Extraordinary measures are sometimes necessary to quell the madness of crowds. When Diana, Princess of Wales's mourners threatened to vent their angry grief on the institution...

DEBORAH DEVONSHIRE 1 n the wake of my niece by marriage, Charlotte Mosley, queen of editors, I have done a few book signings lately in aid of The MiOrds: Letters Between Six...

CHARLES MOORE For ten years, it has been said that Gordon Brown gave independence to the Bank of England. He never did, and this week dramatically reminds us of that fact. What...

By Tamzin Lightwater MONDAY Hooray! Labour no longer the Party of Economic Competence!! It's all over! Or rather, it's all back on!! Dave looks like a weight has been lifted....

In Bournemouth, Brown will present himself as the indispensable father of the nation, says Fraser Nelson. He will unveil a strategy to crush the Tories and project himself as...

It is a huge mistake to underestimate the PM and his achievements, says Irwin Stelzer. But he himself must learn that he has made serious mistakes and adjust accordingly Not...

Matthew d'Ancona talks to Mark Penn about his new book on `microtrends', his work as Hillary Clinton's chief strategist — and why 'you need experience to bring about change' 1 f...

Walking to the station the other day I was thinking how annoying it is that, when people are invited to name their favourite words, so many answer serendipity. Then, blow me if...

John Hutton, an ultra-Blairite, was thought to be destined for a grisly end under Brown. Yet he remains in the Cabinet and, he tells Fraser Nelson, his Blairite philosophy still...

Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, responds to our editorial last week on the Reform Treaty. It is not, he says, the same as the 2004 EU Constitutional Treaty and its 'red lines'...

Rod Liddle says that the CRE, now being merged into a super-commission, never grasped that the disparities between ethnic communities reflect cultural forces within them Le ss a...

Sarah Vine's Great Big Glorious Book for Girls was a number one bestseller: it was also attacked by 'the Sisters' as 'a conscious act of aggression' against her own sex As a...

Sir: Your leading article overstates the case for a referendum in the UK (15 September). It would be interesting to know how many newspapers thought there should be a referendum...

Sir: In your introduction to Peter Oborne's article 'The Establishment is dead,' (15 September) you say that `the term "Establishment" was coined in The Spectator', and you...

Sir: In his review of General Jackson's book Soldier (Books, 15 September), Andro Linklater ends with an unintended insight: `that he has left his mark on the army for years to...

Sir: Philip Hensher is quite right to correct Peter Ackroyd's bizarre suggestion that the apostles in Zoffany's 'Last Supper' were modelled on Thames fishermen (Books, 8...

Sir: Rod Liddle's rugby piece (8 September) was bad-tempered, foul-mouthed and oikish. The poor fellow seems to have a monstrous chip on his shoulder. There's probably just as...

Sir: I don't know about the legal circles in which Clarissa Dickson Wright used to move (8 September), but in the diplomatic service, when I used to attend receptions at British...

HUGO RIFKIND Iv hy does Gordon Brown have a 'big tent'? Why, to be pertinent, does he have a 'tent' at all? There must have been leaders, throughout world history, who have...

PAUL JOHNSON ne need not be depressed by lugubrious calculations of how many trees are chopped down to produce one edition of a popular newspaper. The timber industry is so...

Jules Evans says billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska has global business ambitions — but a dispute with another Russian tycoon, Michael Cherney, may get in his way leg...

Ross Clark Ivhile all eyes were on the crash of Northern Rock last week, something even scarier was happening. Two of Britain's many house price indices — there were eight...

Judi Bevan wonders whether the Body Shop founder's view of capitalism was hypocritical or just muddled As the train trundled down to Littlehampton one warm summer afternoon in...

MARTIN VANDER WEYER Hindsight suggests that the Rock was always likely to get the Northern into trouble one day. The Northern Counties Permanent Building Society, founded in...

Mary Wakefield on the highs and lows of skitouring in the French Alps .57 a.m. I wake up three minutes before the alarm is due to go off, aware that I have slept badly: dipping...

Stanley Johnson At the beginning of 1984 — more than 23 years ago — I was lucky enough to be invited by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to join its research and supply...

Christian House At 17, Truman Capote 'just wanted to get out of Greenwich and get to New York'. The local high school paper may have provided his first byline, but the dazzle of...

James Leith Ask any non-African what 'safari' means and they will almost certainly say that it has something to do with looking at wildlife, probably through the windows of a...

Churchill described Russia as a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. He was referring to the Soviet Union, all eight million square miles of it. Slightly reduced, the...

Rosemary Behan D , o you mind if I take off my shirt?' Elias took another long draw on the water pipe and looked at me. As we reclined in the shadow of his crumbling palace in...

Philip Hensher THE MITFORDS: LETTERS BETWEEN SIX SISTERS edited by Charlotte Mosley 4th Estate, £25, pp. 832, ISBN 9781841157900 © £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 At the...

Charlotte Moore THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS by Jonathan Coe Viking, £17.99, pp. 278, ISBN 9780436205972 £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 qjonathan Coe's gloomy new novel will...

Raymond Carr THE DAY OF THE BARBARIANS: THE FIRST BATTLE IN THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Alessandro Barbero, translated by John Cullen Atlantic, £17.99, pp. 192, ISBN...

Frederic Raphael ANCIENT ROME ON FIVE DENARII A DAY by Philip Matyszak Thames & Hudson, £12.95, pp. 144, ISBN 9780500051474 £1039 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Quid have we...

In this cool cube of marble I am valid but invisible As an image caught in a camera But not yet reproduced. My reappearance from confinement Is that of a lavatory Houdini...

