Who the right one to govern Cool Britannia? It your choice A the Conservative party conference, Mr William Hague, the leader of the opposi- tion, said he would combat crime and...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 020-7405 1706; Fax 020-7242 0603 LEAVE IT TO SERBIA veryone — even Mr Milosevic — is agreed that he lost the...

CHARLES MOORE ntering the restaurant at the Highcliff Hotel here on Tuesday, I asked the waiter, `Could you tell me where Lady Thatcher's table is?"Sorry, sir,' he said, 'what...

Sex, drugs and the problems of being a Conservative in a libertarian world BRUCE ANDERSON B elieving in Britain' is the official slo- gan for this year's Tory party...

Here is a policy that would help the police, bring pleasure to millions and might even boost the Tories BORIS JOHNSON I t is not often that an idea flashes into my head. But...

You can't reconcile the Rottweiler Right with the touchy-feely Tory party may have arrived too late ACCORDING to the signs that surround this idyllic town, Bournemouth is...

The word for it is war: Emma Williams watches a tragedy unfold Jerusalem IT has become surprisingly hard to buy spices in the Old City. Last week it was Jean-Claude Van...

David Lovibond on how the rural poor are going back to ancient ways of ekeing out a living IN his diary entry for 30 July 1990, Alan Clark complains of a parish councillor's...

Justin Marozzi finds the Muslim country of Uzbekistan on the brink of social and economic collapse Tashkent THE man in front of me was emphatic. I was to contact The Book of...

`ANYTHING interesting in the post?' asked my husband, while dropping the reply envelope for the telephone bill carelessly into the marmalade. `Mwuh?' I said, distractedly. 'Oh,...

Past and present generations were wrong in their assumptions about self-esteem. It's of little importance, says Virginia Ironside WHEN I was in hospital with depression earlier...

The Spectator invited Sean O'Callaghan and Ronan Bennett to tea. Boris Johnson presided over a lively debate EARLIER this year The Spectator pub- lished a series of articles by...

Over mugs of steaming cocoa, we cracked every code Mr Major threw at us FRANK JOHNSON T o understand a Conservative confer- ence, it helps to have worked at Bletchley during...

It was a dreadful picture — but it spoke for humanity STEPHEN GLOVER L ast Saturday a 12-year-old boy called Mohammed al-Durra was shot dead by Israeli forces in the Gaza...

£15 Plain £16 Initialled The Spectator 2001 Diary, bound in soft red goatskin leather, is now available at the same price as last year. Laid out with a whole week to view,...

Michael Portillo takes his turn in the Tories' most rapidly revolving chair CHRISTOPHER FILDES W illiam Hague is on his third shadow chancellor, and Gordon Brown claims to be...

IT happened one day in September, a Wednesday, eight years ago. The party had won an election, its fourth in a row, after tying the pound to the exchange rate mecha- nism, which...

WE all tell politicians that we would be happy to pay more in tax to support their good causes, but that is not how we behave, at the petrol stations or the polls. We already...

THE Guardian's City editor looked at me sternly: 'I have a very serious question to ask: can you type?' I could, but he still didn't give me the job. Richard Fry had high...

IN opposition, they faced a Chancellor who had his own ideas about building a strong- point, or at least a sandcastle. They were not ready for this. Previous Labour chancellors...

From Mr Andrew Roberts Sir: Might I, on behalf of the late 3rd Mar- quess of Salisbury and Enoch Powell, refute Geoffrey Wheatcroft's suggestion that they, Oliver Letwin,...

From Mr Alexander Chancellor Sir: I wish to apologise to Anthony Holden for implying in the Diary (23 September) that he doesn't know the meaning of the word 'enseam'. He does....

From Mr Gordon M.L. Smith Sir: Peter Oborne (`The great pretender', 30 September), commenting on the Labour journalist Andrew Rawnsley's revelations concerning Bernie...

From Mr John Henson Sir: Carole Caldwell (Letters, 23 Septem- ber) states that she would like to see LETTERS `drivers out of their cars and on to buses, trains or other modes...

with the truth seems to be the gist of Peter Oborne's article. True. But he misses the main charge. Telling porkies is official Labour policy. Except that Alastair Camp- bell...

to excuse Tony Blair et al. for their porkies, perhaps I could suggest to Peter Oborne that peo- ple in glasshouses should not throw stones. What about the bias, gloss and...

