T wenty-five Conservative MPs wrote to the chairman of the 1922 Committee calling for a vote of confidence in their leader, Mr lain Duncan Smith. The Labour party expelled Mr...

T my MPs have decided to get rid of their leader in what are, on the face of it, surprising circumstances. The party is ahead in the polls by as much as 5 per cent. The recent...

I was as excited as a kid going to Disneyland to be invited on Concorde's last flight from New York to London. I've always regarded it as one of Britain's greatest ambassadors,...

STEPHEN GLOVER T he Tories, we are told, are a party of unstable men who are genetically predisposed to plotting against their leader. I would certainly appreciate a learned...

Jamaica T he Vole's sagacious manservant, W.F. Deedes, this week found himself in the middle of a hypothetical Bateman cartoon: 'The Man Who Told A Rastafarian He Was At Haile...

The 25 letters are in. lain Duncan Smith will soon be out. The treachery of the flunkeys has triumphed. Peter Oborne outlines what the new leader must now do to save the party...

The BBC report on the racist police recruits has given new ammunition to those who are curbing our legitimate freedoms, says Leo McKinstry I n our modern secular society, we...

John Laughland says Kill Bill is cheesy and evil, and wonders why it is tolerated when depictions of real violence are censored A brutal-looking 17-year-old girl takes a long...

A weeldy survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade Teesside waste-management company AbleUK has won a £10.8 million contract to dismantle 13 US navy ships at its...

Ahead of next year's regional elections in Provence, JeanMarie Le Pen is using his daughter to give the National Front a kinder, gentler face. Philip Delves Broughton reports...

My husband's favourite programme on television, to judge by what he shouts at the screen, is Grumpy Old Men. You should hear him when they sound off about automated telephone...

Rachel Johnson talks to the Hon. Sir Oliver Bury Popplewell, 76 and sprightly with it, who is reading PPE at Oxford H e may have caught your eye at the Freshers' Fair for...

Simon Henderson on the unremarked progress being made by the coalition forces in Iraq T he first snows are arriving in New Hampshire, but the action for the first of the US...

Mars closed in, and astrology freaks wet themselves with excitement — the poor dears. In the ancient world, astrology came under the category of divination, which Cicero hit on...

The Suez intervention was illegal, says Jesse Norman. It is now up to the government to show us that the Iraq war was not also illegal S lowly, the pressure is building on the...

Tracy Worcester on how the American pork industry is invading Poland with the help of EU grants W e ignored the 'No Entry' sign at Smithfield hog factory, near Szczecinek, west...

p Aki ico4 m y father died almost exactly 60 years ago. I was at boarding school, on the eve of my 15th birthday, and the news came without warning. His illness was sudden,...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES I t was a mistake, historians will agree, to let Transylvania sign up for the euro. At the time, Ed Balls, the Chancellor's eurosceptical adviser, summed up...

MATTHEW PARRIS Limpopo Province, South Africa o ttoshoek means 'Otto's corner' or perhaps more colloquially 'Otto's place' in Afrikaans. But this cabin in the Soutpansberg...

From Stephen I Hayhow Sir: One point regarding Mary Wakefield's article 'The mystery of the missing links' (25 October). The problems with Professor Dawkins's views are...

From Bruce Leeming Sir: Sholto Byrnes asks us to recognise the merits of the approach of Dr Mahathir Mohamad to government (`Mahathir knows best', 25 October). This is the...

From Dr Cyril Laming Sir: Rod Liddle's 'Thought for the Day' (18 October) was up to his usual freshness and — er — penetration in both topic and style. But he must surely have...

From KJ. Marsh Sir: Rod Liddle's article (`Thought for the Day', 25 October) was inaccurate. He writes — in connection with my decision not to broadcast part of an interview...

From Douglas Carswell Sir: Mark Steyn is correct that British Conservatives should be wary of being seen as wanting to ape US-style local democracy ('How to save the Tory...

From Edward Collier Sir: Forget about the flawed field trials, ignore the (largely US) vested interests and the gung-ho scientists on the 'pro' side, and the Luddite conspiracy...

From Jennifer Miller Sir: Stephen Glover (Media studies, 25 October) might care to consider that for years rumour had it that the late Princess anticipated being sabotaged in...

From Andrew Daley Sir: Why does Theodore Dalrymple (`Thick accents', 25 October), a writer with whom I usually agree, believe that the pronunciation of 'Newcastle' used by the...

From Michael Knowles Sir: So Ken Livingstone objects to The Spectator carrying the leaflet from the Campaign for an English Parliament about its Open Conference on The Future of...

Adam Zamoyski RISING '44: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW by Norman Davies Macmillan, £25, pp. 660, ISBN 0333905687 T he Warsaw uprising of August 1944 was one of the most tragic...

Henry Hobhouse CRAP TOWNS: THE 50 WORST PLACES TO LIVE IN THE UK edited by Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran Boxtree, £10, pp. 156, ISBN 0752215825 T his inelegantly titled book has...

Jonathan Mirsky MADAM SECRETARY: A MEMOIR by Madeleine Albright Macmillan. £20, pp. 562, ISBN140503369X I t is a mark of the excellence of this memoir by the highest-ranking...

