Joining friends grouped around a piano one evening last week, I sat down to hear another friend play. A man of extraordinary talent, he both composes and performs; and this time he had three new compositions to perform for us. The piano can be a spectacular instrument. An hour sped, for my friend is touched
What I thought I’d do this summer holidays is catch up with all those classics I’ve been meaning to read for ages: A la recherche du temps perdu, Moby-Dick, David Copperfield, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, Vanity Fair, everything by the Brontës, anything German, Metamorphosis, the Odyssey, the Iliad, most Balzac, anything by P.G. Wodehouse,
Did you know that David Miliband’s favourite snack is a Twirl? I learned this yesterday while trawling the various Labour leadership websites, desperate to find some reason — any reason — to care about any of it. In his photograph at the top, David’s odd grey patch of hair seems curiously prominent, in a manner
Like many members of the Tory tribe, I’ve struggled with the Big Society doctrine. As with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity there have been moments when I thought I’d grasped it, but upon being asked to explain it to somebody else, found that it had given me the slip again. After an impassioned Cameron
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics You wouldn’t know it from listening to the Prime Minister, but the coalition is on course to be a great reforming administration. In its first 11 weeks, it has announced plans to reform all four major public services. At the same time, its first Budget mandated the largest
I do wish the Prince of Wales weren’t such a terrible prat because then I wouldn’t have to say it in print and quite ruin my chances of a knighthood. But he is a prat. A dangerous prat at that — as he reminded us yet again just the other day in a speech he
People don’t half talk a lot of dross about the burka. Or rather, the burka doesn’t half make people talk a lot of dross, about everything else. Nicolas Sarkozy, the four-foot-tall French President, has decided that his countrywomen don’t have a ‘right’ to wear the burka. Damian Green, our own, taller, immigration minister, has decided
It’s been a good month for spy commentators. Experts on espionage have been popping up everywhere in the news media, offering views, news and background information on secret intelligence. The exposure of a Russian spy-ring operating in the United States, followed by a spy-swap in which America retrieved four of theirs in return for Russia
It’s odd, says Rod Liddle, that we mollycoddle our children while insisting that they can decide what’s right or wrong When I was six years old and on holiday at my grandparents’ house I would spend every day, with a lunch box of egg and cress sandwiches, up at Darlington railway station, watching the trains.
I was at a debate at the Institute of Economic Affairs last week when the speaker next to me — a preening, prickly chap with a moustache and hugely self-important manner — took it upon himself to apprise the assembled throng of the most extraordinary fact: apparently, James Delingpole is nowhere near as good at
You’ve got to hand it to Mel Gibson. When it comes to potentially career-ending outbursts of vile bigotry, there really is nobody better. As somebody posted on Twitter this week (there is increasingly little point in even trying to formulate this stuff yourself), ‘You’re a pretty hard-core ass when drunkenly yelling about Jews running banks
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics For one night only, the band was back together. On Monday night, Tony Blair — looking toned and tanned — addressed the Institute for Government, the think-tank set up by his ally Lord Sainsbury. Cherie was in the front row, resplendent in a white salwar kameez. Blair’s two
Readers familiar with Idomeneo might have shared my pleasure (and bemusement) at a performance of Mozart’s early opera at the Coliseum in London last week. The English National Opera production, which staged most of the action in what appeared to be a top-quality modern hotel, was ludicrous (I found the waiters distracting, but then I
I once wrote a column about Camden Council, the total bastards, stealing my car. Never had a response like it. Lawyers got in touch, offering their services. Motorist groups wanted to sign me up. Readers wrote in, offering other tales of total Camden bastardy, or similar bastardy from elsewhere, and Tom Conti invited me round
James Delingpole says You Know It Makes Sense The most excruciatingly awful thing I have ever done in my entire life happened in my penultimate year at school. At the time I was learning classical guitar and occasionally I would meet up with one of my English teachers, ‘Mattie’ Simpson, so that we could play
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics From a distance, Tony Blair might be able to persuade himself that the Labour party contest now underway is the fulfilment of his dreams. The ‘brothers’ everyone is talking about are not trade union heavies but two Oxford PPE graduates who have worked their way up through the
I turned to this week’s press coverage of the latest pre-Budget economic forecasts only after a punishing battle with my motorcar. A morning’s home car mechanics left me bruised, cut, frustrated and covered in diesel, but — as it turned out — philosophically refreshed for the debate about Britain’s economic future. I drive a grey
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics It is a sign of how well things are going with the coalition that the civil servants left the room towards the end of the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday and let the politicians get on with it. The first ‘political Cabinet’ — when its members talk about party
One of the nicest, gentlest fellows I’ve ever met is a man named Mike Dauncey. He’s so terribly polite that he can’t bring himself to swear even in extremis and if you had to guess what he did before he retired, you’d probably say ‘country parson’. In fact, though, Brigadier Mike Dauncey DSO is a
This is going to be a wibbling and self-indulgent column, so don’t say you haven’t been warned. There are various reasons for this, but chief among them is the fact that I’m on holiday right now, in St Tropez. It’s possible that you already know this, if the Spectator overlords have decided to put one