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The London bombings: one year on

A year of thinking lazily

Michael Gove

Thursday, 29th June 2006

On 14 July 2005 the Times published a photograph of a thoughtful young man at work in a Yorkshire classroom. Mohammad Sidique Khan was pictured, purse-lipped and neatly bearded, in the school where he was employed as a teaching mentor. Khan’s CV was one of which any parent might be proud. The son of a foundry worker who had emigrated from Pakistan, Khan was born in Leeds, where he succeeded at school and went on to univer-sity. Happily married, and a regular worshipper at his local mosque, Khan’s work seemed designed to allow others to enjoy the British dream. His professional life was dedicated to helping the children of recent immigrants make the most of the opportunities open to them in the United Kingdom.

That life ended, however, at 8.50 a.m. on 7 July 2005, when Mohammad Sidique Khan detonated an explosive device on the Circle Line train heading west out of Edgware Road station. Khan and three others — Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Husain and Jermaine Lindsay — blew themselves up that morning in the first successful suicide bombing attack in the British Isles; 52 people were killed and more than 700 injured.

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A portrait of the artist as a tennis champion

Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite meets Martina Navratilova, nine times Wimbledon singles champion and now pioneer of ‘tennising’ — an artistic technique that creates Jackson Pollock-style patterns

Et tu, Scott? Bush’s press aide turns on his boss

James Forsyth

James Forsyth talks to Scott McClellan, former press secretary to the President, about his new book attacking the Bush administration, its methods and its deceits

The Law Lords are right to resist the government

Lord Lloyd of Berwick

Lord Lloyd of Berwick says that the government’s emergency legislation to overturn their lordships’ ruling on witness anonymity is part of a ‘gradual usurpation’ of our liberties

I was starstuck by David Cameron

Steven Berkoff

In the week of the Spectator Summer Party, Steven Berkoff recalls another of our celebrations at which he sought out the Tory leader and forgave his confusion of Brando and Dean

How to get stabbed: you, too, can be knifed in a public place

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that it helps to be aged between 14 and 30, white and male. Being drunk and argumentative speeds things along. And no public policy seems to dissuade those who do the stabbing

Brown’s security strategy is the worst of all worlds

David Davis

It’s draconian, expensive and ineffective, says David Davis. All the evidence shows that the Prime Minister is eroding our civil liberties pointlessly

Even middle-class children are suffering from neglect

Rachel Johnson

Rachel Johnson says that working mothers, divorce, Polish nannies and an obsession with extra-curricular activities mean that our children are seeingless of their parents than at any time in the last 100 years

Umbrian idyll

Taki

Taki lives the High Life

Sorry, but apologies really are the work of the Devil

Anna Blundy

Saying ‘sorry’ is mostly wicked and usually irrelevant, says Anna Blundy. People should not be allowed to dump their inner shame so easily

Welcome to the United States of Amnesia

Mary Wakefield

Gore Vidal tells Mary Wakefield that America has forgotten its constitutional roots, and explains why Bobby Kennedy was ‘the biggest son of a bitch in politics’