‘I nflation,’ Ronald Reagan declared, ‘is as violent as a mugger.’ In response, the world pursued zerotolerance policies for two decades, to the point at which politicians and...

London. The party season is in full swing so I dipped my toes in a couple, and what a difference between two of the most high-profile events that week. One, an exhibition of...

T he Conservatives are making about as much headway in next week’s Glasgow East by-election as they would on Mars. ‘I told one guy I was from the Conservative party,’ moans one...

CHARLES MOORE J ohn Howard, four times Prime Minister of Australia, is one of the great men of our time — direct, amusing, patriotic, moderate but tough-minded. He finally lost...

T hese things are sent to try us: I’m speaking now of circular letters from the General Medical Council. I recently received a second such letter about the Council’s Ethnicity...

let the Beijing Games commence Mark Leonard , Britain’s pre-eminent analyst of modern China, says the Olympic genie is out of the bottle. The prospect of global scrutiny has...

Lloyd Evans joins the dissident movement in a ritual exercise near the Chinese Embassy. He is unsettled to find himself understanding why China’s rulers get so paranoid about...

Whether Muslims want elements of sharia law to have the force of civil law or not (not, it is argued in last week’s Spectator ), the principle of different jurisdictional codes...

David Tang reflects on his visits to Beijing in the run-up to the Games, where Western expertise has been harnessed to the ruthless efficiency of China’s government machine A...

Cameroons’ new g uru The economist Richard Thaler — a favourite of the Cameron and Obama camps — talks to James Forsyth about the power of ‘nudging’: small transformative acts...

nobody has ever been stabbed — ever Rod Liddle imagines the hoodie at home, allegedly innocent of any wicked intent, arming himself with a Stanley knife only because of the...

Sir: Each week, Rod Liddle’s column reminds me of the little girl of whom it was written that she hiked up her skirt to show she wasn’t wearing knickers. In the absence of a...

Sir: The problem with calling the initial Islamic campaign ‘unprovoked’ (Letters, 12 July) is that many events in late antiquity — and modern times — were also unprovoked. The...

Sir: Oleg Gordievsky (Letters, 5 July) dismisses Russia’s perception of its own vulnerability as ‘communist propaganda’. In fact the anxiety borne of inhabiting a land without...

B ritain, says the poet Kate Fox, quoted on Radio 4’s Saturday Live last week, is a country ‘eternally poised between a hosepipe ban and a flood’. Or between fearsome,...

T he other evening I went to a ‘pig roast’ in our Somerset village. It was a tremendous turnout from far and wide. There is something about the idea which stirs up deep guzzling...

Judi Bevan meets Tim Parker, the controversial private-equity player who slashed jobs and boosted value at Kwik-Fit and the AA, and is about to apply his skills at City Hall T...

Elliot Wilson I t’s becoming harder and harder to believe that anyone is really in charge of the world’s largest economy. Each day brings a new catalogue of woes, miscues and...

William Leith S NOOP : W HAT Y OUR S TUFF S AYS A BOUT Y OU by Sam Gosling Profile, £15, pp. 260, ISBN 9781846680182 ✆ £12.00 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T HE C OMFORT OF T...

Dinah Roe T HE L OST L EADER by Mick Imlah Faber, £9.99, pp. 126, ISBN 9780571243075 ✆ £7.90 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 E DWIN M UIR : S ELECTED P OEMS edited by Mick Imlah...

I live on an island. But that’s not the worst part. Water sloshes uncontrollably at the edges of this entire geological formation. You can hardly go anyplace without falling...

Andrew Roberts p iuS Xii: t he h ound of h itLer by Gerard Noel Continuum, £20, pp. 256, ISBN 9781847063557 ✆ £16.00 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 V atiCan S eCret d ipLomaCY...

Lloyd Evans T XTING : T HE G R 8 D B 8 by David Crystal OUP, £9.99, pp. 239, ISBN 9780199544905 ✆ £7.90 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 W hat do you make of this texting...

Olivia Glazebrook T HE B ELLINI M ADONNA by Elizabeth Lowry Quercus, £16.99, pp. 304, ISBN9781847243645 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his is a curious book: not...

Alberto Manguel T HE S PARE R OOM by Helen Garner Canongate, £12.99, pp. 195, ISBN 9781847672650 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 M ontaigne wished for a library of...

Jonathan Keates O NE M ORNING IN S ARAJEVO by David James Smith Weidenfeld, £18.99, pp. 326, ISBN 9780297851448 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 M ugging, according to a...

James Fergusson T HE S EVEN L IVES OF J OHN MURRAY by Humphrey Carpenter, edited by Candida Brazil and James Hamilton John Murray, £25, pp. 370, ISBN 9780719565328 ✆ £20.00...

