T he US mid-term election results have many lessons, but one of them, as Christopher Caldwell argues on page 14, is that most Americans believe that the war in Iraq is over, and...

I just know I can help you!’ This has been happening a lot in the past week or two. Heaven knows how total strangers get my number, but they do. Maybe it’s divine intervention....

T he most famous political quotations come not from politicians but the wickedness of headline writers. Although Jim Callaghan never said ‘Crisis? What crisis?’, the phrase...

Am sleeping on the bunk bed at Dave and Sam’s. The atmosphere is v tense. We don’t know when they will come for us, but we know they will come and when they do we have to be...

frightening the children. Godammit one of them dropped a piece of rainforest into the Brabantia! OK, so it was in the form of a lollipop stick but that’s not what the headline’s...

Hours to go until announcement, and we still can’t decide whether to create a new post of Shadow Minister for Love. Personally, I’m with Dave on this. If love really is the...

the Speaker! He walked in on the plotters in a basement room with just minutes to spare before PMQs. Luckily, quick-thinking Dezzy managed to avert disaster by locking the door...

people in the north that we care about the NHS. (And what better way to show we care than to go all that way!) It’ll be a bit of a squeeze in the back of the Lexus. Hope Mr...

Christopher Caldwell says that the mid-term elections were a landslide in which the Republicans paid a heavy price for Iraq, for sexual scandals and for ugly campaigning....

Alasdair Palmer says that the proceedings in Baghdad were far from perfect, but a much better option than the international tribunal favoured by so many lawyers W hen Mohammed...

My husband has been trying to interest me in the architecture of the stations on the Jubilee line on the London Underground. Some of them — Westminster and Canary Wharf — are...

Jeremy Clarke hovers in the blood-soaked limbo of a Plymouth police station, where he discovers a nostalgia for the days when police custody was a little more robust I t’s ten...

Allister Heath talks to John Hulsman, a rising star of the Republican party, who has rejected neoconservatism but remains committed to fighting al-Qa’eda and global Islamism H...

The trouble with lunch, writes Rachel Johnson , is that it takes all day, serves no purpose and makes you feel bloated. Tea is so much better. Ladies who don’t lunch, unite! A...

Whatever the eventual result of the West’s incursion into Iraq, the Iraqi people will have to rewrite their history to make sense of the occupation. Doubtless the West will try...

There is an obvious connection between immigration to Britain and emigration from these shores, says Rod Liddle , but we are frightened of admitting it A pparently almost a...

From Bill Troop Sir: Oxford’s new prize-winning graduate ‘Charlie’ Boss evidently did not learn enough during his time there (‘Is Oxford about to get rid of its...

From Tristan Gooley Sir: I find myself among the weary majority who share a genuine concern for the environment and a mild revulsion at sensationalism on the subject. David...

From Mitchell Symons Sir: Further to Rachel Johnson’s claim that there is a paucity of ex-head boys and girls in public life (‘To be expelled is the mark of genius’, 28...

support for the US and British commitment to Iraq, Jonathan Mirsky asserts that the ‘brutal truth’, in Iraq as in Vietnam, ‘is that the insurgents are far more willing to die...

From J.G. Cluff Sir: I expect that I am not the only Spectator reader to have become exasperated by your consistent support for the Bush/Blair axis of incompetence in Iraq and...

From Malcolm Knott Sir: Not only are gentlemen in period drama given anachronistic wedding rings; they are also robbed of their hats (Letters, 4 November). Until the late 1930s...

From Michael Shuttleworth Sir: Matthew d’Ancona (‘How to build the peace’, 4 November) lets Paddy Ashdown off very lightly. Five years of non-conflict and raising state...

From Dov Midalia Sir: Paul Johnson’s (And another thing, 28 October) nod to Australian nicknames failed to mention their ironic tendency: a red-haired man is invariably Blue, a...

From Madeleine Cutts-Watson Sir: H.O. Mounce (Letters, 21 October) has completely missed Charles Moore’s point. He says his mother never travelled far out of her home town; but...

From Helma Drukker Sir: Thank you very much for the informative review of the James Ensor exhibition in Ostend (Arts, 4 November). However, Mark Glazebrook names Toorop as a...

