James Delingpole 
Here’s why Tories shouldn’t do smear campaigns
‘Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it and polarise it.’ This is the best-known of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals, and even if you haven’t heard of the man or… Read more
The Fall, Culture Show Special — Not Like Any Other Love: The Smiths
The serial killer on The Fall (BBC1, Monday) is no ordinary serial killer. He has a unique and terrifying modus operandi — or ‘signature’, as we serial-killer experts call it.… Read more
Niall Ferguson's enemies can't accuse him of racism, so they hope the homophobe charge will work its poison.
Is it homophobic to argue that it’s mainly gay men who keep the flame of popular culture alive? If so, then Simon Napier Bell has some grovelling to do. Napier… Read more
TV: I would surely die if I watched more than five minutes of Ben Elton’s The Wright Way; Rupert Murdoch: Battle With Britain
The controversial counterintuitive piece I was going to write concerned Ben Elton’s new sitcom The Wright Way (BBC1, Tuesday). You may have noticed it has been panned by all the… Read more
Since I moved to the country, I’m on the side of the squirrel-killers
What is the correct expression to wear, I wonder, when you’ve just caught a squirrel in your squirrel trap? Guilt? Pain? Sorrow? Fear at the possibility of a 3 a.m. knock… Read more
Television: Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary
In Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary (Channel 4, Saturday) — Martin Durkin’s superb tribute to our greatest prime minister — there was some footage of Harold Macmillan giving his ‘selling… Read more
Climate wars: I’m being attacked by my own side. Why?
There’s nothing more irritating then being asked to apologise for something you haven’t done. No, wait, there is: when the person demanding the apology is one of the friends you… Read more
The Village
Everyone’s loving BBC1’s new, Sunday-night period mega-drama The Village (32 episodes long if writer Peter Moffat has his way). It’s taut, spare, grown-up, accomplished, dark, strange and poetic, according to… Read more
UKIP is patriotic, fiscally conservative and socially libertarian – what’s not to like?
‘A conduit for pissed-off protest voters.’ ‘Farage’s Falange.’ ‘Fascists in blazers.’ These are some of the things friends have said about Ukip recently and I don’t want to embarrass them… Read more
Lost in space
On 28 January 1986 the Challenger space shuttle exploded shortly after launch, killing all seven crew. What made it worse was that one of the victims, Christa McAuliffe, was a… Read more
What I learned from teaching at Malvern College
If those who can do and those who can’t teach, then that must make me a totally useless git for I’ve just had a go at being a schoolmaster and… Read more
Bluestone 42: Dad's Army it isn't
The thing that always used to bother me about M*A*S*H as a child was the lack of combat. You’d see the realistic film of choppers at the beginning and, obviously,… Read more
Spending isn’t the answer. But how do we explain that?
One of the things I love about being a classical liberal is that I’m always on the right side of every argument. I’m pro: freedom, jobs, self-determination, cheap energy, higher… Read more
New word order
‘Don’t be evil.’ Google’s unofficial motto. ‘Evil men don’t get up in the morning saying, “I’m going to do evil.” They say, “I’m going to make the world a better… Read more
How Twitter almost destroyed me
Last year, my old sparring partner George Monbiot got himself into a spot of bother. ‘Why not stick the knife in on your blog?’ various people suggested. But I didn’t… Read more
Old school joy
Let’s not beat about the bush: Howard Goodall’s Story of Music (BBC2, Saturday) is landmark television, a documentary series that deserves to rank with such unimpeachable classics as Kenneth Clark’s… Read more
At last: your chance to make me a kept man
Sometimes my wife accuses me of being sexist but I really don’t see how this can possibly be because a) I’ve acknowledged for some time that I consider women the… Read more
The hard sell
`The older I get, the less tolerant I become of being treated by television like a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. No offence meant to Dr Jago Cooper but,… Read more
Three decades of blood and horror – just the sort of history I like
In the church just a few fields from where I live stands the handsome, painted alabaster tomb to Sir Richard Knightley and his wife Jane. Round the sides of the… Read more
Death watch
Some people say TV is a bad thing for families but I say don’t knock it. It was thanks to TV this school holidays that I almost got vaguely, slightly,… Read more
Latest blogs
- Lee Rigby named as victim of Woolwich attack Sebastian Payne
- The friendless Help-to-Buy scheme Isabel Hardman
- Nothing to do with Islam? Douglas Murray
- Why it’s not the 1990s all over again for the Tories James Forsyth
- You’re going to lose. It is only you against many. Alex Massie
- PM avoids knee-jerk response to Woolwich attack Isabel Hardman
- David Cameron’s statement on the Woolwich attack The Spectator
