Features

Travel: Shop like a Roman

When I am in Rome, I do as the Romans — I engage in rampant materialism. The eternal city may be — via the Church which has its headquarters there — the way to heaven; its population, however, is more interested in this world than the next. The city is full of superb shops, as

Mary Wakefield

‘Die slowly, Christian dog’

There is one main road stretching north-south along the Bekaa valley between Lebanon and Syria. It runs in a beeline from the prosperous little city of Zhaleh, on through a series of villages each with its own religious bent — some Sunni, some Christian — to the border town of al-Qaa, then on into Homs

Repeat offenders

The Prime Minister gave a stirring speech last week in which he outlined the government’s new policy on law and order. The key, he insisted, was to be ‘tough and intelligent’ — which naturally suggested that previous policy had been soft and stupid. The truth, however, is that there is much more continuity between the

Charles Moore

Lost in Europe

As you read this, the Conservatives seem to be edging towards some promise, to be contested at the next general election, of a referendum in the next parliament over Britain’s membership of the EU. You can see how far opinion has moved by the fact that government ministers — Michael Gove only last week —

Girls’ own

Everyone was so busy celebrating Hilary Mantel’s second Booker Prize victory last week that it was easy to overlook the announcement that another of our literary prizes has been saved from extinction. The Orange Prize had lost its sponsor — but has been rescued by a group of women sponsors, including Cherie Blair. It ought

A brother’s suffering

My brother David died recently in the care of the NHS. His death was not their fault: no one can do anything about bone cancer except alleviate the pain. Which is what they spectacularly failed to do. Bone cancer does not kill you. It just hurts like hell and your bones become so fragile that

Even if he wins, Obama will be diminished

If a US presidential election has the potential to wear down foreign observers, let alone the American public, imagine what it must do to the candidates. The challenger must spend years campaigning for the endorsement of their own party — fighting rebellions and pandering to diehards — while the incumbent has to work equally hard

Obama’s nightmare

The 2012 US presidential election will long be remembered for the encounters between a sleepwalker and a ghost intent on breaking into the White House. Even now, after one vice-presidential debate and two presidential debates, it is by no means clear which will win. Millions of astonished Americans watched the first televised encounter, which took

Which way is right: Tories should seek truth, not comfort

The below is a response to a piece by Spectator columnist Matthew Parris ‘If you look for truth,’ counselled C.S. Lewis, ‘you may find comfort in the end.’ If, however, you look for comfort ‘you will not get either comfort or truth’. A patriotic politician should reflect on Lewis’s wisdom. In good times almost anyone can

Matthew Parris

Which way is right: the centre holds

Few put a political argument better than Tim Montgomerie, the editor of ConservativeHome, and his latest column in the Times is no exception. Policies portrayed as priorities of the Tory right, he said, are also shared by the majority of the public. Some 70 per cent of Britons want a referendum on Europe and 80

Melanie McDonagh

Can you trust a Christian?

For some time we have known about the tension between George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith over welfare reform. The Chancellor wanted more welfare cuts, and the Work and Pensions Secretary resisted: real reform, he said, would cost money. So far, so understandable. But a new biography of the Chancellor by Janan Ganesh reveals another

Leaving Lebanon

Beirut is usually a party town, capital of the Middle East’s most glamorous country where people from all over the region come to kick back — but this year’s been a little different. Kidnappings, bank robberies, roadblocks and gun battles — no wonder the free-spending and normally blasé Gulf Arabs have stayed at home, leaving

I am not my cancer

In the evenings the kidneys came. The helicopter, a bright yellow, would land on the grey cement disc, its blades chopping slower, slower, slow — stop. People in blue scurried from an opening in the building and ran towards the aircraft, hauling from it boxes and bags. These containers held hearts, lungs, livers. The organs

Till faith do us part

A girlfriend who was about to get married was telling me about her wedding plans recently when she said, almost as an aside: ‘Oh, and I’ve converted to Islam.’ Her fiancé was a Muslim but she thought it no more than a minor detail — like ordering the corsages, or finalising the table plan —

Tanya Gold

A tale of three cities

Conference Season: for people watching it on telly, it is noise coming from Huw Edwards’s face, with pictures of people waving. For the rest of us, the devil has blown into town. First come the Lib Dems, in Brighton — the only party sentimental enough to think of candy floss and helter skelters and then

High society | 11 October 2012

How thrilling it is when someone finally stages a demonstration against you. All right, it was a very small protest (one person), and it was in Southampton on a wet Sunday morning. But it was all mine. Stretched by the roadside was a dank bedsheet bearing the words ‘Peter Hitchens is a hypocritical racist alcoholic.

Early edition

If you were to ask the editor of one of our quality newspapers whether he had thought about how to adapt to the internet, he would look at you as if you had been locked in a basement for 20 years, and then tell you that he thinks of little else. And it would be