Selina Hastings 
'The Prince, the Princess and the Perfect Murder', by Andrew Rose - review
In April 1917 Edward, Prince of Wales, at a luncheon at the Crillon Hotel in Paris, had the misfortune to meet the very sexy and utterly loathsome Marguerite Alibert. A… Read more
Friends across the sea
On 12 February 1952 the novelist Anthony Powell received a letter from a bookseller in New York. Robert Vanderbilt Jr was the proprietor of a couple of Manhattan bookstores and… Read more
House of memories
Selina Hastings recalls her visit in 1989 to Lady Beauchamp, mistress of Madresfield Madresfield: the name is now almost as lustrous with literary association as Little Gidding or Adlestrop. To… Read more
Mixing memory with desire
Rick Gekoski is an expatriate American, long established as one of the leading antiquarian book-dealers in Britain. As one might expect, books have been his passion for as long as… Read more
Friends and enemies
The Pursuit of Laughter: Essays, Articles and Reviews, by Diana Mitford, edited by Deborah Devonshire Nancy was the only one of the six Mitford sisters who, throughout her life, bitterly… Read more
The triumph of hope over experience
Derek Jackson was one of the most distinguished scientists of the previous century, whose work in atomic spectroscopy contributed significantly to British success in aerial warfare. Throughout his life Jackson… Read more
For richer, for richer
In her introduction to this extraordinary memoir, Etti Plesch warns the reader that the life she is about to describe will seem unfashionable as it contains no ‘stories of great… Read more
The battle of the books
B y now Heywood Hill’s bookshop in Curzon Street must be almost as famous as 84 Charing Cross Road. Opened in 1936, the shop first became familiar through the lively… Read more
Unfaltering to the end
While staying at Chatsworth for Christmas 1994, James Lees-Milne records an exchange with his old friend, Patrick Leigh Fermor, on the subject of keeping a diary. Leigh Fermor regrets not… Read more
Latest blogs
- Spectator Play: what’s worth watching, listening to or going to this weekend Camilla Swift
- Drummer Lee Rigby Douglas Murray
- Eight Golden Rules for Tragedy Tweeting Freddy Gray
- Government behaving badly over ‘quietly aborted’ lobbying reform Iain Anderson
- Vice is vanishing from Britain Leo McKinstry
- Edmund Burke and post-modern conservatism David Blackburn
- Why, once again, a fall in student immigration is good Andrew Green
