of the Exchequer, made a speech at the Labour party conference that pointedly made reference to 'Labour' 20 times and never to 'New Labour'; the party needed 'not just a...

S ir Ian McKellen's visits to Downing •Street were supposedly to discuss gay rights. To study the Prime Minister's conference speech at Bournemouth, though, suggests another...

D id you have a nice holiday? I know I did. Did you find yourself in a hotel bedroom in Naples looking after four children between the ages of two and six? Two girls and two...

.(1)1hti PETER °BORNE T here are times when there is no alternative but to throw up one's hands in despair and just confess that one is not up to the job. A plumber, sent to...

T he National Portrait Gallery ' s highly superior toilet book Heroes and Villains (accompanying a new exhibition, it offers 'pro' and 'anti' essays alongside illustrations of...

Peter Hitchens says that there will be no credible opposition while the Tory party remains an impossible coalition of irreconcilables with no feeling for old Britain N o power...

A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade The other day my email inbox included details of two special deals. One said, 'Increase your penis size', the...

Simon Hefter says only the Tories can defend us against the revival of socialism planned by the Chancellor I t was, as we now all know, Gordon Brown's definitive statement of...

Ross Clark says the government punishes innocent companies and defends its own monopolies 0 ne of the Official Monster Raving Loony party's most coherent policies was to break...

Nicholas Boles demonstrates that although Auntie always gives the Tories equal airtime, she still leans heavily to the Left Nv hen any aspiring Tory orator sits down to compose...

Forza Italia senator Paolo Guzzanti condemns Fascism — and defends Silvio Berlusconi's assessment of Mussolini F or much of the past month Italy has been lashed by a political,...

When I hear the word Internet, I reach for . . . words fail me. Veronica has been showing me round that dunces' playground. Pity the children who have to copy out bits for their...

The government has new ideas about burying the dead, but won't publish them because of the Iraq war. John Gibb says new thinking is badly needed M y mother came from a family...

Can one justify American intervention in the Middle East, both the wars themselves and the apparent establishment of a shadowy sort of American empire? If one accepts the force...

Anthony Lipmann on the decision of Charterhouse, his former school, to sell the contents of its museum Nv hat's cooking at Charterhouse? Last month the school signed a...

privileged It hardly seems fair, says Rachel Johnson, but the new higher education watchdog, Steven Schwartz, is about to recommend discrimination against elite schools T his...

ROD LIDDLE 1 t was one year ago this week that I left the BBC. At the time, people thought it was because I'd written something unflattering — and therefore redolent of bias —...

STEPHEN GLOVER C harles Moore is an old friend of mine, and I cannot claim to write about his eight-year editorship of the Daily Telegraph with a great degree of objectivity....

their left from their right PAUL JOHNSON T hings may be more difficult nowadays, but in my time it was quite possible to go through life without driving. I dislike operating...

MATTHEW PARRIS I t was was pure coincidence that The Spectator should have landed itself with our own space correspondent — me — as chance witness to the launch of Europe's...

From George Bathurst Sir: Melanie Phillips is right to assert that Blair is not a liar (Honest Tony', 27 September). She's wrong to think that that's OK then. Blair is a...

From C. Francis Warren Sir: In the last two editions of The Spectator, we have had detailed examination of the BBC's EU bias, even if, as Peter Hitchens says, it is not only...

From Michael Bright Sir: 1 would like the Conservative party conference to bring back Mr Nasty. I would like to hear that the burden of tax is to be reduced to 35 per cent of...

From Dimitri Cava lli Sir: In her otherwise interesting article, (Go straight to Heaven', 20 September) Anne Sebba reports that the Vatican's plans to canonise Pope Pius XII...

From Lord Black of Crossharbour Sir: There were several inaccuracies in my friend Taki's version of the origins of the Pacific war in 1941 (High life', 20 September). Japan...

From Simon Sinclair Sir: In trying to persuade his nanny to refer to his children's evening meal as 'dinner', Damien McCrystal's snobbery overreaches itself (First, weigh your...

From B.D. Kelly Sir: Your correspondent Dr David Dendy (Letters, 13 September) suggests that Christians in the pre-Reformation Church were not free to read the Bible in their...

From Nigel Rodgers Sir; Theodore Dalrymple (`Nasty, brutish and on credit', 20 September) is absolutely right to compare the 'constant thump of very loud pop music' in...

From Stephen Masty Sir: After reading Mark Steyn's latest column (If Clark wins — I'll quit', 27 September), am I alone among Spectator readers in sending a small donation to...

Clive James W B. YEATS: A LIFE: THE ARCH-POET, 1915-1939 by R. F. Foster Oxford University Press, £30, pp. 832, ISBN 0198184654 y eats was a great poet who was also the...

Santiago Tamaron WORDS OF MERCURY by Patrick Leigh Fermor John Murray, £20, pp. 274, ISBN 0719561051 T he perfect anthology, like the perfect hors d'oeuvre, should turn us into...

Angela Huth THE Two POUND TRAM by William Newton Bloomsbury, f12.99, pp. 192, ISBN 0747566976 V ery occasionally one comes across a book which, in its unexpected delights,...

M. R. D. Foot TEN DAYS TO D-DAY by David Stafford LittieBrown, £20, pp. 366, ISBN 0376724777 W orld history is pitted with world wars. Last century was conceited enough to call...

P. N. Furbank ARCTIC SUMMER by E. M. Forster Hesperus, £6.99, pp. 87, ISBN 1843910616 T he great popular success of Forster's Howards End, published in 1910, meant that he was...

