The latest culture as recommended by our staff

The secret letters of the Jonestown death cult

Thirty years after the mass suicides and murders in Guyana, Barry Isaacson unveils a cache of letters he found in his LA home, mapping the pain of one of the families

C’mon Cherie: even Goering stuck up a bit for Hitler

Rod Liddle says it is no surprise that Gordon Brown has ended up as surly and suspicious as he has: the memoirs of John Prescott, Lord Levy and Cherie Blair are appalling acts of treachery and avarice

I never want to be as insecure as Olivier

Tim Walker talks to Greta Scacchi about her new role in The Deep Blue Sea, the gaucheness of Bill Murray — and being offered the lead in Basic Instinct

Meet James Purnell: the best hope Labour has of avoiding disaster

Fraser Nelson says that the 38-year-old Work and Pensions Secretary is the best candidate to succeed Gordon Brown. Already surging ahead at his department, he has the gift of sounding like an ordinary human being — and he understands the Cameron Conservative party

An Actor's Life

Joan Collins lives an actor's life

Joking apart: why Boris is the man for the job

Boris Johnson has confounded his critics, says Matthew d’Ancona. The contest will go to the wire, but our man has proved himself to be both shrewd enough and serious enough to take charge

Milburn: What’s it all about, Gordon?

Alan Milburn gives his first interview since Brown became PM, and tells Fraser Nelson that Gordon has converted to Blairism too late. Something new is needed now

We live in a state of emergency: and we are getting angrier

Britain has lost its identity and its sense of nation, says David Selbourne. The citizen is treated as a mere ‘consumer’, liberty reduced to the ‘freedom to choose’, politicians held in contempt and hostile forces such as Islamism appeased. The stakes could scarcely be higher.

The miners’ strike and the fight against Islamism

Extremism dies when its lack of legitimacy is revealed, Charles Moore says. Muslim fundamentalism is as brittle as union militancy was in the Eighties

Pity the monks of Tibet who dare to hope that anyone will come to their aid

Rod Liddle is appalled by the appeasement of China, a country that now combines the most oppressive aspects of state Marxism with the most brutally rapacious aspects of capitalism.