T o adapt Macaulay, there is no spectacle so ridiculous as the Labour party in one of its periodic fits of ideology. While the heir-presumptive, Gordon Brown, has remained in...

was the starcrammed party that fiber-agent Irving ‘Swifty’ Lazar threw first at the Bistro in Beverly Hills and later at Spago in Hollywood. Invitations to this party were the...

S ay what you like about Ken Livingstone, you can’t accuse him of failing to spot a political opportunity. When the position of mayor of London was created in 2000, other...

year is of the abolition of the slave trade by Britain. From the amount of breast-beating, you would think that it was 200 years since the trade got going. There is huge...

MONDAY I know I should be excited about the move to Millbank — historic landslide here we come! — but I’d just got my desk next to Jed’s office. It’s taken months of ‘edging’ at...

Tessa Mayes says that snooping and surveillance are on the rise all around us, in a culture where there is no longer a presumption in favour of privacy, and reveals alarming...

taste of g un crime Lloyd Evans is caught in the crossfire in an east London shootout and refuses to accept that such incidents are ‘society’s crime’. They happen because stupid...

Rod Liddle salutes one of the impressionist’s victims, Peter Hain, and the minister’s awesomely flexible definition of principle I t is always cheering to encounter a politician...

George Jellicoe, who died last week, was an early member of David Stirling’s SAS, and soon became commander of the Special Boat Service. We first met in pitch darkness soon...

The US presidential race is setting the scene for a subtle new isolationism, says Irwin Stelzer . America is fed up of playing global policeman and getting no credit for it D...

Britain doesn’t do Lord High Executioners, but if it did, Gordon Brown would probably be the best in the world. The prospect of the Chancellor in this role occurred to me while...

Michael Meacher wants to succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister. Here he offers our readers his radical views on the special relationship, Parliament and the environment A...

From Malcolm Gooderham Sir: Your leading article of 24 February misses a fundamental point. Notably, the epetition initiative has helped to breathe new life into the body...

From Jana Edmunds Sir: Your leading article ‘A nation of babysitters’ (17 February) hinted at a truth behind the problem faced by Britain in relation to childcare. I was a...

From George Simmers Sir: Auden’s ‘Letter to Lord Byron’ is not written in ‘the stanza form of Byron’s Don Juan ’ as Grey Gowrie believes (Books, 24 February). Byron used ottava...

From Richard Mernane Sir: It is a pity that Leo McKinstry, whose writing I find unfailingly compelling, should choose to celebrate the forthcoming World Cup by taking a swipe...

Sir: As a longtime admirer of the great Lilian Thomson (mentioned on page 8 of your cricket supplement), I was disappointed that you were not able to include a photograph....

From Paul Johnson Sir: I was unable to see a proof of my essay on crocodiles, and two misprints emerged in consequence. Lepidus in Antony and Cleopatra appeared as ‘Lefridus’...

A log cabin by a frozen lake in the snowy fastness of central Sweden is a good place to contemplate the future of Blairite third-way politics. Scandinavia has some claim to be...

B rowsing through a Christie’s catalogue, I came across the description of a pen-and-wash drawing by Rowlandson, c. 1800, ‘Elegant company in a park’. It set me thinking. One...

Judi Bevan meets Marcus Agius, the new chairman of the high-street bank that faces a storm of customer protest and a constant buzz of takeover and merger rumours M arcus Agius...

Allister Heath W hen Goldilocks broke into the three bears’ house and stole their breakfast, she found Baby Bear’s porridge to be just right — neither too hot nor too cold. The...

Margareta Pagano learns about the hi-tech potential of the world’s oldest man-made building material L ook! Concrete!’ Bruno Lafont crashes his fist on the table. ‘You could put...

T he current row about private equity seems to me to have much more to do with the flexing of union muscles in anticipation of a return to influence under Gordon Brown than it...

Raymond Carr B EAUMARCHAIS IN S EVILLE : A N I NTERMEZZO by Hugh Thomas Yale, £16, pp. 192, ISBN 9780300121032 H ugh Thomas is widely known as the author of scholarly...

William Brett B ABYLON ’ S B URNING by Clinton Heylin Viking, £20, pp. 694, ISBN 9780670916061 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 C linton Heylin is a celebrated Bob Dylan...

Honor Clerk O VER by Margaret Forster Chatto, £16.99, pp. 200, ISBN 9780701181253 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I t is a curious phenomenon of the modern novel that...

Jonathan Clark G EORGE III: A MERICA ’ S L AST K ING by Jeremy Black Yale, £25, pp. 475, ISBN 0300117329 T he American Revolution is the gorilla in the corner of the room. Some...

Paul Binding D ISTURBING THE P EACE by Richard Yates Methuen, £7.99, pp. 253, ISBN 0413776204 0 £6.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A G OOD S CHOOL by Richard Yates Methuen,...

