T he government has promised that from next year everyone aged between 40 and 75 will be offered an ‘MOT’ of their health. The patient most in need of a health check,...

for those of us who do five days of getting up at sparrow’s cough. The prospect of two days of lie-ins is so exciting it makes me feel giddy. My self-imposed rule of no...

W hen Tony Blair was Prime Minister he used to joke in private that his writ — like that of the Roman Empire — ended at Hadrian’s Wall. Beyond that lay Gordon’s land, a...

running of the Church of England, where does this leave Gordon Brown? I ask because one of Mr Brown’s first acts as Prime Minister was to get rid of his office’s traditional...

New rules at Intelligence Squared. For the debate on architecture the speakers were offered the use of a slide projector. Opening for the motion Roger Scruton described modern...

On the eve of the General Synod and the Lambeth Conference, Theo Hobson says that the sleeping giant of evangelical and orthodox Anglicanism has been awoken by liberal agitation...

It’s draconian, expensive and ineffective, says David Davis . All the evidence shows that the Prime Minister is eroding our civil liberties pointlessly A s shadow home...

Melissa Kite meets Martina Navratilova, nine times Wimbledon singles champion and now pioneer of ‘tennising’ — an artistic technique that creates Jackson Pollock-style...

Lord Lloyd of Berwick says that the government’s emergency legislation to overturn their lordships’ ruling on witness anonymity is part of a ‘gradual usurpation’ of our...

In the week of the Spectator Summer Party, Steven Berkoff recalls another of our celebrations at which he sought out the Tory leader and forgave his confusion of Brando and Dean...

Rod Liddle says that it helps to be aged between 14 and 30, white and male. Being drunk and argumentative speeds things along. And no public policy seems to dissuade those who...

Sir: Rod Liddle (Liddle Britain, 28 June) is mistaken to suggest that only Guardian journalists objected to articles published in the Sunday Telegraph under the pseudonym Will...

Sir: In his review (Books, 14 June) of my book, Forgotten Voices of the Secret War : An Inside History of Special Operations During the Second World War , Andro Linklater...

Sir: If Fraser Nelson’s insight (‘Very discretely, Cameron is writing his first Queen’s Speech’, 28 June) into what is being planned by the Conservatives is...

Sir: Charlotte Hobson (Books, 28 June) obviously does not know Russia very well and does not like it. She did not read Jonathan Dimbleby’s book with due attention as she fails...

‘H ow the Guardianistas changed their tune,’ was the heading to a Sunday Times factbox published in the paper last weekend. The intention was to mock those Fleet Street...

S omebody asked: ‘How do you express your love of country in this leaden age? How do you sweep aside the multicultural poison and simply assert — “I am an English...

Richard Orange says the Indian tea industry is enjoying a revival — but that the traditional tea-planters’ way of life, established by the British, is passing into history...

Christopher Fildes O h, dear, what a setback. The usual suspects have slipped through the net. They will have to be locked up in the Financial Services Authority’s waterside...

Philip Hensher H ouSE oF W ITS : A N I NTIMATE P oRTRAIT oF THE J AMES F AMILY by Paul Fisher Little, Brown, £16.99, pp. 694, ISBN 9780316726573 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

Justin Cartwright H ITLER ’ S E MPIRE by Mark Mazower Allen Lane, £30, pp.725, ISBN 9780713996814 ✆ £24 (plus 2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A s we now know, the unimaginably...

D. J. Taylor G RUB S TREET I RREGULAR : S CENES FROM L ITERARY L IFE by Jeremy Lewis Harper Press, f20, pp. 330, ISBN 9780002559065 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 N o...

Leanda de Lisle B URGHLEY : W ILLIAM C ECIL AT THE C OURT OF E LIZABETH I by Stephen Alford Yale, £25, pp. 412, ISBN 9780300118964 ✆ £20 (plus 2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 W...

Byron Rogers T HE W ELSH A CADEMY E NCYCLOPAEDIA OF W ALES (E NGLISH V ERSION ) edited by John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur Lynch University of Wales Press,...

Carey Schofield A C ASE OF E XPLODING MANGOES by Mohammed Hanif Cape, £12.99, pp. 297, ISBN 9780224082044 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 O n 29 May 1989 Brigadier...

Henrietta Bredin visits Oslo’s new opera house and finds it impressive, both inside and out O slo is a small city, with a population of just over half a million, but it now...

Andrew Lambirth Radical Light: Italy’s Divisionist Painters 1891–1910 National Gallery, until 7 September Sponsored by Credit Suisse D ivisionism is based on the scientific...

Lloyd Evans Black Watch Barbican Whatever Happened to Cotton Dress Girl New End Divas Apollo D isney does death. That’s how Black Watch looks to me. The hit show has arrived...

Michael Tanner Le nozze di Figaro Royal Opera House T he first night of the latest revival of the Royal Opera House’s Le nozze di Figaro I count among the dozen, or perhaps...

Peter Hoskin The Mist 15, Nationwide A s any fan of Howard Hawks, George A. Romero or John Carpenter will know, it’s not the monsters outside your window that you should...

Marcus Berkmann I t seems hard to believe, but on 29 August Michael Jackson will be 50 years old. Maybe fortunately in this case, the music industry doesn’t really go a...

Simon Hoggart Y ears ago I was ‘political consultant’ on State of Play, the successful BBC drama serial that got very substantial ratings. It launched several acting...

Taki ‘M y legs are leaden, my throat is dry and I feel slightly sick with anxiety. As I make my way towards the arena the roar of the crowd gets louder. One question keeps...

Jeremy Clarke A n extraordinary email from theatre critic Mr Lloyd Evans arrived in my inbox last week. He’d written a play, it said, a two-hander, and one of the characters...

There can be no prouder boast amongst the garden-minded rich than “we got Tom Stuart-Smith to design our garden before he was famous”. Of course, when exactly he became...

Melissa Kite T he following events took place in a Lambeth Council parking shop just off Streatham High Road. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. This report...

Richard Sennett W at passes for summer is finally upon us in the British Isles. Between bouts of rain, we can finally inhale the sun-tan oil, note that last year’s swimsuit...

John Torode watches his movie poster collection gain value I started collecting movie posters half a century ago. It was a nerdy and downmarket hobby for an ambitious East End...

B eing muzzled is a very frustrating experience for a journalist. When the story broke last week that Sean Langan had been kidnapped in a remote region of Pakistan — he was...

It was either Kung Fu Panda or Prince Caspian , so I took my nephew and niece to the latter. Aunts are only flesh and blood. A trailer for the Panda film featured him exclaiming...

him, he could do a lot worse than turn to whoever’s giving mighty Andy Murray some advice these days. For what was obvious in that stunning, thrilling, epic, heart-pumping...

friends. The alcohol is within my budget. Most of my friends are recovering alcoholics and the others are too old to binge drink, but I have been quoted £30 a head for food. I...

a friend for the first week of the school holidays. We have to drive down all the bedding and all the necessary kitchen equipment and food to cater for about ten of us, to say...

to fancy dress shops yet we have two such parties looming. What should I do? F.W., Edinburgh A. In the old days men simply turned their shirts back to front and came as vicars....