Byron Rogers SUNDRIE PIECES by George Herbert Gregynog Press, £375, pp. 99, ISBN 0954194217 H ah, that's had you fumbling with your bi-focals, but no, there is no printing...

Christopher Howse THE MEANING OF EVERYTHING by Simon Winchester OUP, £12.99, pp. 260, ISBN 10198607024 A da Murray, the wife of the long-bearded progenitor of The Oxford...

Lloyd Evans COLLECTED POETRY by Ted Hughes Faber, £40, pp. 1332, ISBN 0571217192 T ed Hughes was the first living poet I loved. The same is probably true for countless kids who...

Tom Stacey HEMINGWAY IN AFRICA by Christopher Ondaatje HarperCollins, £24.95, pp. 237, ISBN 0002006707 1 t's not fair to blame a book for its subject — a book by a decent...

Andrew Gimson How TO BE A BETTER PARENT by Cassandra Jardine Vermilion, £8.99, pp. 229, ISBN 0091889723 C hildren, like dogs, need to be trained. After this promising start,...

George Osborne WINNING MODERN WARS by General Wesley K. Clark Perseus Group, £18.99, pp. 218, ISBN 1586482181 H ere's a good rule of thumb: never read a book by a politician...

C. D. C. Armstrong HOPE AND HISTORY by Gerry Adams Brandon, £20, pp. 406, ISBN 0863223176 H ope and History is the second volume of autobio g raphy by Gerry Adams ; to g ether...

Simon Courtauld CAPTAIN SCOTT by Ranulph Fiennes Hodder, £20. pp. 508, ISBN 0340826975 S ir Ranulph Fiennes has done Captain Scott's memory some service. For the past two...

Karl Miller T he New York Review of Books has been celebrating the paper's 40th anniversary, and it's only fair to join in, with a show of hands across the sea. The first few...

Susan Moore celebrates 100 years of the National Art Collections Fund E xhibitions celebrating the nation's art treasures have a habit of backfiring. Within 50 years of the...

Andrew Lambirth Bill Viola: The Passions The National Gallery, until 4 January 2004 A 'though I do not value most video art 1 - 1.— too much of it is sloppily made and vacuous...

Laura Gascoigne Eric Rimmington Scalar Fine Am 35 Bruton Place, London WI, until 28 November I es a strange irony of the throwaway society that objets Iron yes — 'found...

This year's obscurity rating at Wexford is down, as Tom Sutcliffe reports I t does seem bizarre, considering the dismal state of opera in Ireland, where Dublin's usual diet of...

Giannandre a Poesio Kammer Kammer, Ballet Frankfurt Sadler's Wells W illiam Forsythe challenges the common perception of what a ballet performance should be like. This talent...

Ursula Buchan I never used to like Pampas grass. In fact, 1 hated it. It was one of the first plants I could name as a child, but not because it appealed to me. There was a...

Stuart Nicholson A s every American is at pains to insist, rjazz is American. And in the sense that America was where it originated and America was where it evolved, it is, But...

Lloyd Evans Thoroughly Modern Millie Shaftesbury Electra Gate Thoroughly Modem Millie has a thor oughly disturbing storyline. An innocent flapper comes to New York and pitches...

Michael Tanner Paride ed Elena Barbican riluck is a composer who tends to divide opinion more than one might expect, given that his art is hardly one of extremes. While many of...

Marcus Berkmann C igns of material success are not hard to Ospot in the modern pop star. Tattoos, extreme drug usage, high levels of paranoia, feeble albums — we've seen it all...

Sebastian Smee is seduced by the Tahitian art of Paul Gauguin Elalse seduction is not something we like to equate with great art. But it's a feeling, a suspicion, that presses...

Michael Vestey B BC radio is pretty good at popularising science; so, nearly 300 years ago, was James Ferguson, the subject of Inventors Imperfect on Radio Four last week...

Simon Hoggart T HE best sitcom on television at the moment (I think even better than Will & Grace on Channel 4, a formula which works perfectly because Will is clearly not gay,...

Robin Oakley M rs Oakley and I have only one dissonance in our lives. When we are due to travel somewhere, she is of the cautious school and I am of the last-minute variety....

Taki New York T believe it was Jemima Khan's idea, the 1 search for a beau for Princess Diana — after her divorce, that is. It was late 1995 going into 1996. If memory serves,...

Jeremy Clarke I T've got these vertical lines running down face, on either side of my mouth, and they are bothering me, You know the lines I mean. The ones that make serious...

Petronella Wyatt Virginia A merica appears to have de-politically orrected itself. On my last trip to New York before 11 September, I was likely to get mud in my eye if I did...

Jaspistos In Competition No. 2313 you were invited to outMary 'Dear Mary' by raising a preposterous question of social behaviour and providing an absurd and ingenious answer....

G OSH, there's some not very nice wine about. The other day I tried a few bottles of something called 'Origin', a branded series of wines from single-grape varieties. They're...

MICHAEL HENDERSON K ICK racism out of football,' proclaimed a banner at the football match I attended last weekend. Before the game, and during half-time, young people carried...

Q. My husband and! are planning to celebrate our 55th (emerald) wedding anniversary with a modest family party. We have verbally accepted a quotation for a finger buffet from a...