Anna Maxwell M ARKHAM T HORPE by Giles Waterfield Headline, £17.99, pp. 280, ISBN 0755329694 V ictoriana is unleashed in Giles Waterfield’s third novel, an upstairs-downstairs...

Olivia Glazebrook T EN D AYS IN THE H ILLS by Jane Smiley Faber, £16.99, pp. 449, ISBN 9780571235339 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 J ane Smiley suffered a period of...

Giles Waterfield S TEALING THE S CREAM by Edward Dolnick Icon Books, £12.99, pp. 270, ISBN 9781840467925 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 M unch’s ‘The Scream’ was...

Ian Thomson T. S. E LIOT by Craig Raine OUP, £12.99, pp. 202, ISBN 97805309935 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A t a Clapham dinner party recently I was offered...

Simon Baker T HE B ILL F ROM M Y F ATHER by Bernard Cooper Picador, £12.99, pp. 240, ISBN 9780330447393 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 E dward Cooper, the father...

Frederic Raphael NOTEBOOKS: T ENNESSEE W ILLIAMS edited by Margaret Bradham Thornton Yale, £27.50, pp. 828, ISBN 9780300116823 ✆ £00.00 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T enn —...

Anna Vaux W HAT Y OU W ILL by Katherine Bucknell Fourth Estate,£14.99, pp. 341, ISBN 9780007225101 ✆ £00.00 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 ‘W hat you will’ has a Shakespearean...

T he young Evelyn Waugh, it’s said, once declared in a newspaper article that the writing of novels in the first person was a contemptible practice. One would like to think he...

Stephen Pettitt is attracted to sacred music, despite being a committed agnostic. Why? W ere I ever to be placed in the position of castaway on Desert Island Discs an unlikely...

Andrew Lambirth Guercino: Mind to Paper Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, until 13 May T o be called ‘the squinter’, which is what ‘il Guercino’ means, might not seem an...

Roderick Conway Morris St Nicholas: Artistic Splendours of East and West Castello Svevo, Bari, until 6 May ‘ is clothes are drenched in brine, his H beard drips with seawater,...

Lloyd Evans Ghosts Pentameters The Reporter Cottesloe Equus Gielgud W hen Ghosts was published in 1881 it was met by a Victorian speciality, a wave of international bourgeois...

Deborah Ross The Illusionist PG, selected cinemas T he Illusionist is one of those films that gains points for trying to be clever and different and ingenious but then promptly...

Charles Spencer J erry Garcia once compared his band the Grateful Dead to liquorice. As with the pitch-black confectionery, you either loved them or loathed them, he said. It...

Michael Tanner The Excursions of Mr Broucek Barbican S unday evening at the Barbican was a revelation, no less gushy word will do. Janacek’s comic opera The Excursions of Mr...

Giannandrea Poesio The Bull Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, Barbican M ichael Keegan-Dolan is to dance–theatre what radical and elusive Banksy is to the visual arts. Indeed,...

Kate Chisholm M elvyn Bragg stirred up quite a controversy last week by devoting his weekly In Our Time programme (Radio Four) to the anti-slavery campaigner William...

Simon Hoggart I used to write a few political profiles in my time, and the one thing I always hoped was that the subject would refuse to co-operate. You had to offer to...

Robin Oakley N ewmarket it isn’t. Forget clipped hedges, purring security gates and decorated dovecotes. At Gary Moore’s yard in Woodingdean there isn’t even a name over the...

Taki Gstaad M argaret MacMillan’s new book, Nixon and Mao, brought back pleasant memories. It was February 1972, and I’d just returned to Saigon from Phu Bai and Hue in the...

Jeremy Clarke F or the six weeks that I was in Las Apujarras, I bought provisions from the backs of rural delivery vans. The arrival of one of these vans, one for bread,...

Roy Hattersley B y the time that I arrived — a good half-hour before the public inquiry was scheduled to begin — there was hardly a seat left unoccupied. The people of Calver,...

go to the Almeida Theatre in Islington to see There Came A Gypsy Rising (excellent I do love a rising gypsy!) and then it’s over the road to Ottolenghi on Upper Street....

Why Oscar Humphries wants a signet ring on his finger T here are many things I covet. There are in fact, few things I don’t desire except herpes, dental work sans anaesthetic,...

Rachel Johnson takes the size-zero debate up a notch J ust when the size-zero debate was threatening for the first time in ages to stop picture editors from filling pages with...

Tom Williams takes a cycling tour of New Zealand’s wineries B icycles and wine, on paper at least, do not make the best partners. Wasn’t it Virgil who said that good vines love...

FRANK KEATING B y next Wednesday evening, uniquely, five British clubs could be in the last eight of the European Champions’ Cup. There is still, as they say, a lot of football...

where I saw two people I usually meet up with each year at a certain house-party. They greeted me with yelps of anticipation and asked was I excited about meeting up again next...

the intermission I was invited to share a glass of wine at a private gathering, at which time I was introduced to several people and I extended my hand in greeting to each. One...