while asleep, at 3.15 p.m. on 30 March, aged 101; the Queen was at her side. The Queen Mother, who was born on 4 August 1900, is to be buried in the same vault as her husband...

T he death of the Queen Mother, adornment for 80 years of our national life, has betrayed a certain poverty of outlook in sections of our press. She was a staunch, light-hearted...

R ecently, in St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin's home city — into which he is pouring money in time for the 300th anniversary of its founding — a friend and I bought two icons in a...

PETER OBORNE T his is the weekend of the Grand National meeting, when Aintree racecourse hosts what remains emphatically the greatest horserace in the world. This year there...

When the Queen Mother was born, writes Theodore Dalrymple, Britain was a country of greatness and charm. Today it is irrevocably associated with boorishness and vulgarity...

Sarah Bradford on how the Queen Mother brought the monarchy closer to the people OLD age, the last enemy she fought so indomitably, has finally overcome Queen Elizabeth the...

In June 1990 A.N. Wilson reported this dinner-table conversation with the Queen Mother The article caused a sensation THE Queen Mother is a largely mythological being. This is...

AN Oscar-winning film about the Nobel-Prize mathematician John Nash (A Beautiful Mind) concentrates on his really important achievements, i.e. falling in love and going potty....

British officers will not criticise the US forces, but, discovers Julian Manyon, the GIs are full of surprises Bagram airbase, Afghanistan IT is often by accident that one...

Seventy years ago the Rector of Stiffkey was defrocked, but, asks Leo McKinstry, did he really deserve to be eaten by a lion? DESPITE the recent unedifying parade of...

It may not be fair, says Mark Steyn, but the Palestinian uprising must be crushed ON 19 September, when everyone was making Pearl Harbor comparisons, I stood at Ground Zero...

A Bite noire of Kim Parsons, who tells me he is neither a fogy nor geriatric, is anthem, as in 'Top 40 Pop Anthems of All Time'. He doesn't understand what it means. I am not...

Ariel Sharon may be his own worst enemy, says Paul Gottfried, but the man has chutzpah — and he is in the right RECENTLY I was shown the text of an interview with General...

PAUL JOHNSON W hat is the most serious form of racism in the world today? It is anti-Americanism, How so? Because it is deliberately whipped up by intellectuals and...

STEPHEN GLOVER E arlier this year I wondered whether Rupert Murdoch might be in financial trouble. I didn't have a shred of evidence that he was. It was a sort of instinctive...

FRANK JOHNSON T hough long expected, which of us could not fail to be moved by the death, though peaceful and at a great age, on an Easter Saturday afternoon, of the BBC? Yet...

From Sir Nicholas Henderson Sir: Matthew Parris's article (Another voice, 30 March) and John Nott's recently published autobiography to which he referred raise doubts about...

From Mr Stanislas M. Yassukovich, CBE Sir: On the matter of commercial farmers in Zimbabwe (Time to deal with Mugabe', AIgy Cluff, 30 March): they are Zimbabwean citizens who...

From Anne M. Sebba Sir: I have just returned from a trip to Turkey in the company of two elegant Swedish ladies who neither wore trousersuits nor had irritating accents...

CHRISTOPHER F ILDES A uberon Waugh explained digital television to me. This was the new kind, he said, which could be operated with your fingers, as opposed to the old sets...

Frederic Raphael THE DOUBLE BOND by Carole Angier Penguin, £25, pp. 928, ISBN 0670883336 PRIMO LEVI by Ian Thomson Hutchinson, £25, pp.624, ISBN 0091785316 C an we assume that...

Robert Edric COMING SOON!!! by John Barth Atlantic Books, £14.99, pp. 396, ISBN 1903809460 W ith the possible exceptions of those preaching dogs, dancing bears and crazy,...

Michael Glover FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE by Seamus Heaney Faber, £20, pp. 416, ISBN 0571210805 A nother year, another Heaney, hohum. I counted up 20-odd titles on the...

Alan Judd AUTOMOBILE: HOW THE CAR CHANGED LIFE by Ruth Brandon Macmillan, £20, pp. 467, ISBN 0333766660 B efore cars, Ruth Brandon tells us, streets were 'not necessarily, or...

Peregrine Worsthorne STATECRAFT by Margaret Thatcher HarperCollins, £25, pp. 486, ISBN 0349115281 S tatecraft at one relatively lowly level is the craft of making the best of...

Salley Vickers A PATTERN OF MADNESS by Neville Symington Kamac, 122.50. pp. 234, ISBN 1855752794 A though I have spent much of my working life in what might loosely be called...

Nicolette Jones A CHILD'S BOOK OF TRUE CRIME by Chloe Hooper Cape, 412.99, pp. 308, ISBN 0701173211 HAVING IT AND EATING IT by Sabine Durrant Time Warner, £5.99, pp. 336, ISBN...

Michael Henderson salutes Claudio Abbado as he prepares to leave the Berlin Philharmonic M erely to be in Salzburg over Easter was to bathe in the broad, brimming river called...

Playing around Laura Gascoigne R ecently, trains through London have become more interesting. As they chunter slowly round the back of things, opening up vistas unseen from...

Marcus Berkmann T he problem with collecting records is. well, all these bloody records. Recently I have been wondering what to do with them all. Not that I ever set out to...

Teenage cruelty Toby Young I t's happened again. Just when I was beginning to think that being a theatre critic is a terrible chore, I've been sandbagged by an absolutely...

By Pallas, it's inept! Michael Tanner A s the climax of more than a month's celebrations of the centenary of Walton's birth, at the Royal Festival Hall there was a rare...

Mark Steyn A t the Oscars back in the Eighties, Dudley Moore said, 'It took me 20 years to become a household name. Even in my own household.' Three household names died last...

Ursula Buchan N othing about horticulture irritates and soothes, so much as its deep conservatism. Gardeners and nurserymen, aided and abetted by manufacturers and gardening...

James Delingpole A bout this time last year when for one reason or another I was feeling fairly down, someone suggested that what I really needed was to see a cognitive...

Michael Vestey I t is odd that the BBC seemed so unprepared for the death of the Queen Mother. After all, it has been rehearsing its coverage of this very moment for many...

Robin Oakley J umping folk will miss the Queen Mother more than most, and they will remember her as much for her sportsmanship as for the winners she owned like Game Spirit,...

Taki E Washington DC leven or so years ago, my very good friend and mentor William F. Buckley Jr devoted an entire issue of National Review — the magazine he had founded and...

Jeremy Clarke I t took about three weeks for the Prozac to kick in. In the meantime, I took the doctor's advice and got out more by going to the pub every evening. I went to...

Petronella Wyatt M y father liked to whip you up into a frenzy of frustration before he told you what you wanted to know. In the summer of 1980, he and my mother went about...

AT the end of a week when an order once unquestioned has been challenged, when the fount of authority has been impertinently asked to justify its curious hierarchies, complex...

Kim Fletcher JUST when you think you've had it with football, had it with cheating and whining, hyperbole and money, philandering players and replica kits; just when you see...

London's best vegetarian Indian restaurants with some friends — enjoyed, that is, until a party at the next table, comprising two young couples and a baby, decided to change the...

for the party and is going rather well. We have one member who is upsetting the others. He dominates the conversation, asks the speakers questions aggressively, and interrupts...

greeting 'Hello, How do you do?' — which requires no answer — for 'All right?' How is one supposed to respond to this greeting, which suddenly heaps on one the mental effort of...