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Thursday 4 December 2008

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The latest culture as recommended by our staff

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Letters

Wednesday, 14th May 2008

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

No sin of omission

Sir: Jonathan Mirsky (Books, 10 May) quotes Tony Judt stating that Arthur Koestler was ‘silent’ on ‘the famines, the expropriations, the wholesale deportations of peoples authorised by Stalin’. Koestler devoted most of the third part of his The Yogi and the Commissar to these subjects.

David Ashton
Norfolk
Guard duty

Sir: I have to advise Leonard Allen (Letters, 10 May) that his defence of what he refers to as ‘The Guards’ is misplaced. The Brigade of Guards and Household Cavalry have fought for freedom in this country for the BBC, and anyone else for that matter, to be able to screen what it likes without fear, favour or censorship. That, Mr Allen, is of far more importance and significance.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Hundon, Suffolk

New depths

Sir: Bernard Levin memorably described Harold Wilson as ‘the worst British Prime Minister since Lord North’. If he was alive today, I am sure that he would revise his judgment, demoting Wilson in favour of the present incumbent.

Richard Skilbeck
Newbury, Berkshire

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Diary

Rani Singh

I’ve just emerged from the gym, winding down after a day’s writing, when my son Sukhraj calls, alerting me to sudden news of explosions and fatalities in Mumbai.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

Tamzin Lightwater

Tamzin Lightwater's unique take on the week

Letters

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

This battle has just begun

‘I was excited and delighted by it in that first Bombay minute,’ says the narrator in Gregory David Roberts’s great novel Shantaram.

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

In his speech announcing his Pre-Budget Report, Alistair Darling said that he was going to put up the top rate of income tax to 45 per cent from 2011, because he wanted the burden to be borne by ‘those who have done best out of the growth of the past decade’.

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.