A n ‘embarrassed’ Mayor Livingstone was reported this week to have flown back to London from Caracas. President Hugo Chavez had ‘shunned’ him. The official reason for Señor...

Subtle and stylish, the Mogul from Pink has a breast pocket designed for a gentleman’s favourite accessory A ccording to Rudyard Kipling, ‘A woman is only a woman, but a good...

A n optimist, listing for me the reasons that the deplorable state of the world is not quite as bad as we think, cited, as one of them, ‘the Latin revival’. Oh, is there one? I...

Cosmo Lush explores the bizarre byways of Second Life, the latest internet phenomenon, and explains how big brands plan to make money out of it M y name is Cosmic Finucane. I...

White diamonds are the world’s most expensive gems. The ideal stone is like a piece of ice, whiter than white, graded ‘D’, the purest possible grading, and cut with exquisite...

Richard Orange meets Bill Browder, the investor who is banned from Russia but remains bullish about its future B ill Browder is strangely apologetic for the grandeur of his...

‘W ho’s the most impressive business leader you’ve ever met?’ I asked a group of senior executives the other night. I confess I interjected the question (as I do here) to enable...

W hat is it about fruit? There is no more searing passage in the memoirs of Auberon Waugh than the bit when three bananas reach the Waugh household in the worst days of postwar...

Robert Salisbury T HATCHER AND S ONS by Simon Jenkins Allen Lane, £20, pp. 384, ISBN 0713995955 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his country is incompetently governed....

Marcus Berkmann D IARIES , 1969-1979: T HE P YTHON Y EARS by Michael Palin Weidenfeld, £16.99, pp. 650, ISBN 0297844369 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his is a...

Nicholas Harman B IG B ABIES by Michael Bywater Granta, £14.99, pp. 262, ISBN 1862078831 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 G rumpy grand-dads do their job best when,...

Sandy Balfour A-Z OF C ROSSWORDS : I NSIGHTS INTO THE T OP S ETTERS AND THEIR P UZZLES by Jonathan Crowther Collins, £17.99, pp. 342, ISBN 0007229232 ✆ £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

A. N. Wilson G RASS S EED IN J UNE by John Martin Robinson Michael Russell, £16.95, pp. 175, ISBN 9780859553018 T he central and the longest part of this all too brief memoir...

Sebastian Smee T HE R OAD by Cormac McCarthy Picador, £16.99, pp. 226, ISBN 033044753X ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A great many unspeakable things happen in the...

Philip Womack A MO , A MAS , A MAT ... A ND A LL T HAT : H OW TO B ECOME A L ATIN L OVER by Harry Mount Short Books, £12.99, pp. 269, ISBN 1904977545 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

Jonathan Cecil HELLO! by Leslie Phillips Orion, £18.99, pp. 406, ISBN 0752868896 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 ‘W hen you reach your seventies,’ mused a once...

Francis King B RIGHT D AY by J. B. Priestley Great Northern, £14.99, pp. 320, ISBN 1905080182 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his is one of the three best of J. B....

Judith Flanders A D ICTIONARY OF V ICTORIAN L ONDON : A N A-Z OF THE G REAT METROPOLIS by Lee Jackson Anthem Press, £12.99, pp. 180, ISBN 1843312301 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

M. R. D. Foot C HURCHILL ’ S M AN OF M YSTERY : D ESMOND M ORTON AND THE W ORLD OF I NTELLIGENCE by Gillian Bennett Routledge, £49.95, pp. 404, ISBN 9780415394307 ✆ £39.96...

Jonathan Keates K ATE : T HE W OMAN WHO WAS K ATHARINE H EPBURN by William J. Mann Faber, £18.99, pp. 621, ISBN 0571229778 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 ‘I don’t want...

Fiona Maddocks T CHAIKOVSKY : T HE M AN AND HIS M USIC by David Brown Faber, £25, pp.460, ISBN 0571231942 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T hree decades ago, in one of...

