destructive wave in the Indian Ocean, British people donated £60 million in a week to the disaster emergency committee co-ordinated by the main aid charities. The Queen, who...

S ince 1997, in a cynical effort to prove that it values power for more than its own sake, the Blair government has sought to tear up the constitutional map and impose its own,...

get a lobotomy. I had rung him to ask whether he’d like to grace Newsnight and the nation with his views on the affair between the former home secretary and the publisher of...

W hen Michael Howard became Tory leader, time was desperately short. For six and a half years, the Tories had been unable to convert Labour’s negatives to their positives. They...

and Nicki. Keith Lake used to be my driver when I was editor of the Daily Telegraph and remains a great friend. He and his wife Nicki were on holiday in the Maldives. I felt...

China has no exportable culture, she is militarily overrated and her economy is not as successful as it is cracked up to be. Martin Vander Weyer says it’s time we abandoned our...

From 1 January 1888 ‘all substances, whether compound or otherwise, prepared in imitation of butter’ had to be offered for sale under the name of margarine . I can’t pretend...

Andrew Gilligan on some of the myths the media have been peddling about the tsunami Colombo T he staff of Unicef’s Sri Lanka operation are in their Colombo offices dealing as...

Lloyd Evans was left a whimpering wreck when his back seized up. Then an alternative therapist got her hands on him... I was attacked last November. It happened without warning...

Max Hastings says it’s about time our leaders stopped playing political games and accepted that ‘international terror’ cannot be defeated by conventional military means I f the...

A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade The national ‘giveathon’ provoked by Boxing Day’s tsunami in the Indian Ocean is an admirable response to an...

The Archbeard of Canterbury has proclaimed that the tsunami disaster in Asia justifies people’s doubts about the existence of any God, let alone a good one. If he needs comfort...

These are hard days for Methodists, but even as their numbers decline they are fighting the good fight. Sholto Byrne talks to their General Secretary ‘W here have all the...

by Robert McCrum P.G. Wodehouse is still o n e of the world’s best-loved writers. Nearly thirty years after his death, over fifty-five of his n ovels are still i n pri n t. His...

From Virginia Price Evans Sir: It is interesting how people reveal their prejudices by the words they use. So, to A.N. Wilson (‘Holy Sage’, 18/25 December) those who oppose...

T hese days the media do not show much interest in God. On television He was long ago shunted into the backwaters, though it is true He retains a bailiwick on Radio Four. You...

P itch it in your imagination, somewhere between Louis XIV on his couch at Versailles and a down-and-out on his cardboard litter under the railway arches at Charing Cross. Now...

H ow convenient it would be if we could find something out of a package — a computer programme, presumably to do our conscience’s work for us. Then we could switch off and stop...

M y old friend Peregrine Worsthorne was deploring the other day the decline in the quality of courtesans. And it is true that those who get themselves into the headlines today,...

Sam Leith T HE D IARIES OF C HARLES GREVILLE edited by Edward and Diana Pearce Pimlico, £18.99, pp. 368, ISBN 1844134040 V £16.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 C harles...

Philip Ziegler M OMENTS OF V ISION : A M EMOIR by Elizabeth Basset The Ledburn Press, £15, pp. 160, ISBN 095491810X He sees Dickens and Jerrold performing Every Man in his...

Sarah Bradford T HE P OPE ’ S D AUGHTER by Caroline P. Murphy Faber, £16.99, pp. 315, ISBN 571221076 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 ‘W hosoever wants to do as they...

Julian Shuckburgh E VENING IN THE P ALACE OF REASON by James Gaines Fourth Estate, £15.99, pp. 328, ISBN 0007153929 ✆ £13.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 A lthough for more...

Diana Hendry S LEEPING A RRANGEMENTS by Laura Shaine Cunningham Bloomsbury, £12.99, pp. 228, ISBN 0747576270 ✆ £11.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 A t a time when publishers...

Peter J. M. Wayne B REAKING G ROUND : A DVENTURES IN L IFE AND ARCHITECTURE by Daniel Libeskind John Murray, £20, pp. 288, ISBN 0719566541 ✆ £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848...

Adam Zamoyski I N THE G ARDEN OF M EMORY by Joanna Olczak-Ronikier, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 322, ISBN 0297645498 ✆ £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800...

Toby Young F ATHERHOOD : T HE T RUTH by Marcus Berkmann Vermilion, £10.99, ,pp. 282, ISBN 0091900638 O nce upon a time, long, long ago, people used to argue about politics. Now...

John Martin Robinson T HE B RITISH S TABLE by Giles Worsley Yale, £45, pp. 320, ISBN 0300107080 W hich is the finest 18th-century building in England? Not a royal palace, not a...

Andrew Lambirth looks at the treats we can expect over the coming year T o get the year off to a good start is the eye-catchingly titled William Orpen — Politics, Sex & Death...

Mark Steyn Alexander 15, selected cinemas E xperts disagree on when precisely Oliver Stone lost it. In his memoir of his time as Stone’s co-producer on Nixon and other work,...

Petroc Trelawny A ccording to the leader of Gateshead Council, it wasn’t long ago that the River Tyne was like an open sewer. No one went near it unless they had to;...

Michael Tanner Das Rheingold Royal Opera House A fter seemingly endless drumrolls and fanfares, with the conductor Antonio Pappano and the director Keith Warner giving...

Peter Phillips T his year is rich in composers’ anniversaries, if one takes a moment to look for them. Sir Michael Tippett, who was born on 2 January 1905 and has already been...

Michael Vestey I wasn’t sure there was much more to say about the late Alistair Cooke, who died at the end of last March at the age of 95. An excellent biography of him had...

Simon Hoggart T he point about Desperate Housewives (Channel 4, Wednesday) is that it’s not remotely a feminist tract about women obliged to live as slavish appendages of their...

Robin Oakley T he Soviets had sent a dog into space before they sent Yuri Gagarin. When the astronaut Gagarin, after his feat, came to London, he was mobbed by admiring crowds,...

Taki Gstaad T his place made its reputation during the Fifties. It was known as the Mecca of old money and good manners, as opposed to other stations d’hiver , where old people...

Jeremy Clarke O n New Year’s Day I was sitting in the waiting-room of the genito-urinary clinic (the genital warts have flared up again) reading a book of selected writings by...

Petronella Wyatt T ypical of me, I omitted to pack the terribly highbrow tomes I had planned to take to South Africa in my hand luggage and put them, instead, in my suitcase. I...

FRANK KEATING T here is a calming domestic languor about new year sport. Pleasant. Like things used t’be. Olde tyme talk is of minnows and giant-slayers and the ‘magic’ of the...

normally rent out at New Year for a huge sum of money. This year they very kindly allowed me to have it and to invite ten friends from uni. It all went really well and everyone...

who currently have ‘builders in’? Ask the builders to plumb in a hot water tap along with powerful sprayhead hose to run into a ground-level sink near your back door. You will...

dinner party, some unusual cheeses came round and I took (tiny) helpings of about five different varieties, none of which I had tried before. My neighbour told me that when one...