before the war on Iraq, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, had warned Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, in a 13-page letter that it was questionable whether Britain could...

G iven that most readers will have voted by the time this magazine next appears, we have no hesitation in now urging them to vote Conservative. This is no time for dwelling on...

be the same as the last. We are winning back what I call the buggy vote. That is the middleclass mums and dads pushing prams. I don’t know quite why, but I attach terrific...

N ext Thursday Tony Blair will be re-elected with a fairly generous margin of victory: not less than a 50-seat majority, but probably not much more than 100. The Tories will...

people realise. We know about the BNP already, but the growing force is Muslim extremism. The tactics are nasty. Look at the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee...

Allister Heath shows how Gordon Brown has played fast and loose with the facts to portray Britain as a dynamic economy. The truth is that the Chancellor is a tax-and-spender who...

The replacement of one Pope with another of equally firm and loudly proclaimed views on a wide range of political and social issues raises specific questions about the...

Andrew Gilligan records the goodwill that accompanied Mr Blair’s 1997 victory, and how he lost it M uch is made, not least by The Spectator , of the waste of New Labour: the...

Brussels is now responsible for half the laws passed in Britain, but our MPs don’t kick up a fuss. Anthony Browne wants to know why I f you are a Christian Aider worried that...

On 25 November 1894 in a chapel in the rue du Bac in Paris was first celebrated the feast honouring devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary through the ‘Miraculous Medal’, which...

Some Tories find the party platform too raucous; others feel that it lacks radicalism. Bruce Anderson says neither group understands the subtleties of electoral politics ‘L ook...

He was always Maggie’s favourite. She loved him. He adored her. But as in most hot romances, there was a cooling. And finally the embers died. Essex Man had found another. In...

In Hungary, says Petronella Wyatt , the euphoria that followed the collapse of the old regime has been replaced by cynicism and despair I was recently having lunch with some...

Of course Beijing is beastly, says Mark Steyn , but its strategy of economic liberalisation without political liberalisation is working nicely New Hampshire D id you see that...

From Helen Boaden Sir: Andrew Gilligan takes a characteristically certain view on what the headline describes as ‘Ricin certainties’ (23 April). Mark Easton researched the...

M ay I claim my prize? Unless I am much mistaken, and unless my internet searches have missed something, it was I who brought the expression ‘dog-whistling’ to British...

I found the Chancellor outside his local supermarket, conducting what he called a stationary walkabout. He had brought his spaniel, which canvassed the voters by licking them:...

I n his book of proverbs, Blake writes, ‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.’ That is true enough but it is not my treeproverb, which runs, ‘An artist sees trees...

Peter Oborne says New Labour has latched on to postmodernist philosophy to replace mere facts with a ‘narrative’ that serves party interests A s his premiership has persisted,...

Sam Leith N EVER H AD I T S O G OOD by Dominic Sandbrook Little, Brown, £20, pp. 824, ISBN 0316860832 ✆ £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 I f you can remember the Sixties, so...

Sandy Balfour T HE P RESTER Q UEST by Nicholas Jubber Doubleday, £14.99, pp. 516, ISBN 1385607024 ✆ £12.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 H aving read The Prester Quest almost...

Rupert Christiansen W ILLIAM E MPSON : V OLUME I: A MONG THE M ANDARINS by John Haffenden OUP, £30, pp. 692, ISBN 01992766595 ✆ £30 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 S chool...

William Rees-Mogg T HE R ISE OF P OLITICAL L YING by Peter Oborne Free Press, £7.99, pp. 317 ISBN 0743275608 T here are two views about the morality of political lying. The...

Olivia Glazebrook T HE G LASS C ASTLE by Jeannette Walls Virago, £14.99, pp. 341, ISBN 1844081818 ✆ £12.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T he Glass Castle is a memoir of an...

Neil Clark H URRAH FOR THE B LACKSHIRTS : F ASCISTS AND F ASCISM IN B RITAIN B ETWEEN THE W ARS by Martin Pugh Cape, £20, pp. 320, ISBN 0224064398 ✆ £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870...

John Mortimer T HE T RIAL : A H ISTORY FROM S OCRATES TO O. J. S IMPSON by Sadakat Kadri HarperCollins, £25, pp. 474, ISBN 0007111215 ✆ £23 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 T...

Patricia Daunt D IPLOMATIC B AGGAGE : T HE A DVENTURES OF A T RAILING S POUSE by Brigid Keenan John Murray, £14.99, pp. 292, ISBN 0719567254 ✆ £12.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800...

Caroline Moorehead T HE B OY IN E NGLAND by Naim Attallah Quartet, £12.50, pp. 217, ISBN 0704371170 T he saga of Naim Attallah and his writing career continues. For readers who...

Richard Kirwan on the idiosyncrasies of the art college interview I t should come as no surprise to learn that the World of Art, with all its attendant satellites and moons, is...

Andrew Lambirth Peter Coker RA (1926–2004) Piano Nobile Fine Paintings, 129 Portland Road, W11 (Tel: 020 7229 1099), until 7 May P eter Coker died in December last year after a...

Tom Rosenthal Jean Hélion Picasso Museum, Barcelona, until 19 June Paris and the Surrealists Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, until 22 May; at the Museo de Bellas...

Robin Holloway T he God of Small Things has enjoyed a fulltime month. The human propensity to gather, hoard, tabulate, display goes all the way from stamp collecting,...

Toby Young Julius Caesar Barbican My Name Is Rachel Corrie Royal Court Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me New Ambassadors I t’s quite hard to enjoy Shakespeare’s history plays these...

Giannandrea Poesio Ondine Royal Opera House Sylvie Guillem and the Ballet Boyz Sadler’s Wells Theatre I am perfectly aware that what I am about to say will upset several...

Michael Tanner Lulu Coliseum E NO’s production of Berg’s Lulu, first mounted three years ago, is one of its outstanding successes. Richard Jones, the director, seems to feel a...

Mark Steyn T he Mills family, according to David Thomson, has ‘crowded us out with insipid, tennis-club talent’, which is a cruel verdict, but hard to disagree with. When the...

Michael Vestey H ow many times do we groan, I wonder, when at eight o’clock in the morning we hear Today presenters announce the names of the politicians they’ll be...

Simon Hoggart G enghis Khan (BBC1, Monday) was a remarkable 60-minute documentary. Normally, something filmed on such a massive scale would be stretched to last several hours...

Robin Oakley H umphrey Bogart once complained that the trouble with the world was that ‘everybody in it is three drinks behind’. He would have liked the three Irishmen ahead of...

Taki New York H appiness is a German pope succeeding the greatest pope ever, a Pole. Not everyone agrees with me. Blogger Andrew Sullivan, a Brit expatriate and gay-rights...

Jeremy Clarke S un streaming in through the open door. Barman hunched over the counter, absorbing the racing pages. Jeremy Vine on the radio. I’m standing at the bar, the only...

FRANK KEATING O bligatory at election time are party leaders compelled to treat voters as dolts by declaiming lifelong devotion to the people’s game. In 1997 Mr Blair made a...

foreigners, would they by any chance be Greek? Married for 20 years to a Greek, I am aware that no convention attaches at all to what we consider to be good manners. Calls will...

dealt with an important problem, particularly to those of us who enjoy the doubtful privilege of using the Kent trains, which are regularly marked by the local pond life who...

an 80-year-old friend who very much wants to meet some neighbours of mine who are writers but very politically correct. My friend, however, has never brought himself up to date...