Columnists are still partisan. Our readers aren’t
An email exchange with a Conservative-leaning friend this week left me feeling sheepish. But if shameful my behaviour be, I’m…
Steerpike
The wine waiters at Claridges are taking a keen interest in the investigation into malpractice in Falkirk. And they’re hoping…
Is this amazing railway going ahead? Not if Boris and Mandychops can help it
‘Does anyone seriously doubt that this amazing scheme is actually going to go ahead?’ boomed Boris Johnson last week. ‘No…
Wind
Invisible hand that jangles the lantern over the porch and tells the leaves on the pond to imagine they are…
School wars
The battle over the King's School in Tynemouth shows just how deeply confused Labour has become about education reform
Knickers to burlesque
People enjoying a lifestyle are choking and denigrating people trying to build a life
Do look now
At 85, the film director Nicolas Roeg is pleased to see the critics catching up with him
Notes on… Glorious Goodwood
His Grace the tenth Duke of Richmond gave my father the job of running his beloved racecourse, Goodwood, when I…
For the greater glory of Benjamin Disraeli
Sam Leith finds shades of Jeffrey Archer and Boris Johnson in the 19th-century prime minister
Playing Woolf
The Charleston Bulletin was a family newspaper produced between 1923 and 1927 by the teenaged Quentin Bell and his elder…
We were dazzled
This is the third volume of Isaiah Berlin letters; one more to go. Discerning critics have showered the first two…
Rousseau and the Tiger
This is the Tiger and this is Rousseau. This is the picture I painted to show That this is the…
Bring on the winged kelp
On 14 April each year, nori fishermen gather on a hillside overlooking Ariake Bay on Kyushu in southern Japan to…
The history girl
Ronald Knox, found awake aged four by a nanny, was asked what he was thinking about, and he replied ‘the…
Pearl beyond price
The subtitle of Carole Seymour-Jones’s quietly moving biography of the brilliant SOE agent Pearl Witherington is ‘the real Charlotte Gray’.…
how to get a life
just to tell you there is nothing better almost nothing better than getting into bed in the middle of the…
Change and decay in all around I see
The Unwinding is a rather classy addition to the thriving genre of American apocalypse porn. The basic thesis can be…
A wicket way with words
We were never going to get ‘come to the party’ or ‘a hundred and ten per cent’ from The Authors…
A fine vintage
Lloyd Evans meets Peter Nichols, who, in his ninth decade, is riding a wave of public favour
Fat boys slim
Don’t worry, I’m not going to go on about Glastonbury. I wasn’t there, I never have been and, unless forced…
Verdi virtues
I’m not the first person to remark that Verdi is getting oddly little attention in this his bicentenary year, especially…
