police powers to stop and search in order to combat street crime in London, particularly the use of firearms. A judge told Ashley Walters, known as Asher-D in the group So Solid...

poised with half-bricks outside their local McDonald's, there must be a sense of confusion. In America, they believed they had an arch-enemy. The sight of American brand names...

in the Commons to Marshal Foch, a man whose centre was giving way and whose right was in retreat, and duly concluded, 'Situation excellent. I shall attack.' Or rather, I had...

BRUCE ANDERSON T hey were heart-rending photographs. A young girl, whose sweet face sang of the hope and joy of youth; a couple of years later, she is a broken, beggarly...

The editors of the Sun and the Mirror have only been to tea at Chequers, but there are some so grand that they are more lavishly received. Peter °borne reveals their names...

WITH all the enthusiasm of a neophyte I passed on the exciting discoveries I had made about the origins of Latin (26 January). I said that a sixth-century BC fibula, or brooch,...

George Monbiot on how Tony Blair's partnership of convenience with the private sector is fleecing the taxpayer THE government can't pretend that it lacked advice. In 1997,...

Rod Liddle on why the innocent peanut is being hunted to extinction by the allergy police IT's always a life-affirming moment — for me, at least. The aeroplane has groaned and...

Mark Steyn says that it's time to destroy the Arab kingdom which, directly or indirectly, is responsible for 11 September New Hampshire JOANNE JACOBS, formerly a columnist...

AN ancient Athenian witnessing the lying of government and its hangers-on over the Stephen Byers affair would have been no more or less surprised than any of us at the sight of...

Julian Manyon says that the intercommunal violence in India is likely to get a lot worse Ahmedabad THERE are times in this business when you feel you have made a mistake,...

Andrew Gimson accompanies David Willetts to Birmingham, and finds misery, comedy, resentment and hope LAST week I went to Birmingham with David Willetts, the Conservative MP...

A VISITOR to our grey and ghastly land might easily conclude that it had just emerged from a prolonged period of severe drought and famine, for the English seem incapable these...

Clive Aslet says the Paris agricultural show proves that the French, unlike the British, rejoice in country living THERE is no doubt about it, the French know how to put on a...

PAUL JOHNSON T he man who has been labelled 'the rudest man in Britain' is to be paid £75,000 an hour to entertain television viewers with the story of the monarchy. I came...

STEPHEN GLOVER T he odds are that Greg 'cut the crap' Dyke may be the last director-general of the BBC in its guise as a public service broadcaster. It becomes clearer all the...

From Mrs Jennifer Miller Sir: Perhaps the greatest weakness of our monarchy is the constant malicious misrepresentation of royal finances; so Simon Heffer's brilliant and...

has rather missed the point. Many would agree that the government is wasteful and is too careless with our money, but that does not render criticism of royal expenditure...

From Mr John Dickenson Sir: Mark Steyn's further analysis of the soft elements in Europe (On the right side of history', 23 February) reminds me of the perfect embodiment of...

Sir: Sorry to put a damper on Mark Steyn's almost rhapsodic praise of the great and wonderful US of A, but I don't think that America is really entitled to receive the full...

From Mr Duncan Blake Sir: I read with interest the correspondence regarding the article on possible links between sexual activity and prostate cancer (The wages of sex,' 19...

From Mr Percy Gourgey Sir: In referring to the right of self-determination for the inhabitants of Palestine (Letters, 23 February) Piers Paul Read overlooks the fact that this...

From Mr Oliver Kamm Sir: John Collins (Letters, 2 March) dissembles in his defence of Noarn Chomsky's claims of several million casualties of US action in Afghanistan. Chomsky...

From Mr William R. Morosse Sir: Please pass on to Taki that there were at least two gold medallists of African descent in the recent winter Olympic Games (High Life, 2 March)....

Sir: Taki writes in his column of last week . , handball, whatever that is'. Many of our mutual friends on both sides of the Atlantic have written to me saying that they were...

From Mr Chris Wheal Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 16 February) wants another 'religious reawakening' in America. Bad idea. There are more than enough religious wackos...

From Mr Harry Woolf Sir: Your leading article of 2 March says that all spin doctors and special advisers to government should sit civil service exams. Many years ago I...

From Mr Paul Coletti Sir: Jo Johnson (Down with Oncle Sam!', 23 February) quotes Jean-Pierre Chev'enement as saying that America is responsible for the tretinisation of the...

From Mr James Young Sir: Dot Wordsworth (Mind your language, 2 March) is right about the pronunciation of Osama bin Laden's first name. It's Osama, with the stress on the first...

FRANK JOHNSON T he new Times editor, Robert Thomson, is reported to be a student of Sun Tzu's Art of War (c. 500 ac). His having been long in the United States suggests that he...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he missionary Bishop Heber wrote a hymn about Ceylon: 'Where every prospect pleases And only man is vile.' On being told that this was unfair to his...

Charlotte Metcalf visits East Timor, the first new country of the millennium THE immigration official raised his eyebrows, then frowned. 'What is the purpose of your visit?' he...

