things are difficult is precisely not to cut and run,' Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said at a press conference during a visit to Turkey. 'We have the will, we have the...

A mid the mayhem in Baghdad this week, it would be easy to overlook a significant development towards international peace and security. It came in a letter from Pascal Lamy, EU...

idea for a blockbuster movie to Sam Goldwyn Junior. It was 12 noon, at the Majestic Hotel. I picked up my briefcase and strode past the upturned packet of Paprika Pringles on...

T he last time I wrote about the deranged, unEnglish and pres byterian socialism which Gordon Brown longs to inflict upon us, I had a letter from a doctor, He said my piece was...

service for the tenth anniversary of John Smith's death in Iona. Not only could he have tagged along with John Prescott and Gordon Brown to the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, thus...

hands off Tony Peter Oborne reveals that an operation has been launched within the White House to protect the President's most important ally, and that the Tories are under...

Sir Crispin Tickell tells Mary Wakefield that George Bush's 'illegal' war has brought shame on us all I 'm on the telephone, talking to the editor of this magazine, trawling for...

Chosen by Peter Jones P. and B. Johnson were your favourite choices of author to translate, with P. Wyatt pressing them hard. The verse offerings were of a uniformly superb...

James Delingpole gives both barrels to the 'pea-brained' isolationists who fill the papers — even The Spectator — with their defeatist snivelling A nyone who has ever smoked...

Lucius Cary says that he once experienced an almost perfect market: as a boy playing marbles at the Dragon School A perfect market is a utopian ideal of economists. In such a...

Damian Thompson is sickened by the Archbishop of Canterbury's decision to withdraw as patron of a charity that studies cults T he following people could be found hovering over...

Douglas Hurd believes there are better, more sober conservative approaches to foreign policy than interventionism A lively conference, a stately home looking out on acres of...

Last week, we observed ancient attitudes to wanting to live for ever. Being against it, the ancients developed many ways of dealing with death. Since there were no scriptures...

Hywel Williams says that however much the Welsh may bang on about their proud history, they live in 1945 and many are terminally dependent on the government F rom Moses to...

'High street stalwart Marks & Spencer is preparing to go head-to-head with the likes of Topshop,' said a news report the other day. Never mind 'going head-tohead', a metaphor...

T he sacking of Piers Morgan as editor of the Daily Mirror has been greeted with ululation from media commentators, former and existing editors and several newspapers. Piers, we...

I never understood why Robert Maxwell bothered to steal from his pension funds. There were so many perfectly legal ways to extract money from them, and since they were thought...

- 1 I ast Sunday I collected a waistcoat made from my own pet. From the same source came a hat, gloves, scarf, and a teddy bear wearing a little waistcoat of its own, though...

M r Woodhouse was wont to say, 'An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome', adding in compliments to his cook, a much-tried, patient and sensible woman, 'Serie understands...

From Nikki Ginsberg Sir: Following Emma Williams's article on the Israeli 'wall' (Trapped behind the wall', 15 May), it's time to talk facts, not fiction. The security fence is...

From Frederick Forsyth Sir: The investigations to check out the truth, if any, behind the cruelty accusations against British troops in Iraq continue (Politics, 15 May), and...

From Caroline Kirk Sir: Dr Theodore Dalrymple obviously works in a prison which holds some pretty nasty people (Second opinion, 15 May). But do nasty people deserve to die? I am...

From Derek Tonkin Sir: In 'Burma Jungle' (15 May) John Bercow and Caroline Cox provide a harrowing account of human-rights abuses against the non-Burman national groups in...

From Michael Rice Sir: Your indefatigable correspondent from the ancient world, Peter Jones, has got Gilgamesh slightly wrong (15 May). The king did not go 'down to the...

From Sir Peregrine Worsthome Sir: Robert Salisbury, in one respect, has taken hold, with a characteristically firm grip, of the wrong end of the stick (Books, 15 May). No, I am...

From Jeremy Deedes Sir: What is to be done about the quite ludicrous mark-ups which many London restaurants are applying to the price of their wines? Multiples of four, five or...

Sam Leith EM. THE LIFE OF FREDERICK MATTHIAS ALEXANDER by Michael Bloch Little, Brown, f12.99, pp. 276, ISBN 0316728640 C ornflakes!' my friend's grandmother used to bark at...

John Martin Robinson BURKE'S PEERAGE, BARONETAGE AND KNIGHTAGE, CLAN CHIEFS AND SCOTTISH FEUDAL BARONS edited by Charles Mosley Burke's Peerage / Boydell & Brewer, P.O. Box 9,...

P. J. Kavanagh STEPHEN POTTER AT THE BBC by Julian Potter Orford Books, Orford, Suffolk IP 122 NR, Tel: 01394 450392, £20, pp.221, ISBN 0954665309 S tephen Potter, author,...

John de Falbe SHADE by Neil Jordan John Murray, £16.99, pp. 317, ISBN 0179561868 A review copy of Shade comes with two pages of admonitory blurb about what an important...

'You swine, you bastard, upstart, shit and fake, A seedy conman, always on the make.' Will that be all?' I asked. 'No, silly fart, A thief as well, because you stole my...

James Buchan FROM BABEL TO DRAGOMANS by Bernard Lewis Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 438, ISBN 0297848844 N ow in his late eighties, Bernard Lewis is one of the last representatives of a...

