The 300th anniversary this week of the Act of Union between England and Scotland has been a depressingly defensive event rather than a festival of celebration. In the Daily Telegraph, Gordon Brown — that indefatigable champion of ‘Britishness’ — warned against the ‘Balkanisation of Britain’. The Scottish National Party is poised to form the largest
Israel’s ‘spin’ From Alex Bigham Sir: Douglas Davis has clearly been spun a good line by some Israeli military analysts if he thinks the Israeli threat to use nuclear bombs against Iran is more than that — a ruse to scare Iran into returning to the diplomatic table (‘Israel will do whatever it takes’, 6
If a week is a long time in politics, then 13 years is a positive eternity. In 1994 it emerged that the new Leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, had sent his eldest child, Euan, to the London Oratory School — a school that had opted out of town hall control under a Conservative policy
Blair, brave? From Correlli Barnett Sir: I wish there were something I could do to help poor deluded William Shawcross (‘The West must be the strong horse’, 30 December). He seems to be just about the only man in England other than our deranged Prime Minister and his ministerial stooges still to refuse to accept
The news bulletins over the Christmas holiday were dominated by the vengeful execution of the deposed leader of a ruinous country. The leader, of course, was Nicolae Ceaucescu, the country Romania and the year 1989. That Romania, together with Bulgaria, has just made the then unthinkable step of joining the European Union — the conditions
Contrary to the culture From Edward Nugee QC Sir: I have in the past felt a little guilty in my belief that an Islamic faith school falls into a different category altogether from an Anglican or Roman Catholic, or even Jewish, faith school. Rod Liddle (‘We are what the English Bible has made us’, 16/23
One thing is certain about the political year ahead: No. 10 will have a new occupant well before the end of 2007. Not since Eden’s long struggle to replace Churchill has an heir-apparent had to wait as long as Gordon Brown, and the sheer duration of his battle to dislodge Tony Blair has taken a
Dawkins vs GodFrom R.F. ClementsSir: Richard Dawkins might be convinced of the existence of God (‘A man who believes in Darwin as fervently as he hates God’, December 9) by ‘a large-scale miracle which could not have been engineered by a conjuror’. What evidence does he want for the greatest miracle of all time? It
The juxtaposition of the sacred and the unholy is always shocking. This week, as we attend carol services, decorate our trees and prepare for Christmas with a levity of spirit, the news from Ipswich provides an unbearably horrible counterpoint. In the first ten days of this murder investigation, the bodies of five women were discovered
The green gospel From Paul Horgan Sir: I read the article by Allister Heath (‘It’s a wonderful world: richer, healthier and cleaner than ever’, 2 December) with interest. The author is correct to point out that the optimism of Indur Goklany’s book will be drowned out by the doom-mongering of the environmentalist lobby. I believe
Gordon Brown’s rhetoric in his tenth and presumably final pre-Budget report on Wednesday was as robust as his morning appearances on radio and television were reassuringly amiable. Gordon Brown’s rhetoric in his tenth and presumably final pre-Budget report on Wednesday was as robust as his morning appearances on radio and television were reassuringly amiable. This
Fiction:Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (Penguin, £7.99)The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog by Doris Lessing (Harper Perennial, £7.99)The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill, Vintage, £6.99Making It Up by Penelope Lively (Penguin, £7.99)The Children of Men by P .D. James (Faber, £6.99)Bordeaux Housewives by
Readers respond to recent articles published in The Spectator Security v. rights From the Attorney General Sir: Stuart Wheeler’s article (‘Why the Tories must say No to torture’, 25 November) includes a quote from me about deportation. Taken from a Human Rights Watch report, and by HRW from a BBC online summary of a radio
A television channel has reached a sorry state when the structure of its ownership is more exciting than what it broadcasts. Yet this is precisely what has happened to ITV, whose appalling programming schedule has become a low-rent joke, making real the parodies of the BBC’s Little Britain. The problem is not that ITV strives
From our US edition
Calling time on legislation From Christopher W. Robson Sir: In your leading article ‘To govern is not to legislate’ (18 November), you quote the late Ralph Harris as arguing that there should be a department for repealing laws. May I suggest that the creation of new laws has now reached a pitch where it would
The 23rd annual Threadneedle/ Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year lunch took place last Thursday at Claridge’s. The prizes were presented by the Rt Hon. David Cameron MP, Leader of the Opposition. Welcoming Mr Cameron, Matthew d’Ancona, the editor of The Spectator, observed that, in less than a year as Conservative leader, he had dislodged Beckham
The assassination on Tuesday of Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon’s industry minister, was another brutal blow of the axe to the cedar tree that gave its name to the nation’s so-called ‘revolution’ last year. That uprising was triggered by another death — the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri in February 2005 — and
Anthony Daniels J. G. Ballard’s Kingdom Come (Fourth Estate, £17.99) is a dyspeptic vision of a dystopian Britain that has already half-arrived. He is a close observer of our national malaise: indiscriminate consumerism combined with a sense of entitlement, and therefore of resentment. His profound understanding of the place of the teddy bear in our
Saddam’s ‘parody’ of a trial From Sir Jonah Walker-Smith Sir: When I read the title to Alasdair Palmer’s article, ‘Saddam’s trial shouldn’t be fair’ (11 November), I assumed that it was written with tongue in cheek. By the time I reached the penultimate sentence — ‘the trials of genocidal killers are not, and should never
Rupert Christiansen Recently I’ve had the good fortune to review three works of magisterial scholarship in these pages — John Haffenden’s William Empson: Among the Mandarins (OUP, £30), Philip Gossett’s Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera (Chicago University Press, £22.50) and Patrick Carnegy’s Wagner and the Art of the Theatre (Yale, £29.95). Because they run