‘W e have no plans not to implement our budget’: the double negative employed by Phil Woolas, the Environment Minister, on Tuesday’s Newsnight , and the familiar ‘no...

my stock has recently expanded to include a Romanian tramp. I discovered him sleeping on my doorstep after returning to collect a laptop charger I’d left behind. As it was...

I t is time for Gordon Brown to start contemplating leaving Downing Street. But he should only set a date well into the next decade. To get there he needs to consider now how he...

here stands a cross rising from a mound of cobbles. On each of the four sides of the mound is set a brass plate for the names of those British soldiers who have died in...

By Tamzin Lightwater MONDAY Another superb by-election victory party at HQ with lashings of Pol Roger! The vibe v much: ‘Humility and workmanlike determination to get on with...

You hear it all the time From the President downwards, all Afghans know that the peace in Helmand is precarious. Fraser Nelson reports from a shattered land of corruption and...

This presidential race will be the first real Right v. Left contest in a long time, says Irwin Stelzer . On free trade, healthcare, tax and pariah regimes, the two men are...

Saying ‘sorry’ is mostly wicked and usually irrelevant, says Anna Blundy . People should not be allowed to dump their inner shame so easily T here is no end, of course, to...

Hamid Karzai’s government is said to control a mere 30 per cent of Afghanistan. The rest is in the control of tribal leaders and the Taleban. As David Miliband says, we will...

Few may celebrate the half-century since Charles de Gaulle’s triumphs of 1958, says Robin Harris , but this realist genius understood that, in geopolitics, the nation-state...

Bryan Forbes sees in the persecution of drivers a terrible metaphor for England’s decline: ministers hide in limousines while the police waste their time on minor road...

Eurovision Song Contest next year Rod Liddle watches the UK’s humiliation and concludes that the problem is not politics but music: most of these countries just don’t dig...

Sir: I greatly enjoyed Peter Jones’s excellent article on Ancient Roman globalisation (‘For real globalisation, look at Ancient Rome’, 24 May). I respectfully disagree...

Sir: Reading Matthew Parris’s account of his time in a Ryanair queue (Another Voice, 24 May) reminded me of a conversation I overheard some years ago as I was crossing London...

Sir: While Marianne Macdonald’s article (‘Sex and the City is a myth’, 24 May) was an entertaining read, its central thesis — that the airbrushed on-screen portrayal of...

Sir: Certainly many of the anachronisms in Foyle’s War were non-verbal (Letters, 24 May), perhaps the most glaring being the virtual absence from the screen of smouldering...

Sir: As I read your last editorial (‘Here’s what we call progress’, 24 May) and Rod Liddle’s piece (‘One day, abortions will appal us all’, 24 May) upon how future...

Sir: I suppose it’s just about possible to conceive of a name for a child more pretentious than Aeneas, the name Matthew Dennison gave his child (‘What’s in a name?’, 17...

From London to Delhi, stench is truth E very Sunday night for the past couple of months, I have been going back in time. I have been in the early 1960s. Sharp suits, womanly...

H ard to remember an occasion when an author has aroused such unanimous distaste as Cherie Blair’s revelation that the birth of her son Leo was due to her unwillingness to...

Marcin Miller discovers some startlingly successful Ardbeg whisky and cheese combinations I slay is the home of peaty whisky and they don’t come any peatier, or any more...

Julian Morris argues that recent shortages and price rises of staple food in Asia and Latin America have been caused as much by parasitical politicians as by poor harvests O n...

L ast week the Labour government revealed its plans to create a national cyber-database to hold details of every phone call, text, email and visit to the internet, as part of...

M insk is not a mecca for entrepreneurs or foreign investors, but it seems that the perpetual leader of Belarus, Aleksander Lukashenko, has decided to change that. The kolkhoz...

When transferring money overseas, don’t think you will get the best exchange rate from your high street bank. There is an alternative and it will save you money. Changing and...

‘Watch out for sellers asking crazy prices’ – Alex Hopkins was warned by friends when looking for property in Portugal. His search centred on the Douro Valley near to...

Magnus Linklater T HE I NVENTION OF S COTLAND by Hugh Trevor-Roper, edited by Jeremy J. Carter Yale, £18.99, pp. 282, ISBN 9780300136869 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429...

Ian Sansom A RMAGGEDON IN R ETROSPECT A ND O THER N EW AND U NPUBLISHED W RITING ON W AR AND P EACE by Kurt Vonnegut Cape, £16.99, pp. 232, ISBN 9780224085397 ✆ £13.59...

Leo McKinstry A G OOD W AR by Patrick Bishop Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99, pp.392, ISBN 9780340951705 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T he Battle of Britain and the...

Anthony Daniels D INNER WITH M UGABE : T HE U NTOLD S TORY OF A F REEDOM F IGHTER WHO B ECAME A T ERRORIST by Heidi Holland Penguin, £17.99, pp. 250, ISBN 9780143025573 ✆...

