As Spectator readers would have expected, this magazine was an early and enthusiastic backer of Boris Johnson as the next Mayor of London. On 4 July we gave him our official...

DAPHNE GUINNESS Imiss Issie. I am waiting outside in the Orangerie in the Parc de St-Cloud, in Paris, where the Chanel show is about to begin. The incessant driving rain, the...

Ivhen ministerial limousines line Great Smith Street in Westminster it is normally a sign that the Cinnamon Club is doing brisk trade. This upmarket Indian restaurant has become...

By Tamzin Lightwater MONDAY What a day! Just back from Service of Thanksgiving in the All-Faiths-And-None Prayer Room. Jed read an excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt's inaugural...

Toby Young, our campaign correspondent, says that the candidate's prospects in the London mayoral election hinge on his appeal as a great communicator, and on the hysteria of...

Stanley Johnson says that his son is no buffoon, that his ability to make people laugh doesn't mean he's a lightweight, and that he should not get bogged down in 'consultation'...

Clemency Burton-Hill talks to the British director Stephen Frears and hears his strong views on the film industry in this country which, he says, barely exists now For somebody...

THEODORE DALRYMPLE public affairs vex no man, said 1 Doctor Johnson, and I know what he meant. He, however, did not live as we do in an age of information in which, without...

Tony Blair was one of many Western leaders duped by President Putin, writes James Forsyth, but the new British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary must stand their ground when...

Sarah Churchwell says the romantic comedies of the 1930s have more glamour, wit and sexual equality than the smashhit television series now destined for the silver screen you...

Rod Liddle says that the opprobrium being heaped upon the the controversial doctor reflects the monomaniacal, fundamentalist face of science Dr Andrew Wakefield, if he is still...

Sir: The only pertinent fact from Fraser Nelson's anti-Russia diatribe last week is that the country's defence budget is 5 per cent that of America's. (The New Cold War, 14...

Sir: As an ex-soldier, I have to say Brigadier Maxwell is barking mad if he believes that the reintroduction of National Service will address the problem of today's feral youth...

Sir: Paul Johnson seems unaware that for centuries cavalry troopers around the world knew how to sleep on horseback and often had to do so. He even casts doubt on the 'leathery...

Sir: More British prime ministers have died in office than Paul Johnson can recall 'offhand' (14 July). Most spectacularly, Spencer Perceval was assassinated in 1812 in the...

Sir: Regarding the article on Argentina by Jonathan Davis (The Spectator, 7 July), please note that the country's southernmost province is Tierra del Fuego, and not Santa Cruz....

Sir: Drew Westen is simply talking about the art of rhetoric (Stop Making Sense, 14 July). The ancients taught it two millennia back. Donald Last Via email

Road congestion and casualty waiting times are explained by my Rut Theory of Queueing Afriend twisted his knee badly playing football last week. In considerable pain next...

PAUL JOHNSON The wet weather this summer has made me think about umbrellas, and the curious moral associations they attract. It is not so in the Orient, where they were invented...

Jules Evans meets the billionaire Russian banker Alexander Lebedev, who learnt about international finance as a Soviet spy in London and now dares to criticise the Kremlin 1 t's...

Merryn Somerset Webb Morgan Stanley has just hosted its first 'early access' event for young women: 75 girls from 15 top schools were taken on a tour of the trading floor (I bet...

Peace would be a better business plan for the island of a hundred ministers ERIC ELLIS IN COLOMBO Flying into Colombo's civil war on tourist-less Sri Lankan Airlines, my eye was...

Philip Hensher THE LETTERS OF JOHN MURRAY TO LORD BYRON edited by Andrew Nicholson Liveipool University Press, £25, pp. 608, ISBN 9781846310695 © £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429...

Noble Frankland FATEFUL CHOICES: TEN DECISIONS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD 1940-41 by Ian Kershaw Allen Lane, £30, pp. 656, ISBN 9780713997125 £24 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655...