Francis King S ELECTED L ETTERS by Julian Maclaren-Ross, edited by Paul Willetts Black Spring Press, £9.95, pp. 351 ISBN 9780948238383 ✆ £7.85 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 L...

Tiffany Jenkins talks to James Cuno about looting, exporting and owning antiquities J ames Cuno is a busy man. I pin him down between two projects: promoting the new Modern Art...

Andrew Lambirth Wyndham Lewis Portraits National Portrait Gallery, until 19 October Supported by Christie’s B efore getting down to a discussion of Wyndham Lewis and an...

Mark Glazebrook Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design & Modern Life in Vienna 1900 Tate Liverpool, until 31 August A rt Nouveau, or Jugendstil as it was called in Germany, came...

Lloyd Evans Free Outgoing Royal Court Fanshen 295 Regent St Frozen Riverside T he Royal Court’s search for new scripts has gone global. Its tireless talent scouts, assisted by...

Deborah Ross WALL.E U, Nationwide W ALL.E , the latest CGI animation from Pixar in collaboration with Disney, has already been hailed as a ‘modern masterpiece’ — in America, at...

Michael Tanner The Rake’s Progress Royal Opera House I t’s easy to see the way opera Inszenierung is going. We are in for a spate of US-located productions, just as we emerge...

Kate Chisholm C hekhov, Louisa M. Alcott, Kafka and co. wrote them for money; thinking of them as a lucrative money-spinner to keep their families in bread and potatoes. Now...

Simon Hoggart I T would have been fun to be at the planning meeting for Harley Street (ITV, Thursday), the new medical drama series about a group of stunningly good-looking...

Alan Judd H ow far will the proposed road tax changes influence what we actually buy in the new car market? Not as much, perhaps, as the government likes to think. After all,...

Ursula Buchan I f your ears go back, like a frightened horse, at the word ‘conceptualism’ when applied to modern art, you may not be very pleased to know that this is a hot...

Taki Cephalonia T he sea surface is smooth and mirrorlike, and from the deck of Bushido I scan the coastline for the mother and baby porpoises who live inside a blue-green...

Jeremy Clarke I rested my chin on my hand and watched the passing scenery all the way to London. For most of the journey the sky was filled with towering black clouds and from...

Melissa Kite H ave you ever attempted to open the front door to your house by pointing your car key at it? Please say you have. I did it twice this week and what is worse it...

Janet de Botton S queezes have always been as incomprehensible to me as the off-side rule. Having tried to understand them for years I began to doubt their existence — were...

12 nights for the price of 8 with complimentary half board from £5035 £3395 The Spectator has teamed up with luxury tour operator Ultimate Retreats to offer readers a great...

Club class Julia Hollander leaves her hair shirt at the departure gate I want to tell you about my vow of celibacy. For three years I have abstained from that most compulsive...

Matthew d’Ancona ’s young sons show him a good time in Cyprus I n the end, as so often in life, it boils down to the basics. What you need is three things: a persuasive working...

Olivia Glazebrook and her husband brave the Jordanian wilderness B eing the sort of person who can throw a few things in a bag, take off at a moment’s notice and hunker down...

Peter Hoskins I t’s one of the most striking natural harbours you’ll ever see. A dramatic bay, which courses back in on itself to form an almost complete circle. The walls of...

Tremayne Carew Pole I ’ve always been envious of City boys, not for the obscene six-figure bonuses, the sharp tailoring or the cut and thrust of mergers, acquisitions and...

Paul Williams R ecently, I walked from Winchester through France to a small village near Condom in the south-west. The journey took me back to Rennes and stirred memories of my...

I was told at a very early stage in my writing career never to seek revenge on critics. If you get a poor review, you just have to take it on the chin. To write a letter of...

Although I do not smoke, I find my sympathies drawn more and more to persecuted smokers. Outside Victoria station an aggressive notice says: ‘It is against the law to smoke in...

ROGER ALTON G rass-court tennis eh? A bit boring? Just serve and volley, ace, serve and volley? Well not any more. And sometimes old-style serve-return, bish-bosh, really did...

Q. I have edited a selection of letters which is to be published later this summer. It is more than likely that, as part of the promotion process, I shall be asked to sign a...

one is often asked for a couple of letters from a password. That is fine because the people overhearing one cannot know the rest of the password. What I do mind is being asked...

and I have received a number of charming and delightful letters of thanks. Tell me, Mary: should I thank people for their thanks? Where does it stop? A. By all means express...

ago for a few pounds which is now on a small car which I keep in London. It has been a source of much amusement. It would be as ridiculous to remove it to avoid the strictures...