20 November 1998

Who are the world's most long-lived dictators? Top of the list is Fidel Castro, who came to power when Macmillan was the British prime minister and Eisenhower the American president. ... read more

Monday "Is it true," asks Zero Anstiss in her slightly hoarse voice, "that you new Labour people are all control freaks?" I put down my Bourbon - half nibbled - ... read more

Spare the Rhodri Labour is boosting Rhodri Morgan's chances of beating the Blairite favourite, Alun Michael, to the post of Welsh Assembly leader. The principality's 25,000 party members are ... read more

All party leaders are control freaks. Some are more successful at controlling than others, but none of them is relaxed about the rise of dissenters within their own ranks.

This ... read more

Where did they go, our travelling minstrels, our strolling players? It seems impossible today for any new venture to be allowed the grace to blossom organically, through word of mouth ... read more

In bed on Sunday mornings my wife and I play a little game. No, not that sort of game. This one is conducted just after the Radio 4 announcer has ... read more

America's politicians and pundits sound as disgruntled as the Duke of York's 10,000 men marching down that hill again. President Bill Clinton took them to the Baghdad brink yet again, ... read more

He was born near Takrit, Iraq, in 1937. Beaten by his step-father and hated by the other children in the village . . .

Oh please, I can hear violins ... read more

I realised that my relationship with my one-time GP was foundering when I discovered that my surgery file consisted of a note of two old prescriptions and assorted press clippings. ... read more

"She arched up her hips and he glided into her, filling her up and stretching her out. Clarissa looked up at him in the darkness, his face only partially illuminated ... read more

This week, I chaired a discussion show on Channel 4. The current affairs department had commissioned a small independent company, Laurel Productions, to make a 30-minute documentary on young people's ... read more

Last weekend saw an extraordinary gathering. Around 30 key thinkers and policy experts from across Europe met in the plush surroundings of Harvard University for a three- day seminar to ... read more

A year ago, at Kyoto, the world reached an historic agreement to combat climate change by cutting greenhouse emissions. Developed countries would reduce emissions 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels ... read more

When asked what influence he would name upon his writing, Hugo Young said instantly - before the question was fully out of my mouth - "Macaulay". There is, in fact, ... read more

Time was, whenever I took a cab to a friend's house, I'd find Radio 5 Live blaring in the bumping, grinding vehicle, and Radio 4 murmuring at my friend's. No ... read more

The hit parade is dominated by artists from the eighties and from even earlier

We were working for the party on our council beat

That much is true

We ... read more

If you take out comprehensive, worldwide health insurance with Britain's second mightiest medical insurers, PPP healthcare - started as long ago as 1938 - you'll be covered for vital medical ... read more

Here we are at the end of 1998. More than ten years has passed since Russia began experimenting with economic and political reform. During those ten years, we have had ... read more

This is a true account. It would take a Bertolt Brecht to improve on this ultimate analogue for the dehumanisation of the social market. Rod Grimm (his real name) is ... read more

Identity and Politics (Centre for Reform, Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2AF, 0171-222 5121). Just as we all fell asleep over our rebranded Britishness, this paper prods us between the ribs. ... read more

The trouble with his family, Chris Powell says, is that none of them has ever really done anything. "We are all just whisperers in ears, aren't we?" he complains. This ... read more

I've been trying to imagine how I would describe what it's like to move house to someone who had never done it. Everybody knows the old cliche about it being ... read more

Terence Savage returned with the axe and asked for Mr Barlow before prowling the corridors until police arrived and arrested him.

Savage claimed he had no intention of hurting Mr ... read more

Miles Davis was the most prolific of record-makers, but most know him for three touchstone albums: Sketches of Spain, Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew. To go from the first ... read more

Boris Godunov trundles through the crowds at his coronation on a tricycle rickshaw. He strikes bold, rhetorical poses a la Lenin, then crumples under the weight of a private guilt ... read more

It's clear from the opening credits of King Vidor's The Fountainhead that the film is in the grip of phallic dementia. It begins with a skyscraper swinging round to turn ... read more

To describe a comedy as "dark" is virtually a compliment in itself these days. That unexpected wrench into tragedy, exemplified by the coronary suffered by Beverley's husband in Abigail's Party, ... read more

"Far from being the mere absence of sound, silences express what no words or sounds possibly could." Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (1983)

One of ... read more

Cruel winds of fate have blown me to Rome twice in the past three weeks: sitting in a hotel lobby, I still can't believe people pay me to come here ... read more

Scholars who study the decline of great civilisations sometimes find an environmental factor behind their fall. The river-valley cultures of the Middle East may have destroyed their habitats by over-irrigation, ... read more

As all dinner party bores are aware (and never pause to inform us), there are far too many cookery shows on British TV. To compound the offence, they fulminate, most ... read more

"Would you like to try it first, madam?" the waiter enquires as I order a bottle of wine. He is charming, politeness embodied. But something in his manner assures me ... read more

To arrive at a San Francisco conference knowing that half a day later you must be on your way back to the airport is to see what it is like ... read more

I've just got back from a derby game between Arsenal and Spurs. Which I was really looking forward to. Turned out pretty boring, really, and my mind kept wandering all ... read more

Not all extraordinary writers lead extraordinary lives - some shelter happily in ivory towers of the imagination - but Arthur Koestler's own story might seem implausible even in one of ... read more

Superlatives attach themselves to the Rothschild family like burrs. They are the greatest, richest, most enduringly successful banking dynasty the world has ever seen. From their five European power bases, ... read more

Robert Newman's novel is narrated by a Metropolitan Police constable in north London. The title, with its reference to anodyne English comedy, is, as you might expect from one of ... read more

Nietzsche wrote somewhere that all philosophy is involuntary biography. It is hard to think of a philosopher of whom this is less obviously true than Isaiah Berlin. The heart of ... read more

Tom Wolfe once described his celebrated new journalism as "a garage sale . . . vignettes, odds and ends of scholarship, bits of memoir, short bursts of sociology, apostrophes, epithets, ... read more

When a poet laureate dies, it may be time to take stock. What is the meaning of the role, and has it a place in our society? And why have ... read more

No 3553 Set by Gordon Gwilliams

The year 2000 is the Labour Party's centenary. We asked for fly-on-the-wall reporting of new Labour's strategy session to discuss the "opportunities" presented by ... read more

This is aspirational London. Get out and get on. Going through Enfield, I could navigate from Tesco store to Tesco store. The newest has just been opened by the town ... read more