attempted to rush through Parliament legislation to put people suspected of terrorism under house arrest without trial. Mr Michael McDowell, the Irish justice minister, said...

I f you want an answer to the tricky question of whether it is right for the Queen to boycott her son’s wedding, turn to that leading constitutional expert, Max Clifford: ‘Of...

we spent there recently proved that. It’s a 24–7 town, unbelievably glamorous and exciting if you ignore the massively upholstered ‘middle’ Americans clad in uniform jeans and...

S hortly before Christmas last year I went off to write a book about a malign modern trend, the rise of political lying. Regrettably, during the two months I have been absent,...

I was half-delighted, half-bewildered. Delighted because it was a gigantic show of defiance and the large number of foxes killed proved the absurdity of the ban. Bewildered...

Douglas Hurd urges politicians to stop giving in to the media, and especially to the culture of brutality, fear and sentimentality epitomised by the Daily Mail I t is 7 a.m. and...

Dean Godson on the widening repercussions of the Sinn Fein/IRA bank robbery Dublin I s Sinn Fein/IRA becoming the Hezbollah of Ireland — a state within a state? Just a matter...

Martin Vander Weyer interviews the former phone chief Sir Christopher Gent, who wants to bring free-market solutions to the public services M any years ago, Chris Gent tried to...

Andrew Gilligan on Britain’s financial motives for breaking with Washington and lifting the arms embargo on Beijing M ass slaughter, or something like it, is under way in the...

‘Chalk’n’cheese, hole in one, salt’n’pepper, three-in-one oil, sheep’n’goats, eyeless in Gaza, Swan’n’Edgar,’ said my husband, not pausing for breath, so that nature took over,...

Leo McKinstry on the scandal of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, whereby parents are paid to bring up their children badly A part from the weather, the food and the...

James Howard-Johnston says that the old system of one-on-one instruction is the best way to hone the minds of both students and dons T here was a time when The Spectator...

With US-Russia tensions at a level not seen since the Cold War, Simon Heffer explains the Kremlin’s relationship with Damascus A t about the time that he was re-elected to the...

From Sheridan Morley Sir: ‘Attention must be paid’ to Arthur Miller (Mark Steyn, ‘Death of a salesman’, 19 February) quite simply because he was the greatest dramatist of our...

From Anthony Famularo Sir: I was relieved to discover that the ‘Goodbye England’ on the cover of your 19 February issue does not, in fact, refer to alQa’eda detonating a...

From Deborah Maccoby Sir: Rod Liddle claims that Labour politicians are deliberately offending Jews in order to curry favour with Muslims (‘Why Labour does not need the Jews’,...

From Patrick Wye Sir: On the day I read Rod Liddle’s splendid article on the folly of writing off Third World debt (‘Make naivety history’, 12 February), the Financial Times...

From Martin B. Vallance Sir: Michael Henderson (‘Time to rescue BBC English’, 12 February) looks to the director-general of the BBC for help. One of Mark Thompson’s first...

From Sophie Dugdale Sir: In case any of your readers are bursting with curiosity to know which greyhound won the final Waterloo Cup (Peter Oborne, ‘The dogs have had their...

A nyone interested in how politics affects the wider world, and vice versa, should read in Hansard not Commons exchanges on, say, the economy or foreign affairs, but on...

W hen I was last in the Elysée Palace, with a troop of bankers, we were given a speech of welcome from Jacques Chirac and the opportunity to taste French regional wines. This...

I seldom set foot on the South Bank if I can help it. Once across the River Thames, civilisation ceases and you are in the regions of urban swamps with motorised alligators...

Philip Hensher N EVER L ET M E G O by Kazuo Ishiguro Faber, £16.99, pp. 272, ISBN 0571224113 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T he time is the late 1990s; the setting a...

Jonathan Sumption COLLAPSE: H OW S OCIETIES C HOOSE TO F AIL OR S URVIVE by Jared Diamond Allen Lane/ Penguin, £20, pp. 575, ISBN 0713992867X V £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800...

P. N. Furbank T HE B OOK OF T EN N IGHTS AND A N IGHT by John Barth Atlantic Books, £16.99, pp. 295, ISBN 1843544067 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T he story that...

