pp. 177, ISBN 0141024462 ✆ £6.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I f you tell people there...

Marcus Berkmann T HE Y ALE B OOK OF Q UOTATIONS edited by Fred R. Shapiro Yale, £29.95, pp. 1068, ISBN 0300107986 ✆ £24 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T HE T IMES Q UOTATIONS...

Alberto Manguel S ELECTED W RITINGS by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, translated by Joel Agee University of Chicago Press, Volume I: Plays edited by Kenneth J. Northcott £22.50, pp....

As any good poem is always ending, The fence looks best when it first needs mending. Weathered, it hints it will fall to pieces One day, not yet, but the chance increases With...

William Waldegrave B REAKING THE C HAINS : T HE R OYAL N AVY ’ S W AR ON W HITE S LAVERY by Tom Pocock Chatham, £19.99, pp. 216, ISBN 1861762755 ✆ £15.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870...

Miles Kington T here is a drawing by Sempé of the Tour de France which is so brilliant that when Geoffrey Wheatcroft first saw it, he just knew he had to have it on the front...

Jane Ridley T HE L ION AND THE U NICORN by Richard Aldous Hutchinson, £20, pp. 368, ISBN 9780091799564 T HE C ORRESPONDENCE B ETWEEN M R D ISRAELI AND M RS B RYDGES W ILLIAMS ,...

William Feaver N ORMAN R OCKWELL by Richard Halpern Chicago University Press, £18.50, pp. 188, ISBN 0226314405 ✆ £14.80 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 N orman Rockwell’s the...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft W hen the library of V. S. Pritchett was sold off after his death some years ago, I bought a few books as a mark of homage, among them H. W. Fowler’s A...

Happy the jackdaws surrounded by their playmate Boisterous wind with which they wrestle and roll, Diving against it, wings closed; gripped and thrown Many ways, open-winged,...

Richard Shone T he large garden at Monk’s House, Rodmell, in Sussex, bounded on one side by the village street, and on the other by gently sloping ground towards the River...

Mississippi showed ‘how human beings behave when they are not frightened of the sack’ and so are free to develop their personalities Something similar might be said of the rural...

E very Christmas, I face the problem of choosing an official card. The National Gallery Company sends through the range of choice some time in June, when it all seems far off. I...

Andrew Lambirth At Home in Renaissance Italy V&A, until 7 January 2007 Cézanne in Britain National Gallery, until 7 January 2007 A nother major show at the V&A, this time...

Toby Young is bowing out after five years as theatre critic I n the five years that I’ve been The Spectator ’s drama critic, one of the nicest afternoons I’ve spent was in the...

Henrietta Bredin searches through some operas to help get her into a festive mood P uccini’s Bohemians really knew how to have a good time at Christmas. Huddled in a freezing...

Olivia Glazebrook recommends the best DVDs to watch over Christmas ... T here is a strange kind of amnesia that overtakes me in certain shops: bookshops, DVD shops, CD shops. I...

... while Lucy Beresford reveals what your favourite film says about you Y es, it’s that time of year again. Living rooms up and down the country will reverberate to the sound...

Michael Tanner L’Incoronazione di Poppea Royal College of Music Carmen Royal Opera House M onteverdi’s last opera, L’Incoronazione di Poppea , is an excellent choice for one of...

Lloyd Evans The Critic Pentameters Dick Whittington Barbican Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks Theatre Royal, Haymarket I t’s always puzzled me that so few theatre critics are...

Deborah Ross Esma’s Secret 15, Curzon Soho and key cities T his Bosnian film about the devastating emotional consequences of war has all the things you might expect from a...

Marcus Berkmann I have been listening a lot to David Gilmour’s album, On An Island (EMI). We must now call him David, as he is a portly gent of a certain age who will probably...

Kate Chisholm I wonder whether Tony (‘Education, education, education’) Blair or any of his cohorts in the Education Department were listening to the BBC World Service’s School...

Simon Hoggart T his being the Spectator ’s bumper Christmas issue, we asked the television companies for a few seasonal preview discs. There wasn’t much ‘ho, ho, ho!’ about any...

Robin Oakley W hile you don’t have to be a masochist to be a jump jockey it surely helps. You can expect a fall, on average, every 13 rides and it is the only profession in...

Alan Judd T he car manufacturer of the year has to be JCB. I’ve long wanted one, of course, and it’s not hard to find them in the local classifieds. What is hard, for we...

Taki New York ‘T he United States is 85 per cent Christian, which means it is more Christian than India is Hindu and Israel is Jewish. Moreover, 96 per cent of Americans...

Jeremy Clarke I t must be very dispiriting to be born into this world and find that you are an intensively reared hen. But maybe, if a representative of the human race...

Aidan Hartley Kibera Court No. 2 N ormally, I would bribe a traffic policeman, but very occasionally it feels good to hit back against the system. ‘Go ahead. Book me,’ I said....

Roy Hattersley T he bad news was broken to us by the parish magazine. Christmas Eve is a Sunday this year. So the vicar, who presides over three parishes and must spread...

Susan Boyd can’t find anything to wear this Christmas! C an I be the only woman who has a serious aversion to formal evening dress? The moment the invitation arrives I wish I...

Lindy Woodhead on the biggest thing to hit male marketing for 100 years I t doesn’t surprise me to learn that David Cameron sports a sparkling set of buffed possibly even...

Mark Palmer does his Christmas shopping at the Travelling Souk ‘I ’ve already spent £500 and I don’t even like shopping,’ says Jane Scott. ‘But I suppose that’s half the point...

Rachel Johnson attempts to play her husband at his own game A fter 15 years of pleading from husband, I finally gave in. ‘You’ve got terrific hand-eye-ball coordination,’ he...

Nick Foulkes goes to battle in Brussels V isiting battlefields is a dreary business. I remember once accompanying Clive Aslet on part of his tour of British landmarks for his...

Marcus du Sautoy , Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, has devised a set of five Christmas puzzles especially for Spectator readers. Go on — test yourself! T he...

Puzzle 1: the curious incident of the never-ending numbers There are 78 presents in total. Mathematicians are lazy at heart so we like quick ways to calculate things. So here is...

Dear Mary Once again Mary has invited some of her favourite achievers to submit personal queries for her attention. From Lord Marland Q. There are two restaurants in London...

as financial products consumer champion on a national newspaper. However, friends (whom I have not seen for a while), strangers and acquaintances of acquaintances often ring up...

I have found myself in the enviable position of being chairman of Chelsea Football Club. As you might expect, a number of politicians, rock stars, titans of business and other...

holidays with my children. I usually start panicking in early September about the Christmases when I am without them. I find it hard to be the sad guest in friends’ homes, and...

in the tabloid press as a ‘theatrical dynasty’, although visually my family puts one more in mind of a herd of buffalo. At this time of year when the family is together we are...

annoyed when, at one of my private views, someone comes up to me almost in tears saying that the painting she particularly wanted to buy has already got a red dot on it and that...

A shes to ashes. Oh, England our England! First the football, then the rugby ... and now the prettiest balloon of them all has been well and truly pricked so soon after its...