Anne Somerset THE MYSTERY OF THE DUCHESS OF MALFI by Barbara Banks Amendola Sutton Publishing, £20, pp. 250, ISBN 0750928409 1 n the film Shakespeare in Love, the young John...

Grey Gowrie DYLAN'S VISION OF SIN by Christopher Ricks Viking, £25, pp. 512, ISBN 067080133X W hat is going on here? What on earth is going on here? Christopher Ricks, the...

Rupert Christiansen THE LESSER EVIL: THE DIARIES OF VICTOR KLEMPERER, 1945-59 edited by Martin Chalmers Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 637, ISBN 1842127438 I n 1940, before the ultimate...

Eric Christiansen THE FRIEND by Alan Bray Chicago University Press, distributed by John Wiley, £28, pp. 380, ISBN 0226071804 A s you went into the tower door of the church at...

David Hughes THE CURIOUS LIFE OF ROBERT HOOKE: THE MAN WHO MEASURED LONDON by Lisa Jardine HarperCollins, £25, pp. 422, ISBN 0007149441 T he charm of this unexceptionable book,...

William Trevor WAUGH ABROAD by Evelyn Waugh Everyman 's Library, 419.99, pp. 1064, ISBN 1857152662 A II the clicheis are true: travel refreshes the taste for living; it...

Beryl Bainbridge THE LAST GREAT QUEST: CAPTAIN SCOTT'S ANTARCTIC SACRIFICE by Max Jones OUP, £20, pp. 325, ISBN 0192804839 T he blurb on the front of this mesmerisin g and...

Tim Congdon THE ROARING NINETIES by Joseph Stiglitz Allen Lane,f18. 99, pp. 389, ISBN 1854109308 1 fit is to be interestin g , contemporary history has to be a battle between...

Jasper Griffin POMPEII by Robert Harris Hutchinson, .E17.99, pp. 341, ISBN 0091779251 0 f all the places that have from time to time been devastated by the powers of nature,...

Victoria Glendinning MARTHA GELLHORN: A LIFE by Caroline Moorehead Chatto, £20, pp, 550, ISBN 0701169516 1\4 artha Gellhorn, an American who lost faith in America, was one of...

Antonia Fraser THE ROTTVVEILER by Ruth Rendell Hutchinson, £16.99, pp. 384, ISBN 0091799465 1 t may sound an odd comparison but a visit to Alan Ayckbourn's latest black comedy...

Nigel Nicolson WHERE THERE'S A WILL by John Mortimer Penguin/Viking, 17 7.99, pp. 182, ISBN 0670913650 T his is not exactly an autobiography — John Mortimer has written three...

John de Falbe THE CLEARING by Tim Gautreaux Sceptre, £14.99, pp. 374, ISBN 0340828897 I t is the early 1920s. Randolph Aldridge has come from Pennsylvania to inspect a sawmill...

An exhibition reveals how Dr Johnson faced the prospect of dying. Kate Chisholm reports T he last days of the great essayist and dictionary-maker Dr Johnson were recorded in...

Andrew Lambirth Peter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance C.:Umlaute - 1 Instittite, Somerset House, London WC2, until 8 February 2004 Devonshire's two-year-old son Richard...

Michael Tanner Boris Godunov Royal Opera House Thais ENO, Barbican M usorgsky's Boris Godunov is a masterpiece; it would be absurd to deny that. Yet it is one about which I...

Marcus Berkmann R ock stars of a certain age seem to be keeling over all around us. Cause of death seems to change over the years. Thirty years ago it was drugs; 15 years ago...

Lloyd Evans The Hotel In Amsterdam Donmar John Bull's Other Island Tricycle S ome devotees of the theatre may know John Osborne backwards but for us layfolk he seems barely...

Patrick Camegy Titus Andronicus Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in repertoire until 7 November I t might perhaps have been no more than coincidence that the...

Felicity Owen looks at how London's major museums are faring A rt has recently been vying with football for the headlines, the saving of another Raphael for the National...

Mark Steyn D onald O'Connor and Elia Kazan have nothing in common other than that they died in the same week. But together they're as neat a summation of Hollywood as you could...

Simon Hoggart S unday evening, and usually there's a choice between a gloomy, hard-hitting drama about social problems, probably on BBC2 or Channel 4, or else something light,...

Michael Vestey Xe assic tale of how governments can nege on agreements with people was broadcast this week in Document: Lucilla and the Lost Lands (Radio Four, Monday). In...

Robin Oakley A scot is not just about silly hats, chamagne and flushed faces in corporate boxes. The Ascot crowd know their racing, too. So when Russian Rhythm finished second...

Taki W hat was it that Papa said about Paris? That it was a fine place to be quite young in and that it's a necessary part of a man's education, I believe. Also the bit about...

Jeremy Clarke had contact lenses fitted last week. I was Iso blind before, I came out of the opticians feeling like Paul on the Road to Damascus. That evening I went along with...

Neil Collins I 'm standing plumb in the middle of the river; to be more precise, in one of the 'carriers', the result of decades of chalkstream management, channels which run...

Jaspistos In Competition No. 2309 you were invited to pluck a newspaper heading and attach to it your own surprising story very different from the original one. Hasten to your...

I was chatting to a colleague the other day about wine writers, and how their tastes can differ quite considerably from that of the drinking public. I don't think that is...

MICHAEL HENDERSON T he footballers are fighting again. The tribes of Manchester United and Arsenal are unruly and resentful, and defying the world. Oblivious to the scorn of...

Q. For my husband and me the racing world has always been a source of Elysian happiness and this weekend we are taking our children to Newmarket races. There a problem looms....