How strong public dissatisfaction remains was shown in a leaked poll which led the Palace to conclude that a spin-doctor - contemporary form of the genie - should be appointed. The Sun revealed that the opening of Parliament is to be simplified, HRH'...

But the author and director of the huge hits Dealer's Choice and Closer - the latter just voted Best Play of 1997 at the Olivier Awards - is in the spotlight now, and he is making a good impression. He is impeccably dressed in a suit that wants to be...

Whether it was the original stuff or a remake from the blocks I now forget. Anyway, it was expensive. There was no doubt about that. My friend in the Labour Club, Christopher Norwood (MP for Norwich South 1964-70 and now dead, poor chap), calculated ...

Tomorrow morning, in smart new offices above a shopping centre in south London, a public inquiry into the case opens before a former High Court judge, and the question is being asked again: will Stephen's killers ever pay for their crimes? It is a pe...

This is the conventional wisdom of the Labour back benches, that the left has been chewed up and spat out by Tony Blair's New Labour party. Shorn of the red flag and Clause IV, a once dominant force has been consigned to the dustbin of parliamentary ...

MURRAY HEDGCOCK The P G Wodehouse Society (UK) London SW14

In other words, the Kosovo Albanians, like the Serbs and Croats of Bosnia, must for ever remain part of a state they detest. There must be an "end to violence" and a "negotiated settlement". The policy of all borders being externally sacred is an art...

You quote Sir Christopher as saying he believes such an undertaking would seriously compromise the independence of the BBC Governors. This claim highlights a convenient intellectual smokescreen that has arisen over the corporation's duties towards Pa...

Latin was, for several centuries after the foundation of Constantinople, the administrative language of the Roman Empire (both East and West). It is true that modern Greek owes (some of) its origins to classical Greek, in the same way that French, Ca...

STEWART RUSSELL London SE10 [We mean "young in spirit" - Eds]

"Daddy, is Tony Blair in the Cabinet?" Yes, he is the most important one. "And what does he think?" Well, a girl of about your age wrote a letter to ask him, and he wrote back saying, "I do think hunting is wrong and I will vote in favour of a ban in...

Canon-making and canon-changing preoccupies our archive-minded pre-millennial time. Far from drowning in a sea of anything-goes relativism, as the doomsters claim, we draw up lists, compile charts and obsessively play at Ins and Outs. Last year, the ...