The Week

Leading article

15th August, 2007

As he contemplates the surf on his Breton holiday beach this weekend, David Cameron has an opportunity to reflect on how swiftly the tides of politics can change.

Diary

15th August, 2007

It was the call that never came. For three hours last week, I sat with my hand hovering over the phone. I had been told that Bill Kenwright would be getting in touch between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Yes, the Bill Kenwright, theatreland big shot and chairman of Everton FC.

Riviera notebook

15th August, 2007

The shiny new ‘Vodka Palaces’ lie scattered across the bay of St Tropez like the discarded toys of a spoiled child.

Global warning

15th August, 2007

Do I grow cleverer with age, or does the world grow more stupid? Today, for example, I read what a police spokeswoman said after a man on a motorbike had been shot dead on the M40 motorway. The police, she said, were not treating it as a case of road rage; they were treating it as a case of murder.

Mind your language

15th August, 2007

I was reading in bed (quietly for a change, since my husband was off on some drug-sponsored jamboree in Tallinn) the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation (£14.99) — a work of the BBC Pronunciation Unit — that someone had given me for my birthday.

Leading article

8th August, 2007

Given the boost in the opinion polls enjoyed by Gordon Brown following the recent floods, a cynic might wonder whether the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey has been staged in order to give the Prime Minister an excuse to break off his holiday in Dorset and earn brownie points by taking control of a national crisis while David Cameron (who has since called off his own holiday) was lounging around on a Breton beach.

Diary

8th August, 2007

What is up with the once superb Blue Guide that it fails to so much as mention beautiful Qinghai province, up in China’s northwest?

Politics

8th August, 2007

Brown has handled the crises well, but let’s not forget he is to blame for many of them

Global warning

8th August, 2007

You — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I — can’t get away anywhere from crime and criminality.

The Spectator's notes

8th August, 2007

We are paying now for the lack of a single, comprehensive inquiry into the great foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001.

Mind your language

8th August, 2007

The songs did not go, ‘Keep right on to the road’s end’ or ‘The railroad runs through the house’s middle’, but there is now a vogue for using the inflected genitive with inanimate objects.

Leading article

1st August, 2007

Those who have exchanged fierce views on the invasion of Iraq have a fresh challenge this week: how to react to the UN resolution, tabled by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy with support from George W. Bush, to send 19,000 peacekeeping troops to the Darfur region of western Sudan.

Diary

1st August, 2007

I’m in Canada, three hours north of Toronto, up in the great wilderness.

Politics

1st August, 2007

Gordon Brown will not holiday abroad this summer. Not for him the allure of a Tuscan palace or the sunbeds of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The Spectator's Notes

1st August, 2007

Enoch Powell once said to me, ‘I love the humbug of the English. I worship it. But I reserve the right from time to time to point it out.’

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

1st August, 2007

Mind your language

1st August, 2007

After al-Qa’eda’s no. 2 said that Britain would be attacked for knighting Salman Rushdie, Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Saanei chipped in on Sky News: ‘When your Queen awards Salman Rushdie and turns him into a knight, what do you expect? This is a blasphemy.’

Ancient & modern

1st August, 2007

Apparently Gordon is planning another tax raid on savings, this time life-insurance companies which have ‘too much’ money in reserve against rainy days. After his last pension raid, this will not be a popular move. The Romans can help him solve the problem.

Common sense submerged

25th July, 2007

The waters of the River Avon, recounted the vicar of Bengeworth, outside Evesham, ‘reached almost to the keystone of the arch of the bridge, and extended up Port Street to the public pump on the south side of the street...

Diary

25th July, 2007

I am registered as a voter in Ealing-Southall and have a problem...