Caroline Moorehead N ATURE C URE by Richard Mabey Chatto, £15.99, pp. 231, ISBN 0701176016 ✆ £13.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 I t was soon after he finished work on Flora...

Jane Ridley T HE K NIFE M AN by Wendy Moore Bantam, £18.99, pp. 482, ISBN 0593052099 ✆ £16.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 I n 1767, John Hunter, a 39-year-old surgeon,...

Joanna Kavenna T HEATRE OF F ISH by John Gimlette Hutchinson, £16.99, pp. 367, ISBN0091795192 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 J ohn Gimlette is a writer of vivid...

Ferdinand Mount C AMPO S ANTO by W. G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell Hamish Hamilton, £16.99, pp. 228, ISBN 0241142776 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 A t the end...

Gilbert Adair S HEPPERTON B ABYLON by Matthew Sweet Faber, £12.99, pp. 388, ISBN 0571212972 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 I f you recall, Britain elected to celebrate...

Robert Stewart O SKAR S CHINDLER by David M. Crowe Westview Press/ Perseus, £19.99, pp. 766, ISBN 081333375 ✆ £19.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 M ost biographies are...

Andrew Lambirth on a glorious Caravaggio exhibition at the National Gallery M ichelangelo Merisi (1571–1610), called are temperamentally drawn to the sketchy and incomplete....

has become something of a mythical figure in the half-century or so since his reputation was rescued from obscurity. Today he is celebrated as the great precursor of realism,...

Tom Rosenthal Wyndham Lewis Olympia, from 1–6 March I t will be interesting to see if next week’s full-scale Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) exhibition at Olympia will help, as...

Mark Steyn Hotel Rwanda 12A, selected cinemas L ast year, to mark the tenth anniversary of the previous decade’s ‘never again’ genocide, the editors of the Economist asked,...

Robin Holloway A t this time of year, your critic is bound to his armchair and can sometimes get no further than to switch on his radio for every Saturday evening’s live...

Michael Tanner La Traviata; Wozzeck Welsh National Opera The Barber of Seville English National Opera Die Zauberflöte Royal Opera A t last, at the age of nearly 60, Welsh...

Toby Young Tynan Arts A Dream Play Cottesloe Ying Tong New Ambassadors T owards the end of his Diaries , Kenneth Tynan complains that the older he gets, the more estranged he...

Giannandrea Poesio Tanztheater Wuppertal: Palermo Palermo Sadler’s Wells Theatre La Fille Mal Gardée Royal Ballet/BBC2 A s I said last week, Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater is made...

Michael Vestey W hen I worked at the BBC in Portland Place, a few of my colleagues liked to gravitate to the gloom of basement bars nearby to drink their way lugubriously...

James Delingpole C an I tell you about my latest adventures? Oh, can I? Can I? OK, well I’ve been making a TV documentary for Channel 4 and, en route, I met the greatest...

Simon Courtauld I f America can be associated with one shellfish more than any other, it must surely be the clam. I know that New England is supposedly the home of the...

Taki Gstaad I ’ve been wondering how people like Tony Blair, Michael Howard and assorted busybodies would react if some concentration-camp guard sued Ken Livingstone for...

Jeremy Clarke A bove a door frame in one of the galleries at the Courtauld Collection hangs a large and hideous African tribal mask that used to belong to the artist Roger Fry....

Robert Parker, the critic whose ratings out of 100 increasingly dominate the world trade. A 91 from Parker can make a wine-grower rich; a 77 might leave him destitute. But there...

a student loan in order to have her teeth whitened. It is not the borrowing of money I object to so much as the fact that her own teeth are not in any way discoloured. Please...

that all the time I have not spent riding to hounds has been life wasted. I have no money, hunting has just been banned and my wife does not want me to become paraplegic. What...

various correspondents’ suggestions as to what to wear at fancy dress parties? I remember back in the early 1960s bumping into Vyvyan Holland, Oscar Wilde’s son, at a fancy...

FRANK KEATING T he opening two weekends of rugby’s Six Nations championship were listlessly lacking in panache or brio. England and France have been generally dire,...