M onday was ‘National Nuclear Day’ in Iran. In Britain, with the paid appearance of Leading Seaman Faye Turney on television, it was national humiliation day. The abduction...

St Ives, Cornwall E mailing a friend in Boston, I reported that winter had been so benign in southern England this year that it was bound to snow in Cornwall at Easter. Not so....

A fortnight ago, I was invited along to a dinner with John Reid in the private room of a London hotel. It sounded wonderfully conspiratorial, arranged at just a few hours’...

CHARLES MOORE H itler said, ‘I know my enemies. I met them at Munich. They are little worms.’ He turned out to be wrong, thank goodness, but the impression that his enemies...

Miliband unit if it’s the last thing I do. There’s something shifty about it, mark my words, although initial investigations are inconclusive. Kept eye on Poppy and James, and...

Bullingdon business. I’m not surprised. The bar was set so high by Dave’s Bullers photo, and what with widespread comparisons to Spandau Ballet and other New Romantic...

Couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. Decided that embarrassing myself was actually less painful than not knowing what was going on with Kill Mil. Half-expected door to be...

Everyone v sheepish since I found out the big secret. Jed tried to explain that politics is all about appearances — or ‘Design’, as he calls it. Sometimes you don’t actually...

David Selbourne says that George Bush is losing the war in Iraq as surely as George III lost the war against the American colonists — and that the US imperium has entered on its...

I’ve been reading with unexpected pleasure The First English Dictionary (Bodleian, £12.99), an edition of a list of 2,500 ‘hard usual English words’ compiled by Robert Cawdrey...

Theodore Dalrymple blames the hostage crisis on profound social and psychological changes of which Mr Blair is both a symptom and a cause A taxi driver in Mexico City, who in my...

Matthew d’Ancona talks to this year’s Reith Lecturer, Jeffrey Sachs, about a world ‘bursting at the seams’, the practicalities of ending poverty — and his friendship with George...

Irwin Stelzer says the prime-minister-in-waiting’s poor poll ratings have less to do with personal style and more to do with fading support for the welfare state I n guessing at...

Rod Liddle says that if the Anglicans withdraw from the business of making irksome rules, they will all end up singing from the Monty Python hymn sheet T he Archbishop of York,...

I t may be time to stop talking about whether David Miliband challenges Gordon Brown, and start talking about when. The young cabinet minister plainly contemplates the...

Sir: In his analysis of the Falklands conflict (‘From the Falklands to Iraq’, 31 March) Simon Jenkins treats the independent-minded Lord Franks with disdain for heading an...

Sir: The plan to roll back the Conservative party from Scotland (‘Revealed: how the Conservative party is planning to split’, 7 April), although a setback to Scottish unionists,...

Sir: In Rod Liddle’s article ‘You get your film and go home’ (7 April), no mention is made of the reason why the Jewish population in Hebron is so small: the massacre in 1929 of...

Sir: In his eulogy to the wonderful French railway system (‘French trains: faster, cheaper, greener, sexier’, 7 April), Neil Collins fails to mention one important difference...

Sir: Alasdair Palmer (‘For once, Heather Mills has a point’, 31 March) says: ‘I am sure Fiona Shackleton is rich and successful enough not to have to be professionally concerned...

Sir: My name was misspelt as Ashton in the Letters page last week. Since the letter was a comment on Brian Magee’s accuracy among other matters, I should consider a correction...

I like the new Pope, Benedict XVI. I have not yet met him, but hope to do so soon. It is always fun to judge leaders from afar. David Cameron, another fellow I’ve not yet met,...

Banking on victory for the Scottish Nationalists George Kerevan says the leaders of Scotland’s booming financial sector see the prospect of independence under an SNP...

Can Sarko halt France’s decline? Allister Heath W hen I first moved to Britain in 1995, after a misspent youth in France, there were few Gallic accents to be heard outside the...

S ingapore’s property market is roaring. I know that because our lease will soon expire and our landlady wants 70 per cent more rent than she did in 2004. No matter that our...

