Features

On Sunday, Venezuela goes to the polls. The likely triumph of Hugo Chávez, writes Daniel Hannan, reflects a phenomenon sweeping Latin America that feeds not on hope but on hatred There aren’t really any proper dictators left in South America, but Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez is getting close. His first attempt at power was through an old-fashioned putsch. When this failed, he tried the ballot box, winning a more or less free election in 1998. Once in office, he quickly set about undoing the democratic system that had got him there. Previously autonomous institutions — parliament, the judiciary, the Catholic Church, employers’ federations, trade unions — were subverted.

Neil Barnett recalls his encounters with the poisoned spy who has had the bearing of a marked man for years. The Russian intelligence services, Litvinenko told him, are purely political organisations, whose only purpose is to shore up Putin’s power The hotel off a main square in a central European capital was a seedy, low-budget place. When I asked the receptionist for Alexander Litvinenko in room 38, she looked at me blankly, then after some rooting around said, ‘We only have a Mr Jones in room 38.’ It was Litvinenko, of course, employing one of his endless ruses designed to throw off his former FSB (Federal Security Service) comrades who had hounded him since his defection (or ‘granting of asylum’) to the UK in 2000.

As part of a six-month tour of the main wine-producing countries of the world, the author stopped long enough in South Africa to discover the hidden treasures of Hamilton Russell Standing on Cap Agulhas gazing at the ocean, aware of the fact that we were on the very tip of Africa, it seemed unlikely that we would find anywhere quite as beautiful again. We had driven to this remote spot and walked through budding fynbos, the gorgeous display of nature's wild flowers unique to the Cape. And yet the drive from that windswept corner of South Africa towards Hermanus on minor roads proved to be equally spectacular. Hermanus is synonymous with whale-watching and a high standard of living.

Paddy Ashdown spent more than three years trying to reconstruct Bosnia. He was asked by Donald Rumsfeld to do the same in Iraq. Here, he tells Matthew d’Ancona that such reconstruction must be at the heart of 21st-century geopolitics You send an ex-Lib Dem leader to the Balkans for three and a half years, and he comes back the King of Nation Builders. Not that ‘nation-building’ is a term much liked by Paddy Ashdown, former High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ‘That’s something you do to start a nation. This is reconstruction: how do you reconstruct? And let’s not talk about a “nation”, either. Foreigners are not given to creating nations.

Possibly the finest white wine of all France, Chevalier Blanc is remarkable for having a little known cousin, a red Chevalier that stands up to many of the fine wines of the Médoc Possibly the finest white wine of all France, Chevalier Blanc is remarkable for having a little known cousin, a red Chevalier that stands up to many of the fine wines of the Médoc Claude Ricard inherited the celebrated Graves estate Domaine de Chevalier in 1948, at the age of 21, and abandoned a potential career as a classical pianist to take over the reins. But music still pervaded the domaine when Ricard was in charge. On my first visit to Chevalier in the 1980s, the other guests were two flamenco guitarists. There was music – and there was astonishing wine.