Caroline Moore DIVISADERO by Michael Ondaatje Bloomsbury, £17.99, pp. 273, ISBN 9780747589242 £1439 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Michael Ondaatje's legion of admirers will not...

Ian Sansom BRIDGE OF SIGHS by Richard Russo Bloomsbury, £17.99, pp. 544, ISBN 9780701175979 £1439 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Richard Russo is one of those writers, and they...

Paul Routledge BORROWED TIME: THE STORY OF BRITAIN BETWEEN THE WARS by Roy Hattersley Little, Brown, £20, pp. 454, ISBN 9780316730327 £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 perhaps...

Francis King EXIT GHOST by Philip Roth Cape, £16.99, pp. 292, ISBN 97824681097531 © £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 This is the ninth and final volume of the sequence,...

Sargy Mann THE MODEL by Lars Saabye Christensen, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett Arcadia, £11.99, pp. 320, ISBN 978190514721X © £9.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429...

William Brett FOREIGNERS by Caryl Phillips Harvill Secker, £16.99, pp. 261, ISBN 9780436205972 £13.59(plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Caryl Phillips has found his niche, as a...

My lover tells me that when autumn comes He will fashion me a boat of cherry blossom: There's no way I'm getting in that. Sean O'Brien

Simon Baker SHAKESPEARE by Bill Bryson HaiperPress, £14.99, pp. 200, ISBN 9780007197898 © £11.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 SHAKESPEARE'S WIFE by Germaine Greer Bloomsbury,...

Alexander Masters THE POINCARE CONJECTURE: IN SEARCH OF THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE by Donal O'Shea Allen Lane, £17.99, pp. 292, ISBN 9781846140129 £14.39 (plus £2.45 p+p) 0870...

Bone-domed, wet-suited, that New Zealand day, six of us in a dinghy diced with death. Twenty-five rapids made us hold our breath. The snowmelt river took our breath away. Eleven...

Jonathan Mirsky ENERGY OF DELUSION: A BOOK ON PLOT by Viktor Shklovsky Dalkey Archive, £9.99, pp. 440, ISBN 9781564784266 E7.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 It's terribly...

Andrew Taylor David Peace's astringent novels inhabit the borderland between genre and mainstream fiction. His work includes the Red Riding Quartet and GB84 (winner of the James...

Gary Dexter ESCAPE TO HELL AND OTHER STORIES (1996) by Muammar Qaddafi The stories of this volume are not so much stories, in the sense of having a plot and characters, but...

On The Courtauld's 75th anniversary, Robin Simon looks back at its colourful and distinguished history The Tate Gallery. ... sorry, I'll start again. 'Tate' spent £100,000 a few...

Andrew Lambirth The Art of Lee Miller V&A, until 6 January 2008 Sponsored by Olympus This beautiful exhibition celebrates the 100th anniversary of Lee Miller's birth in...

Roger Kimball Edward Hopper National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, until 21 January 2008 It is not surprising that Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is an immensely popular artist. His...

Deborah Ross A Mighty Heart 15, Nationwide There are, as far as I know, only two Angelinas that are also famous brands. There is Angelina Ballerina, a mouse in a tutu, and there...

Michael Tanner lphigdnie en Tauride Royal Opera House Romeo und Juliet St John's It is astonishing that Gluck achieves such greatness with such limited musical resources. For me...

Lloyd Evans The Member of the Wedding Young Vic The Ugly One Royal Court Awake and Sing! Almeida No idea why, but the hunt is on for lost 20th-century masterpieces. Michael...

Patrick Camegy Black Eyed Susan Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds Twelfth Night Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Between the towering majesty of Greene King's brewery and its...

James Delingpole t the launch of Patrick Bishop's 3 Para at the Cavalry and Guards Club last week, I met some of the boys who've been doing their bit in Helmand. God, they...

Kate Chisholm Hedied in 1955, aged 45, in the back of a New York taxi cab (we were not told how), wrote the script for The African Queen (going so far as to direct the moment...

Ursula Buchan It is more than 40 years since the foundation of the Garden History Society signalled that the study of the history of gardens and designed landscapes had become...

Taki ne tends to do a lot of reading on board a boat while sailing far from the madding yobs. Mostly books, thank God, as newspapers are hard to find until they're ready to wrap...

Jeremy Clarke rr he gym attendant is giving me private boxing lessons for ten quid an hour. He used to box for the army. He candidly admits to having perfected one combination...

Sarah Standing says that luxury hotels tick all the right boxes Gentlemen, I'm going to let you in on one of the great mysteries of life. I'm going to tell you what most married...

James Waldron on the three Ts of wet-shave houses years ago I was an enthusiastic patron of Piers Adam's establishments. His various nightclubs and bars would entice me on an...

Jonathan Ray falls in love with Armagnac and all things Gascon 1 t was inevitable: no sooner had we driven past the signposts to Condom than the guffaws started. My wife,...

TOBY YOUNG ne of the occupational hazards of being a journalist these days is that, sooner or later, you'll get a call asking if you want to be in a reality show. The reason is...

These days we find the idea of an exclusive citizenship hard to handle, probably because we live in a multi-ethnic, 'global' world where `inclusivity' is an endlessly repeated...

Dear Maly Q. I work in an office where the loo is shared by three separate professions — all rather civilised ones, at that. However, we are not money-makers, and therefore...

FRANK KEATING Spectator readers Alan Magid and Timothy Straker were quick on the draw (Letters, 25 August, 8 September) to champion Mike by PG. Wodehouse in a matey reproach to...