Make no mistake: the Muslim Brothers’ vision for Egypt is a frightening one Hosni Mubarak should be given credit for at least one achievement in his three decades in power: his deft exploitation of Washington’s fears about the Muslim Brotherhood. There is, in fact, no evidence that the Brotherhood has ever been able to count
First Tunisia, then Egypt. Whatever next? The laws of the Arab world are supposed to prohibit any domino effect: the military is supposed to be too strong, the governments too unresponsive. But these laws no longer hold now that two of North Africa’s most deeply entrenched leaders have been unsettled by popular protests. The ‘Arab
Few of us understand what is going on at the dusty end of the Med. There may be a few chinstrokers who cup, in their wizened palms, a concise comprehension of the Cairo crisis — see pages 14 to 18 — but the rest of us struggle for something to say. Vivid reporting has been
Critics have been predicting the death of the public lecture ever since Johannes Gutenberg got his printing press going in 1450. Why bother negotiating the market-day crowds in downtown Mainz to hear someone read from the Bible, when you can sit by the fire in your parlour and read your own copy? The same argument
Sunday was a fairly dismal time for me, as a kid — and indeed for our dog, Skipper. Sunday was a fairly dismal time for me, as a kid — and indeed for our dog, Skipper. Church I could just about put up with, but Sunday school was an embarrassment too far: I would scurry
Stand-up comedians: is there anything they can’t do? Not only do they make up a huge proportion of chat-show guests — and of chat-show hosts — they also present Horizon, give us guides to the night sky, utterly dominate panel shows and regularly pop up on Question Time. Recently, they even set up their own
I have a confession to make. In 18 years in government, I have never come up with a policy that was instantly popular. Today, as Justice Secretary, my job is to mend Britain’s broken prison system and make it less expensive. My proposals have prompted widespread criticism, not least from The Spectator, which said recently
If a drunken woman and a drunken man have sex, our legal system treats the man as a rapist. That’s wrong — and patronising Imagine, for a moment, that you’ve had a few sherries. Perhaps, even, more than a few; perhaps you have enjoyed that most pernicious of doses: the one that leaves you on
Books, we are continually told, particularly by people who rarely read them, are going the way of the dodo. The shops that sell them are closing at an alarming rate, as the dreaded Kindle takes over, and public libraries are being encouraged to turn themselves into noisy ‘resource centres’, designed to attract the feckless young.
I caught the figure strolling towards me out the corner of my eye. At first I thought I was mistaken. Then it nearly took my breath away. I was standing in the impressive wooden-beamed assembly hall of Paisley Grammar, where I’d gathered at the start of each school day many years before, silent and smartly
The outcry over Sayeeda Warsi’s speech on Islamophobia last week cannot be understood without a clear grasp of the balance of power within the coalition government. There are two factions, and the strongest can loosely be described as neoconservative. This faction remains an unconditional supporter of the United States of America, continues to defend the
When you have guests over for dinner — Tuscan lamb with truffled polenta, perhaps, followed by pear tarte tatin — at what time do you raise your hand, or bang a knife upon a glass and say. When you have guests over for dinner — Tuscan lamb with truffled polenta, perhaps, followed by pear tarte
When Poles arrive in Britain, we learn some fascinating things about ourselves. We are, it seems, from a part of the world known as the ‘Eastern bloc’. It is populated by lazy benefits thieves, most of whom want to move to Britain. When the EU flung open Britain’s barriers seven years ago, the stereotype wasn’t
Heinz Wolff’s latest and most ambitious experiment might just solve the problem of care for the elderly Heinz Wolff has been offered Maidenhead by the government as the laboratory for his next and boldest experiment, but it is not enough. ‘They should give me the Isle of Wight,’ he cries, domed cranium pulsing beneath his
Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former dictator of Haiti once known as Baby Doc, returned to his native land last week, looking wide-eyed and frail. He read a statement in which he expressed ‘deep sorrow for all those who say they were victims of my government’ and promised that he hadn’t come home to cause trouble, but
It is easy to tell when David Cameron is wading into trouble during interviews. He becomes defensive, audibly irritated and — as an emergency self-calming measure — tries to force a little laugh. He performed this telltale routine on the radio on Monday, when challenged over his NHS reforms. He had promised the country no
Sangin, Afghanistan ‘You don’t want to end up on a bracelet or on a fucking T-shirt. If you see people that need to die, kill them,’ said the US Marine Corps sergeant, briefing the convoy about to leave. It was night and we were setting off along the main road out of Sangin. Highway 611
A friend of mine has just come back from a few days of Civil Service in-house training. He managed in no time to get the hang of the exercise, namely, the mastery of another language. Not a foreign language, which might have been handy, but not English either. ‘I learnt,’ he said proudly, ‘about “brain-friendly
The New York City neighbourhood where politically correct prejudices are born Most people, when they hear the word Brooklyn, will think of big-bellied pizza-spinners, or men hunched over pints of the black stuff in Little Ireland, or black kids in hanging-down trousers ghetto-limping through the streets. But there’s another side, a whiter, cleaner, more PC
Being married to Rose, one of the greatest cooks in the country, is an especially pleasurable thing. No meal is ever dull. Breakfast can be a variety of treats from toast to scrambled eggs to a fried venison liver. Lunch is usually a sausage, perhaps some lentils or something leftover from the evening before. Dinner