F or a politician to invite the television cameras into his home is a risky business. An inexperienced Mrs Thatcher in 1975 merely had to open her larder to the nation to find...

State for Culture, said that she had signed without asking any questions a form that her husband, Mr David Mills, used to gain a mortgage for a house, which he repaid a month...

once thought of taking over a radio station and starting a revolution. In those days the wireless exerted far more influence than the newspapers, at least in our house. I can...

S ir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet secretary, has been obliged to deal with a considerable volume of intricate business in the course of his brilliant Whitehall career. When he...

Because it was a weekday, the mounted field was small — half a dozen or so. As soon as they moved off, they were pursued by 31 masked men, many of them carrying fence posts....

The public is not as enlightened as New Labour would like to believe, says Ross Clark , in this analysis of an exclusive Spectator/YouGov poll on sexual attitudes I t was John...

One of America’s most celebrated ‘sexologists’ tells Harry Mount that there are some problems she will not advise on New York ‘I tell them about pressure, foreplay ......

‘It is,’ Tony Blair said, ‘a word, I think, that members of the public readily know and understand and juries will understand.’ He was talking about glorification . I...

Maybe not, but Piers Paul Read says that the refusal to tame our instincts is coarsening society and harming children O f the precepts that have been abandoned in my lifetime,...

Miles Douglas on the jealousy, ageism and sexual intrigue of gay men’s lives A few months ago I persuaded one of my oldest and best gay friends to invite his lively,...

Why do middle-class mums go to the gym for pole-dancing classes? Because, says Ariel Levy , they have been conned by kitschy, slutty ‘raunch culture’ S ome version of a...

Several years ago, in another lifetime it seems, I played a porn star. In fact I played the Pornstar, in a fairly successful little twohand play called The Dyke and the...

Fraser Nelson on the long-term implications of Europe’s falling birth rate T he last European will die on 6 August 2960. This, if you extend demographic trends far enough, is...

Last time we saw how closely the preparations to make Gordon Brown prime minister paralleled those to make Tiberius emperor ( princeps , ‘first man’) in AD 14, after the...

Rod Liddle doesn’t mean to give offence, but suggests that one of Britain’s strongest appeals as a tourist destination is that our women put it about A n opinion poll of...

Bryan Appleyard says that the attempt to transcend human nature by tinkering with embryonic genes is doomed to failure ‘D esigner babies’ is headline shorthand for a weird...

Douglas Davis says that George W. Bush’s drive for global democracy may hand the Hashemite kingdom over to Hamas I f unintended consequences are the progeny of political...

From Daniel Hannan, MEP Sir: Paul Johnson demolishes the ludicrous expression ‘to the right of Genghis Khan’ and wonders what the Mongol leader’s true politics might have...

From Henry Smith Sir: Alasdair Palmer’s piece (‘Local villains’, 25 February) regarding the unresponsiveness and intransigence of local authorities is, I am sure, wearily...

From Prudence Bell Sir: Ross Clark’s article about Sion Jenkins (‘Trial by tabloid’, 18 February) was a victory for common sense and reasoned journalism. The lack of...

From Beverly Ellis Sir: I cannot help but think that Boris Johnson is being disingenuous when he asks why selection is ‘banned’ in the state-maintained sector (Diary, 11...

From Neil Wilson Sir: Jane Kelly’s fascinating article (‘Out of tune’, 25 February) highlighted the cultural alienation of immigrant communities. So she might be...

From Derek Bingham Sir: I couldn’t agree more with the lady who says that the Telegraph is the perfect size to pluck pheasants on (Any other business, 18 February). It’s...

E very time Sir Alan Sugar fires a contestant on The Apprentice , the nation quivers in admiration; likewise whenever Sir Richard Branson launches another airborne publicity...

S o Mark Bolland has definitively fallen out with his public-relations ‘guru’, the Prince of Wales. Many assume that it is the other way about, with Charles the prince, Mr...

A scare article in the Guardian says that handwriting will soon disappear. Not so. In fact, in the last two years I have reverted to doing all my writing by hand as they no...

Sam Leith T OO C LOSE TO THE S UN : T HE L IFE AND T IMES OF D ENYS F INCH H ATTON by Sara Wheeler Jonathan Cape, £18.99, pp. 284, ISBN 9780224063804 ✆ £15.19 (plus £2.45...

Frank Field C HRISTIANITY AND S OCIAL S ERVICE IN M ODERN B RITAIN : T HE D ISINHERITED S PIRIT by Frank Prochaska OUP, £35, pp. 216, ISBN 0199287929 ✆ £28 (plus £2.45...

Bazaar Vicki Woods A D ASH OF D ARING by Penelope Rowlands Simon & Schuster, £20, pp. 548, ISBN 0743480457 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 C armel Snow, routinely...