Robert Stewart a h ISTory of p olITIcal T rIalS from c harleS I To S addam h USSeIn by John Laughland Peter Lang, £12.99, pp. 315, ISBN 9781906165000 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45...

William Brett T HE I NFORMERS by Juan Gabriel Vásquez Bloomsbury, £16.99, pp. 338, ISBN 9780747592570 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 D o we carry the sins of our...

On the night before the Battle of Cold Harbor in 1864, many of the Federal soldiers wrote their names on slips of paper they pinned to their backs so their families could be...

Philip Ziegler T HE P HOENIX by Leo Hollis Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 389, ISBN 9780297850779 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 L ONDON L IGHTS by James Hamilton John Murray,...

Mirabel Cecil B LOOMSBURY B ALLERINA by Judith Macrell Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 476, ISBN 978 0297849087 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 J udith Mackrell describes her...

Honor Clerk T HE S ORROWS OF AN A MERICAN by Siri Hustvedt Sceptre, £16.99, pp. 306, ISBN 9780340897065 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 B orn into a second...

Judith Flanders T HE C ELLIST OF S ARAJEVO by Steven Galloway Atlantic, £12.99, pp. 278, ISBN 9781843547396 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 M any novels about war...

James Forsyth T HE R ETURN OF H ISTORY AND THE E ND OF D REAMS by Robert Kagan Atlantic, £12.99, pp. 105, ISBN 9781843548119 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 W hen...

Anthony Sattin T HE E YE OF THE L EOPARD by Henning Mankell Harvill Secker, £12.99, pp. 315, ISBN 9781843430490 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T HE M IRACLE AT S...

Powell is insistent — and for all I know dead right, but that’s hardly the point — that Kingsley was a sufferer from depression. Of the last sentence of The Anti-Death...

Stephen Pettitt celebrates the new wave of masterful British productions S amuel Johnson famously defined opera in his A Dictionary of the English Language as ‘an exotic and...

Andrew Lambirth talks to the artist John Hoyland about his life and work J ohn Hoyland dislikes being called ‘one of Britain’s leading abstract painters’. He thinks...

Robin Holloway O nce so sure in the pantheon, esteemed by composers and critical taste, beloved by players and audiences, César Franck appears nowadays to be almost...

Lloyd Evans Marguerite Haymarket The Good Soul of Szechuan Young Vic Under Milk Wood Tricycle T his ought to be a hit. The Les Mis team are back in the West End with another...

Deborah Ross Sex and the City 15, Nationwide I do know that not everyone gets Sex and the City. Bubbles, for example, does not get Sex and the City . ‘I don’t know what...

Michael Tanner L’incoronazione di Poppea Glyndebourne Der Rosenkavalier English National Opera M onteverdi’s last opera L’incoronazione di Poppea was the first opera I...

Kate Chisholm T he light pollution at Chequers can’t be that bad in semi-rural Bucks, so perhaps someone should suggest to our troubled PM that next time he has a weekend off...

James Delingpole ‘S tupid old bat.’ That’s what my father always used to say when Mary Whitehouse appeared on the screen, and the older I grew the more I agreed with him....

Robin Oakley T he Irish show enough enthusiasm for the ‘jumping Olympics’ at Cheltenham in March. Horses, trainers and punters come over in their hordes. For this year’s...

Taki ‘I s democracy on the march or is it in retreat?’ screams a headline in the Washington Times . The question was put to Condoleezza Rice last week, and I must say, for...

Jeremy Clarke T his morning, when I woke up, I reached out and pressed the button on my bedside radio and the first word that came out of it was the word ‘tolerance’. The...

Alex James T hat’s a lot of violins, I thought. Then I realised they were violas. The violins were to the left, smaller. Always smaller than I expect, violins — maybe...

T he Loire produces wonderful wines for summer. Perhaps it’s holidays in July and August, driving from château to château, past the slow reaches of the river and green...

Sinclair McKay gets lost in a labyrinth I s it possible for a Sat-Nav-coddled generation really to appreciate the aesthetic pleasure of a hedge maze? After all, if there is one...

Charlotte Metcalf goes on a glorious tour of Venice S ummer is here (well, just) and with it a national sprouting of good intentions, as people dust off the dreary remnants of...

I n order to tell you the following story I’m going to have to make an embarrassing admission: I LexisNexis myself every day. That is to say, I plug my own name into...

I was interested by a note on the website of Queens’ College, Cambridge, because the use of the apostrophe in English is governed by such simple rules that it is hard to see...

with the cup that cheers.’ This sentence has haunted me for 15 years. It’s from a parody of the typical reader’s review in The Good Food Guide , probably by Craig Brown. I...

out to the Aegean. Our hostess emailed to say we can get a lift from the airport with another couple who are coming for the same week on the same flight and who have already...

only uses sporadically had me to stay the night but left before I did the next morning. I sat down on a chair in his drawing room and went straight through it. I have been...