I was recently upbraided in this magazine by your High Life columnist, a person I’ve liked and admired for many years, regarding a piece I’d written for Tatler on the ski resort of Gstaad. Taki can sometimes get painfully close to the bone, but he let me off lightly. His point was that I hadn’t
Emily Maitlis reports from Libya on a land newly entranced by our brands — even M&S — where the West tolerates Gaddafi for fear of the insurgent alternative Strange things happen to countries hermetically sealed by their dictators. Under Hoxha, Albanians fell in love with Norman Wisdom. Under Lukashenko, the Belarusians have seen mandatory beauty
Britain has lost its identity and its sense of nation, says David Selbourne. The citizen is treated as a mere ‘consumer’, liberty reduced to the ‘freedom to choose’, politicians held in contempt and hostile forces such as Islamism appeased. The stakes could scarcely be higher. The ills of Western democracies are afflicting the most liberal
Gays are law-abiding, better-educated than the norm, economically productive and tend to be less of a drain on the state, says Rod Liddle. They don’t stand a chance in this country Should we afford Iranian homosexuals political asylum in this country, or send them back to be hanged in their home country? I suppose there
On the floor of Alan Milburn’s office is a scroll signed by the Queen offering her ‘well-beloved councillor’ £2,000 to be Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. It is a souvenir of his battles in the Blair–Brown days. He was appointed to this position to co-ordinate the last general election campaign, and was briefly seen
Adam Holloway says that Britain’s strategy in Afghanistan is misconceived. Nato’s military presence should be reduced and the battle for hearts and minds fought more imaginatively They do not like the F-word in Whitehall, but failure stares us in the face in southern Afghanistan. For three years we have deluded ourselves that we can defeat
