01 January 1999

"Daddy, that Mr Mandelson is a very wicked man, isn't he?" "Yes, my son, very wicked indeed. He's done wrong." "So many wrong things: he didn't speak out against dropping ... read more

Whelan and dealin' The greatest political upset so far for the government occurred two days before Christmas, when the trade and industry secretary, Peter Mandelson, and the paymaster-general, Geoffrey ... read more

Christmas Eve Never glad, confident morning again. What a falling off was there, from this to this. Oh fie. Posterity must excuse my emotion at the passing, politically, of one ... read more

I am in Moscow to attend the Russian Booker prize, which shares more than a passing resemblance to its British cousin - the shortlist is annually trashed, the judges traduced ... read more

We are still living through the Twelve Days of Christmas, aren't we? Soon, once the new year has passed and the last festive song has been sung, children will return ... read more

Debt, and what to do with it, has long been the essence of practical politics. Debts to the party which promotes, to the voters who elect, to the ideology which ... read more

I was gutted just before Christmas,

And my fir stripped of stars and balloons;

My cavity, thin as an isthmus,

Was stuffed with old chestnuts and prunes.

They turned up ... read more

A state of war exists between the United States and Iraq. American warplanes patrol the northern and southern skies, and Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries take futile pot-shots at them. The F-16s ... read more

I spent the week before Christmas in Hobe Sound, an inner citadel of Waspdom in Florida where many members of the Bush administration used to Christmas (if not the last ... read more

I was a teenage arms salesman. There! I have wanted to say that for years. It is far more satisfyingly outrageous than being a mere teenage sex maniac. Everybody is ... read more

Well into the 1950s, 25 December was a normal working day in Scotland; the important festival was Hogmanay, 31 December. The Scots tradition was to reflect quietly on the dying ... read more

Half a century ago a newly independent India made its first assault on its powerful ruling families and their feudal nobles. In 1947 the princely states represented about a third ... read more

Once a year, at least, I review a couple of Caribbean weeklies, just to give you a feel of what is taking place in those countries from which so many ... read more

If he were a character in fiction, George Weidenfeld would work best as a baddie: the bulbous-eyed, mittel-European Herr Fixit who dabbles around power, enjoys the company of lithe-legged lovelies ... read more

Whatever else the new year brings, it is unlikely to be economic contentment. Rarely has the world economy found itself in such a mess. If this was a business, the ... read more

Despite the political meltdown of the past ten days, the smack of firm government remains intact. From the Home Office comes the news that new Labour is to ban imports ... read more

O tempora, o mores, as Enoch Powell might have lamented. There used to be a time when a British shadow cabinet minister was sacked if, like the Roman, he saw ... read more

Sorry, I'm terrible with names . . .On New Year's Day, Wim Duisenberg will become one of the most powerful unelected men in the world: president of the new ... read more

The distinguishing feature of Tony Blair's new Labour is that it has fully accepted competitive markets, private enterprise and the profit motive as the motor of the country's economy. It ... read more

Moral Evasions (Centre for Policy Studies, 0171-222 4488, £7.50) by David Selbourne, author of The Principle of Duty, offers not a timely homily about breaking new year's resolutions, but ... read more

The little town of Rosendal is about 300 kilometres due south of Johannesburg, deep in the geographic centre of South Africa. It has a population of 2,000 and a highway ... read more

They've been hiding in lorries and decanting at Deal, causing anguish to Daily Mail readers: hundreds of Romanian refugees are landing on British shores. There are Roma, or gypsy, victims ... read more

The general's near neighbours seemed underwhelmed at the prospect of his arrival.

"There are supposed to be Russian underworld figures and members of the Hong Kong triads living around us ... read more

I'm a bit constrained in what I can write this week. My solicitor has said that I am absolutely not allowed to write about moving house. This is not because ... read more

While I can only applaud Christina Lamb's call to liberate us from our Trappist attitudes to the Tube ("You must be mad to speak to me", 18 December), might not ... read more

Why is Cristina Odone (18 December) so obsessed with sex? She informs us that "yes, I admit it - I've been quoted as saying that, far from being a good ... read more

Francis Beckett ("The myth of John Smith the loser", 11 December) is right to say that the people in charge of Labour's campaign were the real architects of the Sheffield ... read more

If Anna Freeman (Letters, 11 December) means by agnosticism "believing that we cannot know whether God exists", then I agree that this is dogmatic, though no more so than a ... read more

The current issue of the French cineastes' bible, Cahiers du Cinema, features a naked girl lolling distractedly between the sheets. The title of the film is L'Ennui. It's all too ... read more

Guitarists have always attracted hero-worship, and it has helped the best of them survive what would otherwise be the inevitable fall at the end of a brief pop career. Robert ... read more

Cider with Rosie (ITV) was appropriately inebriate fare for the Christmas weekend. I had remembered the liquefied imagery of Laurie Lee's classic account of his country childhood but forgotten the ... read more

"We were making the future and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making." H G Wells, When the Sleeper Wakes, 1899

Star Trek: Insurrection is ... read more

To quote the first work Francis Poulenc wrote for publication, the Rapsodie Negre of 1917:

Honoloulou, poti lama!honoloulou honolouloukati moko, mosi bolouratakou sira, polama!

The lines, by ... read more

Only five days till Twelfth Night. Then Captain Birdseye can go sling his hook. 'Twill no longer be the season to be Tango'd. I refer, of course, to this season's ... read more

The secret of a successful relationship with computers is to remember that they go better with drugs. Alcohol and computers don't mix at all: a loss of impulse control is ... read more

A new heaven and a new earth; a new year and a new diet. In this week of sudden and short-lived faith in seaweed fasts and nutritional gurus, I thought ... read more

"Never mix, never worry," says my latest love, smugly quoting Edward Albee, as he watches me pour half a Red Stripe into my empty sherry glass. Yes, it is quite ... read more

On the Sunday before Christmas (and before the Day of the Resignations), Robert Harris, the author of Fatherland, devoted his weekly Sunday Times column to the New Statesman. Harris is ... read more

It's half way through the season, time to take socks. I'm sitting here, with the Christmas games over, and it's no clearer who will win the Premiership. Awfully crowded, innit, ... read more

There is a famous encounter in Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate. Cedric, a droll, flamboyantly camp social climber, visits the narrator, Fanny, a slightly dowdy young aristo married ... read more

Despite the international recognition that Conor Cruise O'Brien has won in his long career as diplomat, scholar, politician and journalist, there is a dimension to him that must surely escape ... read more

Here are two shocking books. Not because they are lewd and rude; indeed, a great many serious readers today enjoy a little touch of Chaucer or Rabelais in the night, ... read more

When The End of Alice was published in 1997, A M Homes crossed over from the books pages into the news. Narrated by a male paedophile, the novel tapped into ... read more

"The trouble with the Engenglish," stutters Whisky Sisodia in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, "is that their hiss-hiss-history happened overseas, so they do- do-don't know what it means." Only in ... read more

No 3558 Set by John Digby

We asked for revealing excerpts from the young lives of famous fictional characters.

Report by Ms de Meaner

Really excellent. Just what ... read more

The pub at Piercebridge has a grandfather clock that is, they say, the original of the one in the song: "The clock stopped, never to go again, when the old ... read more

We don't have many Christmas traditions in my family. When my mother was alive she did her best to create one by consistently cooking a dinner of such awfulness that ... read more