The latest culture as recommended by our staff

New Sondheim: enjoy it while stocks last

Gerald Kaufman is enthralled by the first Sondheim premiere in 14 years. A minor work Road Show may be, but it is still worth much more than anyone else’s musicals

The law applies to Damian Green, too

Rod Liddle is reluctant to join the journalistic herd in its unqualified outrage at the Tory MP’s arrest. But it is certainly time to put the police under the microscope

After Baby P: the crisis in child foster care

Mary Wakefield talks to a courageous woman who blew the whistle on the deep systemic failures in the foster care service — and whose only reward was to be hounded and vilified

The global force behind Mumbai’s agony is in our midst

Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that LET — the Army of the Righteous — is a worldwide Islamist organisation which is well-established in Britain. The Mumbai atrocities are further proof that the march of Islamic extremism is the central fact of our time

‘They treat me more like a devil than a god’

Lloyd Evans finds that Bernard-Henri Lévy is not the ageing French dandy of caricature but a serious intellectual with views on everything from Barack Obama to the Muslim veil

I loved Oliver Stone’s Bush film — and I know why the critics hated it

The movie W. did not provide the crude anti-Bush agitprop that the reviewers craved, says Rod Liddle. This was precisely its strength: we need to get inside the minds even of those we most deplore

The Republicans are where the Tories were in 1997

This is bad news for the Conservatives, who have always feasted on US right-of-centre ideas, says James Forsyth. But the GOP can learn from the Cameroons

Obama’s America will be more equal but less mighty

Reihan Salam says that the President-elect is no socialist and it was desperate of McCain to claim as much. Obama’s policies more closely resemble European social democracy — with the attendant risk of economic sclerosis in the face of Asian competition

Obama has changed the world just by being elected

James Forsyth looks back on an extraordinary contest and the victory of a man who, even before his inauguration, has had a transformative effect upon American politics

Meet the real Joe Biden: Vice-President Plonker

The scrutiny of Sarah Palin diverted attention from Obama’s running mate, says Freddy Gray. Biden is not that popular, a ‘gaffe machine’, and he eats Snickers bars in one mouthful