From Mr Richard Dawkins Sir: Julia Reed sums up her article on the South (The South is another country', 23 September): 'If there is a theme here, it is that Southerners are...

From Mr Hector Macdonald Sir: You wrote in your 'Portrait of the week' column (23 September) that the `Olympic Games began in Sydney with an incomprehensible ceremony involving...

From Mr Henry Tottenham Sir: The Tory Matthew Richards (Letters, 9 September), hopes for a Gore victory in November. He's a visiting scholar, so he won't have to live with it....

From Mr Edmund Coxhead Sir: Peter Hitchens's article about the Church of England CO praise ye Delors', 16 September) made interesting and sensi- ble reading, although, as a...

From Mr R.W. Johnson Sir: Essop Pahad's letter about me (30 September) is misleading on many different levels: 1. He writes that I 'purport to write on behalf of a foundation he...

Parricide is awful and matricide is a sin against the Holy Ghost of literature PAUL JOHNSON T his spring, at a literary gathering by an Italian lake, I heard Lorna Sage read a...

The great unknown Philip Hensher ROMANCING: THE LIFE OF HENRY GREEN by Jeremy Treglown Faber, £25, pp. 340 T his is already a famous biography, for all the wrong reasons....

John Mortimer COVENT GARDEN, THE UNTOLD STORY: DISPATCHES FROM THE ENGLISH CULTURAL WAR, 1945-2000 by Norman Lebrecht Simon & Schuster, £25, pp. 580 T here is nothing that the...

issues) UK 0 £97 0 £49 Europe 0 £115 0 £58 USA 0 US$175 C US$B8 Canada 0 £129 0 £65 Australia 0 Aus$240 0 Aus$120 Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe 0 £135 0 £68 Rest of World 0...

Norman Stone ISLAM AND SOCIETY IN TURKEY by David Shankland Eothen Press, £27.50, £18,50, pp. 240 Tel: 01480 466 106 D avid Shankland, a pupil of Ernest Gellner's, spent a year...

Barry Unsworth THE HILL BACHELORS by William Trevor Viking, £15.99, pp. 256 T e Hill Bachelors is William Trevor's first collection of short stories since the brilliant and...

Isabel Colegate IRIS ORIGO: MARCHESA OF VAL D'ORCIA by Caroline Moorehead John Murray, £22, pp.35 1 I ris Origo wrote a volume of autobiogra- phy called Images and Shadows....

Anita Brookner THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood Bloomsbury, £16.99, pp. 521 M argaret Atwood's artful and attrac- tive novel exhumes a long-buried scandal of her own...

Jane Gardam A DESERT IN BOHEMIA by Jill Paton Walsh Doubleday, £12.99, pp. 228 J ill Paton Walsh's novel, Knowledge of Angels, so surprised her publishers by its difference...

Hugh Thomas THE GERMAN TRAUMA by Gitta Sereny Penguin, £20, pp. 377 S everal countries had dark times in the 20th century. Germany, Russia and China stand at the top of the...

Timothy Mo STET D iana Athill waved her wand and turned me from a frog into a prince, or at least from an aspirant writer into a pub- lished novelist. It was May 1977. I had...

Anthony Sampson IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MR KURTZ by Michela Wrong Fourth Estate, £13.99, pp. 324 T he history of tyranny and corruption in the Congo has been presented as such an...

Rupert Christiansen RIMBAUD by Graham Robb Picador, £20, pp. 530 T he story Graham Robb tells is famil- iar: Arthur Rimbaud, born in 1854 in northern France, was the son of a...

Sarah Bradford THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EDWARD, KING IN WAITING, 1841-1901 by Stanley Weintraub John Murray, £25, pp. 394 ‘E dward the Caresser', as he was privately dubbed when...

Paul Ferris FREUD: DARKNESS IN THE MIDST OF VISION by Louis Breger John Wiley, £19.99, pp. 460 T his life of Freud is announced as the one the world is waiting for. The chaos...

Philip Ziegler LONDON: THE BIOGRAPHY by Peter Ackroyd Chatto, £25, pp. 779 L ondon has been a brooding presence in many of Peter Ackroyd's books: in his novels, The Great Fire...

on a tric ky subject Anne Applebaum THE ARROGANCE OF POWER: THE SECRET WORLD OF RICHARD NIXON by Anthony Summers Gollancz, £20, pp. 640 D o we need another biography of...

Alexander Chancellor ENJOY: A CELEBRATION OF JENNIFER PATERSON edited by Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson Headline, £15.99, pp. 224 h is may sound like a doubtful proposi- tion —...

