The best passage in President Bush's penultimate State of the Union address on Tuesday was an admission of the transience of his own administration and of the newly composed...

BORIS JOHNSON 1 t is one of the great mysteries of modern geopolitics. How the hell has Condoleezza Rice got away with it for so long? There she is, Secretary of State of the...

FRASER NELSON Just after the 2001 election, the triumphant Tony Blair had a plan: he would split the Home Office in two. The PM had been appalled by its performance in New...

CHARLES MOORE How can a single state school defend itself in court? The question arises because of the 14-year-old Muslim pupil at Wycombe High School who has been forbidden by...

By Tamzin Lightwater MONDAY The scariest thing was waiting for us in the meeting room this morning. It was a huge projected figure on the wall with the head of Shilpa Shetty and...

James Forsyth says that the mighty race between the two Senators — the first serious black contender against the first serious female contender — will be the main event, as the...

Michael Cove says that the broad Left has spawned an unexpected but welcome gang of writers who see Islamofascism for what it is and are not blinded by anti-Americanism The...

Andrew Adonis tells Fraser Nelson that his plans to give state schools greater independence must be pursued with total determination — by a Conservative government if necessary...

Rod Liddle observes a beautiful microcosm of British society on Branscombe beach, as slavering chavs and media monkeys make the most of a shipwreck Sidmouth, Devon The plaque at...

Aidan Hartley says that America's heavy-handed campaign to hunt down Africa's Islamists has driven this country into the arms of the extremists and may yet lead to bloody...

Clemency Burton-Hill says that the new Leonardo DiCaprio movie will ignite fresh controversy over the diamond industry and its impact on poverty-stricken Africa Diamonds are a...

From Sir Peregrine Worsthome Sir: Fraser Nelson is quite right to question David Cameron about 'social responsibility' (Politics, 20 January), and I would appreciate a chance to...

From Sonya Gale Sir: As a Classics teacher in a state school, I read Andrew Nash's description of state education (Letters, 20 January) with some amusement. The 'reduced...

From Malcolm Pearson and David Willoughby de Broke Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator's Notes, 20 January) can't understand how our conversion to the UK Independence Party 'helps...

From Dr Richard Lamerton Sir: Dr Andrew Lawson's letter of 13 January misses the point. It is not people who are terminally ill and imminently dying who are causing increasing...

From Professor Geoffrey Sampson Sir: 'Buying spectrum' does sound odd when first encountered, but the usage was standard before the Ofcom report which Dot Wordsworth complains...

HUGO RIFKIND There is Guy Fawkes, of course, and those annual photogenic exuberances they have somewhere in Sussex, but in the UK political protest rarely employs the device of...

PAUL JOHNSON ne of the reasons I believe the New Testament and regard it as an accurate record of those strange events nearly two millennia ago is its little touches of...

Stephen Vines profiles Jardine Matheson, the trading group that has shrugged off upheaval in Hong Kong and shareholder unrest — but still has dynastic issues to address The...

Allister Heath It was Ronald Reagan who warned that 'inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man'. Having just worked out...

RICHARD ORANGE IN BANGALORE his is a celebration of the nerd in each of us,' declared Partha, the pony-tailed cofounder of Mindtree, an information technology consulting firm,...

Ferdinand Mount EDITH WHARTON by Hermione Lee Chatto, £25, pp. 854, ISBN 9780701166656 © £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 There is no getting away from it, Edith Wharton was...

P. J. Kavanagh COLLECTED POEMS: LOUIS MACNEICE edited by Peter McDonald Faber, £30, pp. 836, ISBN 9780571215744 This careful new Collected arrives just in time; my own 1963...

Jonathan Sumption THE SENSES IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND by C. M. Woolgar Yale, £25, pp. 372, ISBN 0300118716 © £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 n the opening page of The Waning...

Philip Womack THE GLASS BOOKS OF THE DREAM EATERS by G. W. Dalquist Viking, £16.99, pp. 753, ISBN 9780670916474 © £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Ireally wanted to like...

Jane Ridley THE LAST PRINCESS: THE DEVOTED LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER by Matthew Dennison Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 302, ISBN 9780297847946 © £16 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

David Crane HELLFIRE AND HERRING: A CHILDHOOD REMEMBERED by Christopher Rush Profile, £15.99, pp. 308, ISBN 101861979177 £12.79 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 1 t would be hard...

M. R. D. Foot AGENT ZIGZAG: THE TRUE WARTIME STORY OF EDDIE CHAPMAN, LOVER, BETRAYER, HERO, SPY by Ben Macintyre Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 374, ISBN 9780747587541 © £11.99 (plus...

Robert Gore-Langton looks forward to a revival of The Entertainer, which opened 50 years ago Fifty years ago, the Royal Court theatre detonated its second Hbomb. The first had...

Andrew Lambirth WE the moderns Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, until 18 March When Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in 1915 while fighting for the French, he was only 24. It's hard to...

Deborah Ross The Fountain 12a, Nationwide (but don't bother) This week I meant to see Peter O'Toole in Venus, which is said to be really good, but I messed up the screening...

Petherbridge Alone with Soane is an experience not to be missed: a miniretrospective of Deanna Petherbridge's drawings in Sir John Soane's country villa, Pitzhanger ManorHouse...

Giannandrea Poesio Napoli Divertissements/La Sylphide Royal Ballet Swan Lake BBC1 Johan Kobborg's staging of La Sylphide is one of the Royal Ballet's super hits. It is thus a...

Lloyd Evans Antony and Cleopatra Novello Bash: Latterday Plays Trafalgar Studio Uunny isn't it. Twenty years ago everyone was saying that Branagh was the new Olivier, but he's...

James Delingpole In the last ten years there has been (a) an alarming rise (b) a slight but significant rise or (c) no statistically significant change in global mean...

Kate Chisholm The strains of 'Danny Boy' echoed round the living room on Sunday night and suddenly I was back in the north London vicarage where I grew up, crouched over the gas...

Alan Judd Chugging up the drive to a friend's shoot in the ancient Land Rover, the first two guns I saw were men of about six feet seven. My immediate thought was that all the...

Taki Style is the most abused word in the English language. It is usually attributed to fashionable people by those not in the know. Style, however, is an elusive quality, and...

Jeremy Clarke Las Alpujan-as When I was in Spain at Christmas, I bumped into the guide who had led the walking tour of the Sierra Nevada that I'd been on nearly a decade ago. I...

Aidan Hartley Laikipia ur farmhouse is at the finishing stage and Wachira, the electrician from Large Power and Control, is advising me on aesthetics. 'A spotlight in the garden...

Nick Foulkes says that velvet slippers are the new trainers impeccably tailored Italian of my acquaintance told me the most remarkable piece of news: Flavio Briatore had been...

Rebecca Tyrrel says everyone in BA is on the couch, but no one gets any rest Ive arrived in Buenos Aires, my son and I, on the day of a smallish demonstration in the Plaza de...

Dear Maly Q. Unlike your correspondent J.G. of Bath, I received a prompt and fulsome letter from my 15-year-old godson thanking me for the money I had sent him at Christmas....

FRANK KEATING predicting last week's raging gales would subside in time for the Saturday football programme, a BBC weatherman forecast, nicely I thought, 'a weatherfree sports...