Everyone else who is anyone is there, and the results so far are a triumph for the younger generation, with Vassily Ivan-chuk and Vladimir Kramnik a long way ahead of the field. After nine rounds the scores are: Ivanchuk 6; Kramnik 51/2; Short, Kaspa...

Sir: You report today on your front page the death sentence handed out to the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and his co-defendants by a "special tribunal" in Nigeria ("Playwright sentenced to death", 31 October). In March of this year, I went to Port Harcourt ...

Northerners, with a survey conducted at railway stations in London, Newcastle and York, claiming that people from the north are more that 50 per cent more likely to laugh at a joke than those from the south. The survey was described as "only slightly...

Hairdressers are the most boring people in the world, capable of discoursing at length upon an infinite range of mind-numbingly dull subjects. Pets, politics, holidays, kitchen appliances - you name it, hairdressers have an enormous amount to say abo...

This is why the unsavoury revelations of recent years and the sleaze mania were such a bad business, good for newspaper sales but awful for Westminster. It's why the attempt by the Nolan committee and now MPs to clean up the palace is not trivial, or...

Sir: The only problem with Peter Barnett's otherwise admirable suggestion of motorists signalling a gun towards the temple (Letters, 30 October) is that it can be misconstrued as meaning "you should be shot". It must be remembered that enraged motori...

He was, after all, a medical gentleman. He had not, I think, finished his training, but I know many doctors who are called doctor who have not yet finished their training, and no one looks askance at them. The fact of the matter is that it would neve...

Then there is Lord Nolan, the judge brought in by the Prime Minister to calm public anxiety about the ethics of MPs. A rebellion inside the Tory party now threatens the proposed Nolan rule book. Meanwhile Sir Richard Scott sits polishing his long-del...

Sir: I was appalled to hear yesterday that the military government of Nigeria has sentenced five members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop) to death. Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues from Mosop have been involved in a peacef...

Sir: As a former pupil of Hackney Downs School ("Failed school to be shut down", 1 November), I remember well my last day there in September 1967. It was, arguably, the beginning of the end. With a few friends, I had called in to say goodbye to the s...

Kim Kay Perisie, who, despite facing a prison sentence of up to 25 years for offering a man $500 to kill her husband, is still in love with him, and he with her. "Love is a state of insanity anyway," claimed Stephen Perisie, who won $3m on the lotter...

Sir: I have been unable to stop laughing ever since I read Germaine Greer's column last Friday. I cannot get out of my head the vision of a panic- stricken, newly qualified, young and gauche physician, totally unprepared by any of his teachers in the...

Sir: Michael Howard may have been very satisfied to hear that David Steel's son was imprisoned for nine months for growing some cannabis plants for himself and his friends. Perhaps we shall soon see people jailed for smoking cannabis to relieve the d...

Actually, there never was any such study. I made that up. But it doesn't undercut my basic point, which is that today's junior hospital doctors don't have time to produce great poetry. I challenge you to name one junior hospital doctor currently writ...

Sir: Thank you Germaine Greer ("Young, free, virginal and not a dork", 27 October) for making me realise that I am not alone. In a world increasingly dominated by sex, I always feel slightly isolated in not leading a life centred around the subject. ...

As the capital city, London is the focus of attention from other countries around the world. It is the centre not just of national government, but of finance, the arts and entertainment. The capital's reputation as a centre of excellence for its spor...

As the hounds' breath steams in the brisk autumn air and the MFH drains his stirrup cup, unspeakable old England is on the hoof again, galloping across the country, in the scenes that grace the plastic table-mats of a thousand country pubs. Some 20,0...

I understand that the reason given for turning down our high-quality bid was because the Birmingham site is in a green belt area. A public inquiry would be needed and it was felt that it was far from certain whether it would result in Birmingham's fa...

Yesterday, Gillian Shephard's "hit squad" - Hackney Downs Education Association - delivered the death blow, recommending that from next term the school should be abandoned and its teachers made redundant after two decades of decline that soured a cen...

Sir: It is clear from Alex Salmond's views on the referendum in Quebec (Another View: "Choose wisely, Quebec", 30 October) that he misunderstands the nature of the British state. First, it is not a nation-state, it is a multi-national state and has b...