Malcolm Deas P IRATES OF THE C ARIBBEAN : A XIS OF H OPE by Tariq Ali Verso, £14.99, pp. 224, ISBN 184467102X ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T ariq Ali, the Johnny...

Ed Smith T HE B LIND S IDE by Michael Lewis W. W. Norton, £14.99, pp. 288, ISBN 039306123X ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 H ow serious a subject is sport? We know it...

A complete production of Wagner’s Ring cycle is always a major cultural event, especially if it is done on four consecutive evenings, so that the great vision of the work takes...

Andrew Lambirth David Smith: Sculptures Tate Modern, until 21 January 2007 ‘I am going to work to the best of my ability to the day I die, challenging what’s given to me,’...

Laura Gascoigne Art at the Rockface Millennium Galleries, Sheffield, until 7 January 2007 S heffield seems to be in a constant state of redevelopment. Last time I went, the...

Stuart Nicholson T he re-release of Europeana , an evanescent album by pianist Joachim Kühn and the Hanover Philharmonic Orchestra, once again raises the question of whether...

Roderic Dunnett In the Face of History: European Photographers in the 20th Century Barbican Art Gallery, until 28 January 2007 T he title of this absorbing, stylishly laidout...

Michael Tanner The Marriage of Figaro ENO La Bohème Royal Opera T his week each of London’s two opera houses staged a work which has claims to being among the three or four...

Tom Rosenthal Literary Circles Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 30 December T he subtitle ‘Artist, Author, Word and Image in Britain 1800–1920’ sets out the aim of one of...

Peter Phillips W ith the flourish of a pen, or however these things are done, the Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford last week established in principle a new choral...

Harry Mount Y ou won’t find a grander monument to failed marriage than the Mount, the New England picture-book palace built by Edith Wharton a century ago. Wharton was a house...

Marcus Berkmann T he journalist and broadcaster Danny Baker recently admitted that, getting on in years, he listens to almost nothing these days other than country music. I can...

Ursula Buchan J ust as embroiderers working in the late 11th century will not have appreciated the achievement that was the Bayeux Tapestry until they stood well back at the...

Toby Young Cabaret Lyric The Cryptogram Donmar R eading the obituaries of William Styron last week, I was surprised to learn about the controversy surrounding the publication...

Deborah Ross T his film is a perfectly amiable yet inconsequential rom-com, so if perfectly amiable yet inconsequential romcoms are your thing, you’re basically in clover. What...

Kate Chisholm W here have all the billions gone? asked a refreshingly unpolitical investigation into the Iraq war on the BBC World Service. Baghdad Billions , presented by Mark...

James Delingpole B efore I go on, can I just ask: do any readers share my concern about the scrawny bum on the girl on the new Nokia billboard poster ad? For those of you who...

Taki T o West Point, where the Black Knights, as the cadets are known among American football types, are slaughtered by the ‘Falcons’ of the Airforce Academy. But sitting in...

Jeremy Clarke T he last mile or so back to her flat was punctuated at 50-yard intervals by speed bumps purposely designed to punish drunks in late-night cabs. I had my head...

Brian Senior A fairly common play technique is the Coup en Passant. The fancy French name hides a pretty simple technique. Declarer attempts to make her small trumps by leading...

Juliet Nicolson on why kids need to learn cookery at school F rom the age of 13 I was famous for my three-course dinners. As the daughter of a recently divorced and newly...

Selina Mills on how she lost her soul to shoes T he first inkling that my life was about to change came when I mentioned casually over lunch to some acquaintances that I was off...

Tessa Keswick celebrates the return of I.M. Pei to his home town, Suzhou W hen the October moon was at its fullest I travelled from Shanghai to nearby Suzhou, the capital of...

wine merchants. The first is by Lay & Wheeler. Nearly all the wines have been reduced by 10 per cent (with free delivery); there are further discounts if you buy more than one...

FRANK KEATING A t Shrewsbury School a couple of weeks ago, with nice ceremony, they opened a swish new indoor cricket centre alongside what Neville Cardus once called ‘the most...

Q. Several weeks ago I was asked to keep clear a date in November for a surprise 60th birthday party. In anticipation I purchased a carefully chosen and expensive gift which,...