Robert Stewart THE FEARS OF HENRY IV: THE LIFE OF ENGLAND'S SELF-MADE KING by Ian Mortimer Cape, £18.99, pp. 478, ISBN 9780224073004 £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Henry...

Jane Rye ROGER HILTON: THE FIGURED LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT by Andrew Lambirth Thames & Hudson, £35, pp. 288, ISBN 9780500093344 © £28 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 G‘ lye me the...

Edward Skidelsky BLACK MASS by John Gray Allen Lane, £18.99, pp. 242, ISBN 9780713999150 © £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 qjohn Gray's latest work brings together many...

Anita Brookner CHEATING AT CANASTA by William Trevor Penguin/Viking, £16.99, pp. 231, ISBN 9780670917266 £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Connoisseurs of the short story...

Peter Oborne THE BLAIR YEARS: EXTRACTS FROM THE ALASTAIR CAMPBELL DIARIES by Alastair Campbell Hutchinson, £25, pp. 816, ISBN 9780091796297 £20(plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 For...

Everyone, I suppose, now knows that Gordon Brown was the first student rector of Edinburgh University. Though based on Continental models, the rectorship is a peculiarly...

11. The word 'virtuoso' is often bandied about. Stephen Pettitt explains what it means to him Serious music critics — and I do not except myself from the breed — have many...

Andrew Lambirth Hockney on Turner Watercolours Tate Britain, until 3 Feb/vary 2008 Annely Juda – A Celebration Annely Juda Fine Art, 23 Doing Street, Wl, until 28 July If you...

Giannandrea Poesio rr he summer ballet season in London, with the traditional arrival of illustrious foreign guests, has a well-established historical tradition. It was during...

Bach wins through Michael Tanner St Matthew Passion Glyndeboume Rigoletto Royal Opera House Bach's St Matthew Passion doesn't seem an obvious `Glyndebourne opera', except from...

Deborah Ross Hairspray PG, Nationwide This film is fun. It is fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. It might be the most fun you can have with your clothes on or, if you have been married a...

Lloyd Evans Glass Eels Hampstead Love's Labour's Lost Globe Saint Joan Olivier Squelchy trotters up in Hampstead. Nell Leyshon's new play is set on a Somerset flood plain where...

Kate Chisholm -pack in the US in the Fifties, just as LI atomic fear was gripping the American nation and the McCarthyite witch hunts were at their most vicious, a rather...

Simon Hoggart rr hese are difficult times for the BBC. The fine for the Blue Peter phone-in fraud was, in its way, as big a shock as the famous vandalising of its garden. The...

Taki On board S IY Bushido Tast Friday the 13th was not a good-news day. I was in Ibiza, sailing around, when the papers were brought in and I read about the death of my old and...

Robin Oakley Keeping thin enough to star in your sixties comes hard, and the recently sadly deceased George Melly once inquired of Mick Jagger why the rock supremo's face was so...

Jeremy Clarke One of the main drawbacks to living on the south Devon coast is the number of drivers on the road who are over 80. I'm not saying they shouldn't be there. I just...

Roy Hattersley Ispent much of my early boyhood in a disused cemetery — a Gothic beginning to my adolescence which was the result of nothing more romantic than the fact that only...

Dear Diary Bryan Forbes says that journals are revealing — about their writers Iv hat compels people to keep a journal? Is it because conceit persuades them that posterity must...

The rein in Spain Samantha Weinberg goes riding through Andalucia For a week this spring I swapped my husband for a horse named JB. It seemed like a fair trade: I can't imagine...

1.7j SOU] Dear Maly Q. I have booked a seaside house in Devon for a week in August — largely for the benefit of our 15-year-old son who refuses to get on with inviting a couple...

Gale-force golf FRANK KEATING ‘H ere is the weekend weather forecast, beginning with Scotland — severe gale-force sou'easterlies raging off the Firth of Tay, not moderating...