Bruce Anderson MO MOWLAM: THE BIOGRAPHY by Julia Langdon Little, Brown, £16.99, pp. 324 M o Mowlam is an extraordinary phe- nomenon. Never before has there been such a contrast...

Julian Mitchell DIARIES, 1969-1977 by Peter Nichols Niek Hem Books, £25, pp. 440 P eter Nichols and Stephen Sondheim once arrived in London terribly jet-lagged from New York....

Name: Address: Postcode: E-mail: LI I enclose a cheque/postal order made payable to The Spectator Bookshop. El I wish to pay by MasterCard/Visa III I IIII II I r TO ORDER:...

Take me to the bridge, Captain Michael Harrington boldly goes into the 24th century with Star Trek S tar Trek in its current form stands for socialism, atheism and female...

La Gioconda (English National Opera) Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Royal Opera House) Intermittent inspiration Michael Tanner I t's a pity that ENO aren't able to mount a staged...

Where The Money Is (15, selected cinemas) Old timer Mark Steyn P aul Newman dusts himself off for you guessed it — another heist caper. Whether or not he manages to steal the...

The Beautiful Game (Cambridge Theatre) To The Green Fields Beyond (Donmar Warehouse) Another Country (Arts Theatre) The disaffected resurrected Sheridan Morley I f you are...

Keeping up standards Marcus Berkmann S ome albums hit you right between the eyes, while others can stalk you for months and months before finally creeping up behind you and...

Cyber-age ciphers James Delingpole U ntil No developed his new obsession with Teletubbies (BBC2, weekdays), I thought I'd been lucky enough to breed one of those...

Camp squib Giannandrea Poem A every Queen fan knows or should know, Freddie Mercury liked ballet. He even appeared in a memorable video-clip dressed up and moving like Vaslav...

Shot down in flames Michael Vestey I have long pondered what name should be given to contemporary art. It definitely needs one because much of it isn't art. The best I've been...

Don't slander coriander Simon Courtauld W hat may be the largest crop of coriander in Britain is growing in a field a couple of miles from here, in the Vale of Pewsey in...

A bet in the wet Robin Oakley T hose of us who take our pleasures out- doors have had to suffer a fair bit of wet this year. Vertical wet I can cope with. The good Lord gave...

Bad sports at the Olympics Taki One thousand five hundred and three years later, the Olympics were back in my hometown and things were hunky-dory for a while. True amateurs...

It's a Skoda. Honest. Toby Young You may scoff, but this is no ordinary Skoda. It's a brand new Skoda Fabia, What Car's Car of the Year 2000. It can go from 0-60 in 11.5...

Open house Leanda de Lisle A week in the life of a country house began with an auction of promises to raise money for the Countryside Alliance and the local hunt. A couple of...

Wolves at the door Petronella Wyatt W hen I was child I used to be taken to Florence to see a mummy. Before you start writing in, nope, I am not referring here to some...

A bridge too far? Susanna Gross I'M NOT sure what it says about married life, but husbands and wives famously make bad bridge partners — they almost always end up squabbling...

HONESTLY, I just could not believe it when I read that The Spectator is going to bring back proper poetry. Because that's what I am mainly — a poet! Truly, I am. People who know...

b www.ardbeg.com CHESS ' Rdbeig The Ultimate Islay Malt. Big match Raymond Keene FROM next week onwards I shall be giving the games of the World Championship match with...

Wobbly verse Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 2156 you were invited to supply a poem on the Millennium Bridge which might have been written by William McGonagall. Son of an...

CIIMIM:11 ChNIIIIM alliallie El II r 0 el elnICIMICIIA II El MOT 111010n T o II in N . 1 L TLIIMMO: li n UM a amen arligridD n 1 " MINN 1 adrIEPI I M a S 1 ti. 8...

It doesn't matter how you voted at the last election (I plumped for Labour); it is irre- sistibly tempting to kick a prime minister when he is down. So let's have a verse lam-...

1484: A lory (anagram)? by Doc A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's award-winning, Late- Bottled Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 23 October, with...

Freeman's real victory Simon Barnes AND so Australia sits back in disbelief after a 17-day celebration that was nothing less than the relaunching of the nation: a moment when...

Dear Mary. . . Q. My husband and I are Australian but have lived in London on and off for some years. I was rather taken aback by a remark made to me at a drinks party the...