One of America’s most celebrated ‘sexologists’ tells Harry Mount that there are some problems she will not advise on New York ‘I tell them about pressure, foreplay …I introduce them to a vibrator but I tell them never to get too used to it. The penis can never duplicate the vibrations of a vibrator.’ At
It was John Major who came a cropper while trying to restore the nation’s moral values: his ‘back to basics’ campaign was mocked to death before it had really got started. Yet Mr Major’s attempt to influence the nation’s morals was nothing compared with that of Tony Blair, who has overseen a Sexual Offences Act,
Kathmandu, dawn on Sunday Under the early sun, a silver disc in a grey sky, candles flicker on the walls of the pagoda temples. People offer morning prayers at shrines. Women from the countryside sit by the roadsides, smoking and selling armfuls of white radishes. Spring is already here; the Himalayas, visible on crisp winter
Brendan O’Neill discovers that public lavatories are plastered with government propaganda, much of it telling us how disgusting we are Under the Blair terror, you can’t even take a piss in peace. The other day, standing at a urinal in a plush cinema in north London, I found myself staring at a notice on the
Fraser Nelson says that David Cameron has given up on tax cuts and will now concentrate on advancing the frontiers of the state by matching Labour’s high spending The secret to everlasting left-wing government was discovered in Sweden decades ago. First raise tax and employ as much of the electorate as possible. Next, offer generous
I have no idea whether Sion Jenkins — the former Hastings deputy headmaster who was this week acquitted of murdering his foster daughter after juries in two successive trials failed to reach a verdict — committed the foul deed or not. I wasn’t there. Maybe Jenkins suffered one of the fits of rage which his
Peter Oborne says that Gordon Brown’s utterances on terrorism and ID cards indicate that he now sees himself as prime minister in all but name It has finally become accepted both in the inner Blair circle and the wider Labour movement that Gordon Brown will inevitably be the next prime minister and must be treated
In the Montblanc/Spectator Art of Writing Award last year, readers were invited to submit a short essay on the subject of immortality. Here is the winning entry. My father is old. He does not believe in God. He was 90 in December, an event celebrated with a family lunch at a hotel of his choosing.
You’d be surprised how many champions Sir Ian Blair has. Ken Livingstone thinks he’s terrific. So does his Oxford contemporary and namesake, Tony Blair. The Guardian has devoted a huge amount of space to telling us what a good job he is doing. According to one of its columnists, the clamour against the Metropolitan Police
Cyrus the Great, the ancient Persian king who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and wrote the first charter of human rights, must be spinning in his grave. Once the world’s most advanced civilisation, Iran is yet again descending into barbarism under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the rabid fanatic who took power in a rigged
Sir Richard Sykes of Imperial College tells Martin Vander Weyer that Britain’s world-class scientists hold the key to future economic success Approaching Imperial College through the long tunnel from South Kensington station, I recalled that the last time I met the College’s rector, Sir Richard Sykes, he was chief executive of Glaxo, the drugs group,
Lashkar Gar, Afghanistan In a dusty clearing on the outskirts of Helmand’s capital, the US army’s Provincial Reconstruction Team had set up a mobile aid station. As we approached, a Humvee gunner swung his machine-gun towards us and shouted angrily, ‘Get back, get back!’ We were clad in shalwar-kameez and sporting scrubby beards. We may
Washington In the 48 hours before George W. Bush took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, the presenter for ABC news was blown up in his flatbed truck by a roadside device near Baghdad, Martin Luther King Jr’s widow died, former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay went on
Julian Manyon on why the Palestinians voted for Hamas — and why the terrorists will not be transformed into politicians by the realities of power Jerusalem Fundamentalists of any stripe are not to my taste but the leading ideologues of Hamas have a grisly fascination. Mild-mannered, often well-educated, including doctors and scientists in their ranks,
Here are a few reasons why the Football Association should have sacked the manager of England, Sven-Goran Eriksson. 1. Allowing England to lose to one of the worst teams in the world, Northern Ireland, in a crucial World Cup qualifying game. 2. Spending what seems to have been most of his free time attempting to
Sholto Byrnes talks to Chris Huhne, second favourite in the Lib Dem race, about coalitions, privacy and the Austro–Hungarian empire Until a couple of weeks ago, the name of Chris Huhne was known only to the most dedicated followers of politics, and a few economists. Now the MP for Eastleigh, who won his seat last
After some consideration I am not sure that I can get excited about the debate as to whether cannabis should be classifed as a Class B drug or whether, as the Home Secretary Charles Clarke decided last week, it should remain Class C. Rather, I am coming round to the conclusion that it should be
William Cash meets a Devon farmer who keeps the family’s gruesome family heirloom — Hitler’s red telephone — in his safe A week before Christmas the Grampian microphone that Sir Winston Churchill used to make his VE Day speech in Westminster Chapel went under the hammer at a specialist sale of historical documents at Ludlow
When the Twin Towers collapsed, I read nothing sane upon the subject in any newspaper until Michael Wharton, as Peter Simple, filed the following to the Telegraph: ‘Only a stony-hearted fanatic could have been unmoved by the massacre in America. Yet for us feudal landlords and clerical reactionaries, cranks, conspiracy theorists and Luddite peasants, the
Everybody loves the Poles. Everybody loves reliable plumbers and natural-born nannies. Only Andrzej Tutkaj, of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, is sceptical about the benefits of the march from East to West. I spoke to Mr Tutkaj on the telephone this week and asked him how all the new Poles were faring in