How do people respond to Rubens these days? Is all that lush flesh so out of fashion that he is of historical interest only? The good people of Lille evidently think not, for a large and ambitious Rubens exhibition has been organised under the special patronage of M. Jacques Chirac to celebrate the fact that
Freddie Sayers went to an EU conference for young people in Ireland — and no one turned up. Euroenthusiasm is not groovy Imagine a huge celebrity wedding before any of the guests have arrived. A romantic Irish castle, a giant marquee with ruched egg-white lining and silver-birch detail, flurries of organisers talking into radios and
Bob Alexander on the need to reform the voting system to get rid of ‘electoral bias’ One of New Labour’s most outspoken commitments in opposition was that it would reform Parliament. It vowed to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative and later committed itself to the Wakeham recommendation to introduce some elected
Simon Jenkins says that Tony Blair’s Sedgefield speech was just another attempt by the Prime Minister to scare us into believing that we are all in mortal danger. We are not ‘And the clouds came flying through the air bringing winds and hurling lightning and arrows, and it rained hail, fire and swords, and killed
1. This prize draw is open to residents of the UK, 18 years or over, except employees of The Spectator 1828 Limited their associated, affiliated or subsidiary companies, and their families, agents or anyone else professionally associated with the draw. 2. Details regarding how to enter as published form part of the terms and conditions.
Andrew Gilligan can confirm, for the first time, that five months before the invasion of Iraq the Attorney General’s advice to the government was that regime change was illegal Hasn’t it been an exciting few months to be a lawyer? Once they just sat quietly in offices with stripey wallpaper and dado rails, sending out
When I arrived in Sydney it was raining. Throughout the 23-hour flight from London, where it was also raining, I had fantasised about walking off the plane into a wall of heat and heading for the beach. Just my bloody luck, I reflected, as I stood in the airport carpark and stared sulkily at the
The trouble with this country is that nobody gets shot,’ said Srdjan, the tubby 39-year-old music promoter, as we piled into his ramshackle Citro
As of last Thursday, multiculturalism was officially declared dead in this country. The funeral took place in Brent Town Hall in the presence of the Prince of Wales and the Home Secretary and was accompanied by the National Anthem and the theme music from Four Weddings and a Funeral. Although the event was not billed
Shortly after Christmas I went to Haiti for the first time in 13 years. The collapse of the Aristide regime was still two months away, but the Caribbean republic was already descending into chaos. At the airport of the capital, Port-au-Prince, the familiar smells of drainage and burning rubbish hit me forcefully and it was
So, off to meet Sir Andrew Green, retired Foreign Office mandarin, now founder and chairman of Migration Watch, which is either an ‘independent think tank which has no links to any political party’ (Migrationwatch.co.uk) or is a ‘nasty little outfit with a distinctly unpleasant agenda’ (the Independent). It depends, I suppose, on where you are
Rachel Johnson talks to Vernon Coleman, the one-man publishing sensation who has now turned his sights on the ‘lying little warmonger’ in Downing Street If you’re a Telegraph reader — as I do hope you are — you too will have seen those ads placed by a Dr Vernon Coleman, MB. Not the ones that
New York As British universities lurch from funding crisis to funding crisis, the jealous eyes of the academic establishment focus obsessively on the United States as the role model for future success. The assumption is that if UK universities charged ‘realistic’ fees, they would recreate themselves as ‘world class’ — or, at any rate, superior
Naomi Wolf has eased the burden of silence she has been carrying for over 20 years. In New York magazine she reveals that one evening after a dinner party, when she was a Yale undergraduate, Professor Harold Bloom of Yale placed his ‘heavy, boneless hand hot’ on her thigh. After she repelled the advance, if
Welcome to CNN’s Presidential Election Night Special. We’re just getting the results in live from the 51st State. We can confirm that the Great State of Great Britain has voted overwhelmingly for Senator John Kerry. This is a big blow for George W. Bush, and a humiliation for Governor Blair, who viewers will remember strongly
Simon Heffer believes that if the Tories are to have any hope of returning to power, they’ll have to stop tinkering and go for Labour’s jugular In an impressive observation the other day, a Very Senior Tory Indeed said to me, ‘I don’t buy this argument that governments lose elections rather than oppositions winning them.
I wants to make your flesh creep,’ is the Fat Boy’s refrain in the Pickwick Papers. In Berlin last week, I was at a conference which the Fat Boy would have enjoyed. The subject was terror; the threat that weapons of mass destruction in terrorist hands would pose to the West, during the foreseeable future.
Did Saddam Hussein really use industrial shredders to kill his enemies? Brendan O’Neill is not persuaded that he did Forget the no-show of Saddam Hussein’s WMD. Even George Bush no longer believes that they are there. Ask instead what happened to Saddam’s ‘people shredder’, into which his son Qusay reportedly fed opponents of the Baathist
Rod Liddle says that the government’s White Paper on public health won’t help the fatties, but if we could overcome our fear of ‘kiddie-fiddlers’, children might be able to reduce their weight on the playing field Everybody you know is on a diet because everybody you know is fat. Sometimes they’re just a bit porky,
Something extraordinary and rare is happening in London: we have an incomparable El Greco exhibition in our midst. It doesn’t really matter that it’s being staged in the rebarbative dungeon-like rooms of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury wing basement, for even those inconsiderate walls are alive with the strange music of El Greco’s vision. For a