Robert Salisbury L LOYD G EORGE AND C HURCHILL : R IVALS FOR GREATNESS by Richard Toye Macmillan, £25, pp. 356, ISBN 9781405048965 ✆ £21.50 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T his...

Sebastian Smee TOMORROW by Graham Swift Picador, £16.99, pp. 247, ISBN 9780330450188 ✆ £14.50 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I n managing too carefully the revelation of truth,...

Christopher Bland T HE RSC S HAKESPEARE : T HE C OMPLETE WORKS edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen Macmillan, £30, pp. 2482, ISBN 9780230003507 ✆ £25.50 (plus £2.45 p&p)...

Justin Cartwright D ANCING WITH E VA by Alan Judd Simon & Schuster, £9.99, pp. 214, ISBN 9780743275682 ✆ £8.49 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 R ecently, Adam Mars Jones accused...

Making a virtue out of necessity Ben Wilson F OOD IN E ARLY M ODERN ENGLAND by Joan Thirsk Continuum, £30, pp. 396, ISBN 9781852855383 ✆ £25.50 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655...

Simon Baker HOSPITAL by Toby Litt Hamish Hamilton, £14.99, pp. 510, ISBN 9780241142806 ✆ £12.75 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A summary of the events that take place in this...

D egas once complained to Mallarmé that he had been trying to write a sonnet, unsuccessfully, though he had had such a good idea for it. ‘Alas, my poor Edgar,’ was the reply,...

Andrew Lambirth goes in search of the haunting and the haunted in the world of Surrealism S how time at the V&A: the latest in its series of survey exhibitions brings us...

Charles Spencer I ’ve spent the past couple of weeks sharing my life with some malignant bug that has left me feeling weak and pathetic on those relatively rare occasions when...

Michael Tanner Satyagraha Coliseum W hatever one thinks about Philip Glass’s music in general, and Satyagraha in particular, it does tend to get extremely well served, and...

Lloyd Evans Tom Fool Bush Brecht Fest Young Vic Mojo Mickybo Arcola N o question about it. If you had to name the 500 brightest periods in the history of human creativity, you...

Patrick Carne gy The Merchant of Venice Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon B ack in the 1920s someone complained there wasn’t a play on the London stage that didn’t have a...

Harry Joll The Lives of Others 15, nationwide T he setting is East Germany, 1984. A highly appropriate year: the Stasi is positively Orwellian in its observation of its...

Simon Hoggart L ots of new comedy this week. Mitchell and Webb are a puzzle. They had a successful sketch slot, which followed the first runs of Peep Show . Then they turned up...

Kate Chisholm I t was not so extraordinary in September 1946 when the Third Programme began broadcasting that its schedule should include a weekly discussion of the ‘visual...

Robin Oakley S eeking to realise your dreams it certainly helps if you are a member of a ruling family with untold oil millions to hand. But when Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al...

Taki New York L arry Ellison, the chief executive of the software giant Oracle and the world’s 11th-richest man, according to Forbes magazine, is not imbued with grace or...

Jeremy Clarke I ’m back in the gym. I put it down to the lighter evenings and the rising sap. It’s been so long since I last worked out that I had forgotten what the gym card...

Roy Hattersley T he Charolais changed their habits at about the time we all moved our clocks and watches forward by an hour. The two hardiest calves in the herd —accompanied by...

A driving force Charlotte Metcalf reports on a new course aimed at saving young lives M ost Spectator readers share the gripe that we live in a nanny state. So it is...

Lee Langley follows in the footsteps of a famous French Egyptologist A Nile cruise is not for wimps — not if you do it seriously: up before dawn, a quick breakfast, then off on...

FRANK KEATING I daresay bonny Barbados and some blazing cricket in its final fortnight might retrieve disenchantment with the 2007 World Cup. But I doubt it. Bob Woolmer’s...

Dear Mary Q. Please can you advise me? I am a bachelor living on my own and I have my shirts ironed by a very nice lady in the village. She does a great job, but I am getting...