The Byron Consort Choir of Harrow School is exacting in its choice of audience. It has sung for popes and for royalty — and the setting for its performance at Blenheim Palace one night last month was grand enough for either. Trumpeters manned the gates and candles led the way to the Long Library where
Douglas Davis says that the Israelis are considering the nuclear option in response to President Ahmadinejad’s threat to ‘wipe Israel off the map’. An attack could be launched early this year Within the next 12 months, the Americans or the Israelis, possibly both, are likely to launch military strikes aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Kate Middleton and Prince William are widely expected to announce their engagement in 2007. Patrick Jephson, who was Diana’s private secretary, says there is much the original ‘People’s Princess’ could tell the next queen-in-waiting ‘Perhaps Miss Middleton … will be our future queen,’ I speculated in a Sunday newspaper nearly three years ago. The editor
One night early in the run of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, Claire Bloom tripped on the stage of the Haymarket theatre in the West End and fell flat on her face. ‘I managed to get up and the audience was kind enough to applaud,’ she says in that impeccable Received Pronunciation that is
Charles Moore pays tribute to his friend Frank Johnson, editor of The Spectator 1995–99, who died on 15 December: a man of awesome learning — and light touch ‘In the Fifties, job advertisements used to read “smart boy wanted”. That’s me,’ Frank Johnson would say. The joke tells you a good deal about Frank. First,
Rod Liddle says that the Prime Minister’s Christmas jaunt to the Middle East epitomised his confusion about what happens when people who hate you get the chance to say so in elections As our Prime Minister is someone whose confused political instincts stretch little further than a belief in democracy and freedom of choice, it
There is an interesting debate doing the rounds at the moment: should we allow faith schools in Britain? The debate has been occasioned by our tortuous and interminable wrangling with all things Islamic; it has suddenly occurred to us that allowing children to be inculcated into an ideology which may be antithetical to our national
Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. One would think that the turmoil in Iraq is all President Bush must think about when planning his last two years in the Oval Office. Yes, the manner in which he extricates himself and America from Iraq will affect his legacy. But it need not determine it, or his place in history.
One of the great joys of my life has been to spend nearly 14 years living in Rome, first as a student and then as Rector of the Venerable English College. I suppose the best way to know a strange city is to walk everywhere. As a student, I rarely took public transport and would
Jon Cruddas belongs to a rare breed of politicians who believe the best view of the House of Commons is through the rear-view mirror. He glances at it as we head to his Dagenham constituency in his non-ecologically friendly Land-Rover. ‘Gordon Brown will be taxing you for this soon,’ I say. He replies with a
Paddy Kavanagh died with Christmas only a few weeks away. The poet was taken down by a virulent bout of pneumonia, aided and abetted by his addiction to strong drink. He had once cuttingly remarked that the ‘standing army of Irish poets never fell below 20,000’. His death robbed the country of one of the
With the possible exception of charades, no element of a British Christmas rivals the Brussels sprout when it comes to dividing families. In any well-ordered family, the sprout is a source of fierce disagreement, with those that love the vegetable on one side and haters on the other. There is no Third Way of the
Having toured all over the East Coast of North America for the past four and a half months, I am more than a touch jetlagged, but incredibly impressed with the modernity, beauty and excitement of some of these US cities. Although Toronto is not in the US, it still is to me American in flavour
The opening scene in Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It has our heroine distressing supermarket mince pies with a rolling pin in the hope that other parents at the school carol concert will presume them home-made. I loved her for that, just as I did the Calendar Girl who wins the cake
The three of us were sitting around a table in the parlour of a small public house. The pub had an old-fashioned appearance, one of those strange survivals you find in the City. It was dusty, and it smelled of stale beer. The setting, however, is not important for this story. My companions were not
When he’s not starring in comedy shows, performing stand-up or picking up awards, Ricky Gervais is master of the world of the Flanimals — crazy and spectacularly ugly creatures, many of whom eat each other. Here is a brand new Flanimal, exclusively for Spectator readers Lumby Spud(Chavius Brum) This Brumboidian Chavloader is scuppered. He tries
In the downstairs loo of Richard Dawkins’s house in Oxford there’s a framed award from the Royal Society; to remind visitors, or maybe Richard himself, that here lives a man of some purpose, some gravitas and intellectual clout. The Faraday prize is given to those who communicate science with brilliance and verve to the scientifically
‘Innocent people can’t do any good in the world. First of all, there are no innocent people, and, second of all, exercising power is not an innocent activity.’ This is not the kind of straight talk you expect to hear in Brussels, but Bob Kagan is a man with little time for polite fictions. Three
Neil Kinnock on the Home Secretary’s ambitions, and Cameron ‘Call me Neil, for God’s sake,’ says Lord Kinnock of Bedwellty when he welcomes me to the chairman’s office at the British Council with its panoramic views over Whitehall and the South Bank. ‘That title makes me sound like the bloody Royal Albert Hall.’ Kinnock has
Dhiren Barot’s case faded because it revealed unbearable truths Dhiren who? Mention Dhiren Barot to anyone and the chances are that you’ll be met with a blank look. At best, some might say, ‘Oh, wasn’t he that guy who, er, that trial recently, yeah, bit worrying….’ Thus the British have somehow failed to register the