Harry Mount PEMBROKESHIRE by Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield Yale. £29.95, pp. 549, ISBN 0300101783 F or snoopers who like doing 'sweepers' — walking...

know we didn't know: At least, I didn't. You, you might have known You didn't know. Let's say that might be so. You knew, with wisdom granted you alone, You didn't know. You...

Evelyn FitzHerbert KING ZOG, SELF-MADE MONARCH OF ALBANIA by Jason Tomes Sutton, £20, pp. 312, ISBN 0750930772 gir ason Tomes' excellent book charts the rise and fall of...

Peregrine Worsthorne THE GUARDSMEN by Simon Ball HarperCollins, 125, pp. 456, ISBN 0224071769 I read every page, every line of this very long book with sustained interest and...

Francis King EURYDICE STREET: A PLACE IN ATHENS by Sofa Zinovieff Granta, Li 4.99, pp. 276, ISBN 13579108642 I n the summer of 2001 Sofka Zinovieff accompanied her husband,...

Sandy Balfour THOMAS MORE'S MAGICIAN by Toby Green Weidenfekl, £20, pp. 340, ISBN 0297829882 T he author of a weighty tome on a 16th-century attempt to create a Utopia in...

Ian Garrick Mason THE ANATOMY OF FASCISM by Robert 0. Paxton Allen Lane, £20, pp. 321, ISBN 0713997206 A fter defeating two fascist powers in a world war, the citizens of the...

Michael Howard THE LITTLE FIELD-MARSHAL: THE LIFE OF SIR JOHN FRENCH by Richard Holmes Weidenfeld, .08.99, pp. 427, ISBN 0297846140 R ichard Holmes wrote this book 20 years ago...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT by Roy Jenkins Macmillan, £15.99, pp. 176, ISBN 1405046325 THAT MAN: AN INSIDER'S PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT by Robert H....

France gave back artefacts looted by Napoleon. So what's different today? asks Martin Gayford C ive us back our marbles' G is the cry. Passionate demands are made for the return...

Andrew Lambirth O ver in Notting Hill, at England & Co., 216 Westbourne Grove, W11 (until 12 June), is a fascinating retrospective of that underrated painter Albert Herbert...

Mark Glazebrook W hen out of a job with a title, and freelancing as exhibition organiser, lecturer, writer and painter, I was introduced at a London party some 30 years ago as...

Susan Moore A $100 million Picasso casts a surprisrAingly long shadow. Before the sale of 'Garcon a la Pipe (le jeune apprenti)' at Sotheby's New York on 5 May for a...

John Spurling William Pye at Roche Court New Art Centre Sculpture Park, East Winters/ow, Nr Salisbury, until 5 September S culptors and plumbers make a good team, as the...

Laura Gascoigne Shani Rhys James: The Black Cot Aberystwyth Arts Centre, until 22 May L ast year, after Shani Rhys James won the Jerwood Painting Prize, I showed examples of...

Mark Amory Bad Education 15, selected cinemas T here are several unpromising factors in the making of Bad Education. The director has described it as autobiographical, and it...

Michael Tanner II Trovatore Royal Opera House Maria de Buenos Aires Norwich Francesca da Rimini; I Pagliacci Opera North, Leeds ry the six operas I have been to see this...

Patrick Smith A s the Metropolitan Opera season wound down with a series of performances of the Wagner Ring cycle in its celebrated 'traditional' setting — which will...

Lloyd Evans Rattle of a Simple Man Comedy Suddenly Last Summer Albety The Lodger Pentameters I 've been to one-act plays that were one act too long, but Rattle of a Simple Man...

Michael Vestey T o mark the 25th anniversary of 1 Margaret Thatcher's first election victory in 1979, Radio Two broadcast the start of a series of three programmes, Maggie's...

Simon Hoggart T hadn't watched the Eurovision Song 1 Contest (BBC1) since that unforgettable night of 3 May 1997, when Katrina and the Waves's landslide victory with 'Love...

Robin Oakley C he is not,' says the man who has most to do with her, 'a difficult woman.' She will before long be a millionairess many times over. She is about as near physical...

Taki Tulum, Mexico T he Riviera Maya begins south of Cancun, a poor, honky-tonk Mexican resort on the eastern, or Caribbean part of the Gulf of Mexico. It is a coastal corridor...

Jeremy Clarke S unday afternoon and my 14-year-old boy is over for the day. He's indoors on my computer, surfing the Net. Currently his favourite site is eBay, the Internet...

Petronella Wyatt Door Marks & Spencer. It has found itself in the same position as our Prime Minister. Tony Blair. It can do nothing right. Everyone attacks it for slavishly...

It starts on Saturday evening, when we try to eat at The House in Islington, a gastropub which won Time Out Gastropub of the year last year and which I fancy because I pass it...

FRANK KEATING 1 t is the weekend which once cheered winter's muddied oafs off on their summer hols. Some hope these days! Cup finals at soccer and rugby are now simply tasters...

barbies in the garden late at night. The last time ours had one my husband went over and told them the noise was absolutely fine by us, but there was a lunatic on crack in the...

chatting at the breakfast table during grand house parties? My husband is convinced that, on the grounds that most of the fellow guests will be hungover or grumpy, it is bad...

to you in May 1999 about a couple who, without so much as a word, brought their dog to stay, causing predictable disruption to both hosts and hosts' pets. Unless I am mistaken...