Thomas Cussans SPRING comes early to the CharenteMaritime. In the first week of March the temperature sometimes nudges the 70s. Children run about in T-shirts and shorts under...

Francis X. Rocca IT WAS going to be the working holiday of my dreams. I'd spend mornings in the luminous, high-vaulted reading-room of the state archives, poring over...

Michael Henderson FIRST, it is important to recognise what Lancashire is. Despite the worst efforts of local government reorganisation in 1974, which created the metropolitan...

Anita Brookner NEGOTIATING WITH THE DEAD by Margaret Atwood CUP, £13.50, pp. 219, ISBN 0521662605 N o man is a hero to his own body, observes Margaret Atwood in her...

Robert Macfarlane BABEL: A NATURAL HISTORY OF LANGUAGE by John McWhorter Hamish Hamilton, £15.99, pp. 400, ISBN 04434007897 C ertain languages, particularly tonal languages,...

Michael Glover IMPERIAL VANITIES by Brian Thompson HarperCollins, £17.99. pp. 271, ISBN 0002571889 h is piece of fairly frothy historymaking, a rollicking good 'human-interest...

Sara Wheeler CAPTAIN COOK: OBSESSION AND BETRAYAL IN THE NEW WORLD by Vanessa Collingridge Ebuty, £17.99, pp. 376, ISBN 0091879132 G iven the appetite of our troubled times...

Christian Hesketh THE NEW PENGUIN HISTORY OF SCOTLAND FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY edited by R. A. Huston and W. W. J. Knox Penguin, £25, pp. 573, ISBN...

Douglas Johnson REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE: 1788-1880 : THE SHORT OXFORD HISTORY OF FRANCE edited by Malcolm Crook O(1P, L37.50 6E14.99 paperback), pp. 250, ISBN 0198731868 I n his...

Andro Linklater INDEXERS AND INDEXES IN FACT AND FICTION edited by Hazel K. Bell The British Library, £16, pp. 160, ISBN 0172347291 A n index indicates. And if it did no more...

Allan Mallinson FUSILIER: RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS, 1939-1945 by John McManners Michael Russell £17.95, pp. 225, ISBN 0859552691 L ike Brother Cadfael, another soldier who...

D. J. Taylor A SEASON WITH VERONA by Tim Parks Seeker, 416.99, pp. 447, ISBN 0436275953 W hen was it, you wonder, that football stopped being football? In some ways this is a...

Christopher Holmes rirninally atmospheric music introduces Ian Rankin's Witch Hunt. The scene is set for a gripping detective thriller from the successful Rankin, this time...

Michael Kustow on Peter Brook's television version of Hamlet As a precocious child in Chiswick, Peter Brook performed Hamlet in his parents' drawing-room, playing all the parts,...

Martin Gayford C harles Baudelaire, in addition, of course, to being a great poet, was no mean art critic. Writing in 1846 about the annual Parisian exhibition known as the...

Robin Simon T he Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, has reinvented itself as the National Gallery of the North'. It is still housed in the same majestic neoclassical building but...

Michael Tanner S ally Beamish's first opera, Monster, sports a distinguished cast: Byron, Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Charles and Mary Lamb, Coleridge and...

Peter Phillips L ooking at the icons of Andrei Rublev, the eponymous hero of Tarkovsky's great film. in Moscow's Trityakov gallery, I felt I could have been looking at...

Ursula Buchan I their lives, gardeners seek perfection in what they do, endeavouring to create immaculate landscapes populated with ideal plants. In doing so, they know they...

Toby Young I find myself in a minority of one this week, The Mysteries has opened to universal praise from the critics and rapturous, ecstatic applause from audiences. On the...

Mark Steyn T he best thing about We Were Soldiers is how bad it is. I don't mean 'bad' just in the sense that it's written and directed by Randall Wallace, screenwriter of...

James Delingpole L ast weekend, along with a zillion and one other saps, I paid £10 to go and see a large number of giant silk-screen prints little different in quality to the...

Michael Vestey A nthony Howard's brilliant six-part series about the monarchy on Radio Four drew to a close on Monday with an assessment of the effect on the royal family of...

Robin Oakley I think it was George Orwell who once described advertising as the rattling of a stick in a swill bucket. Some seem to think the Jockey Club's action in choosing...

Taki T Valetta o Malta, where St Paul was shipwrecked in 60AD on his way to Rome under arrest, to be judged before Caesar as was his right as a Roman citizen. Although a...

Petronella Wyatt H aving fallen down the stairs last week, I am back in inaction. The following days were spent doped-up on some painkiller they once gave me when I had...

Simon Barnes IN a way, it was easier to deal with despair. There was a time when the England cricket team lost every match, and generally did so disastrously. We became...

I can still pull 'ern, but there is one man in my office whom I really have my eye on. He is a bit of a genius and a wonderful writer, which is why I have fallen for him. The...

myself spending infuriating amounts of time on the telephone being told by robot operators to press this and that button, then being given four different options, followed by...

a question for you before it was asked (how discreetly to avoid taking Communion when bumped out of the queue and into a procession). I fear that he has given incorrect...