P. J. Kavanagh D EAR R OOM by Hugo Williams Faber, £8.99, pp. 55, ISBN 0571230377 T he poems of Hugo Williams used to puzzle me; they were so simple I couldn’t make them...

Harriet Sergeant M ISHIMA ’ S S WORD : T RAVELS IN S EARCH OF A S AMURAI L EGEND by Christopher Ross 4th Estate, £14.99, pp. 262, ISBN 9780007135080 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.45...

Sandy Balfour N OMAD ’ S H OTEL by Cees Nooteboom, translated by Ann Kelland Harvill/ Secker, £16.99, pp. 195, ISBN 1843431505 ✆ £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I...

Hugh Massingberd T HE B UILDINGS OF S COTLAND : T HE B ORDERS by Kitty Cruft, John Dunbar and Richard Fawcett Yale, £29.95, pp. 841, ISBN 0300107021 ✆ £23.95 (plus £2.45...

David Gilmour G OD ’ S T ERRORISTS by Charles Allen Little, Brown, £20, pp. 349, ISBN 0316729973 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 T he words ‘fanatic’ and...

Francis Wheen J OHN W ILKES by Arthur H. Cash Yale, £20, pp. 482, ISBN 0300108710 ✆ £16 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 J ohn Wilkes was an unlikely icon cross-eyed from...

Sebastian Smee S TILL L OOKING by John Updike Hamish Hamilton, £25, pp. 222, ISBN 0241143357 ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 J ohn Updike is, among one or two other...

Judith Flanders M AGGI H AMBLING : T HE W ORKS AND C ONVERSATIONS WITH A NDREW L AMBIRTH Unicorn Press, £40, pp. 240, ISBN 0906290848 I must declare an interest. At my...

Selina Mills T he Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell is one of those books that people keep rediscovering. You can’t believe you have never come across it before (it was...

Andrew Lambirth on Charlie Millar’s pavement of resin casts in Canterbury Cathedral F or Lent, the artist Charlie Millar (born 1965) has installed a pavement of 308 resin...

Alan Powers Starting at Zero: Black Mountain College 1933–57 Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, until 2 April Now You See It Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until 7 May L ondon...

Michael Kennedy A lthough the 100th anniversary of Shostakovich’s birth is still six months away, Manchester staged a six-week celebration in January and February...

Peter Phillips M usic festivals, like any public undertaking to do with ‘art’, put their planners on their mettle. As much creative thought can go into the format and the...

Ursula Buchan I have been talking tosh. Well, not entire tosh, but certainly substantial dollops of wishful thinking and airy, groundless supposition. I have come to this...

Olivia Glazebrook Syriana 15, selected cinemas ‘S yriana’ is ‘a term used by Washington think-tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East’,...

Toby Young The Cut Donmar The Exonerated Riverside Studios Steptoe and Son Comedy T here’s a scene in The Cut , a new play by Mark Ravenhill, that is so dull I came within a...

Michael Tanner Macbeth Royal Opera La Bohème Royal Albert Hall V erdi’s Macbeth is one of those operas which I always have hopes will be greater than it ever actually seems...

Charles Spencer T here’s nothing like a medical — or, as it is now known, an ‘executive health check’ — to make you feel painfully aware of your own mortality. As...

Michael Vestey T here was a gripping account of Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech denouncing Stalin in 1956 in The Speech that Shook the Kremlin on Radio Four last week...

James Delingpole I mportant stuff first: can the chap with the farm address in Shropshire who very kindly said he’d let me have his hunt coats and boots for a modest sum...

Taki T he telephone rang rather early, and when I picked it up an English male voice said, ‘Hello, Taki, this is David Irving ... ’ He was ringing from the Vienna pokey,...

Jeremy Clarke M y boy didn’t want to go to Venice. His in-built cant detector, these days becoming more finely tuned with every passing day, had alerted him to the...

of a problem warming to Gary Rhodes? I know, I know, all celebrity chefs have their annoying shortcomings: Jamie’s wet lips; Nigella’s sloppy eating habits (sucking her...

Lucy Vickery Perhaps it’s the association with The Goodies and with Dennis Nilsen, serial killer, but people are reluctant to admit that they live in Cricklewood. ‘Well,...

P rivate Cellar is a new company specialising in delightful, unusual, outof-the-way wines of quality. We ran a mini-bar offer with them last year, and it went extremely well,...

FRANK KEATING T reats all round next week if the secondleg matches in football’s Champions League are as compelling as the first. Chelsea and Rangers, each playing in Spain,...

near me. Our exchanges have always been businesslike and I doubt she has noticed my interest. The other women I work with appear to find me congenial and we socialise outside...

wish to be. I am told that I have a lot going for me, but all the men at the office are married and I am too old, at 32, to meet men in nightclubs. None of my friends knows any...

have a partner but I am not that interested in sex. What are my prospects? Name withheld, Eton A. Plenty of girls have body dysmorphia and would be only too pleased to proceed...