Some of the most plaintive, and most distinctively English, lines to be written by any of the Great War poets were those of Rupert Brooke in "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester": "Stands the Church clock at ten to three?/And is there honey still for tea?"

Nearly a century after Brooke, homesick in Berlin, pined for his old Cambridgeshire residence (now occupied by Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare), chances are, though, that any [...]

The name of Preeta Samarasan was seen everywhere in Malaysia this summer, from airport bookshops to generous spreads in Sunday newspapers. Ubiquitous were comparisons to Salman Rushdie, and lavish the praise ("a thrilling new talent" - Peter Ho Davies). Back in Britain, however, despite being published by the respected Fourth Estate, this first-time novelist seems barely to have registered with the literary editors, let alone troubled the bestseller lists.

Has [...]

The dreamy, white-sand beaches of south-east Asia will welcome millions of western tourists this summer. From the west coast of Thailand, excursions will head to Ko Tapu, the island made famous as the lair of the Bond villain Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun. Others will be lured by the clifftop kecak dances on Bali, where flames illuminate the tales of the Ramayana, performed in an 11th-century Hindu [...]

"It's because of loyalty, really, that I don't talk about orthodoxies of any kind," says Lisa Jardine, explaining why she does not want a fight against Catholicism. The loyalty is to the Orthodox Jewish faith that both her parents' families observed "all the way back to whenever - Abraham". A woman of no religious faith, Jardine admits: "It's a sort of awesome admission, that you've ruptured that continuity."

The daughter [...]

"I'll tell you my idea of progress," says Tony Benn. "You come up with a good idea - it's ignored. If you go on, you're mad. Then if you go on, you're dangerous. There's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place." At 83, and elevated to the role of unofficial conscience to the nation, [...]

In a memorable episode of the television series Yes, Prime Minister, the PM, Jim Hacker, is presented with a choice of two candidates for a vacant bishopric. When the cabinet secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, mentions the first, Hacker expresses outrage. "But he doesn't even believe in God!" he says. "Yes, Prime Minister," replies Sir Humphrey smoothly, "but he doesn't have anything against him."

At the time of transmission, in 1986, [...]

The garden in Doughty Street, Bloomsbury, was always packed during the Spectator's summer parties. Former Tory cabinet ministers like Lord Gilmour might be spotted conversing with Sir Charles Wheeler, the veteran BBC correspondent. A smattering of Pakenhams, the literary clan headed by Lord Longford, perhaps; Telegraph editors past and present, such as Charles Moore and Sir Peregrine Worsthorne; novelists, painters, political commentators and, darting hither and thither, shirt untucked and [...]

"In some countries the opposition cannot win, but we are not like that." The words of Dr Mahathir, Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister, never rang truer than when the results of the recent elections came in. Mahathir's hand-picked successor, Abdullah Badawi, led the ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN), to its worst result since independence 50 years ago. The BN still has a simple majority, but it is in crisis after [...]

Not that long ago Samantha Power was trudging through the winter wastes of New Hampshire with Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Anthony Lake, canvassing door- to-door and phoning potential supporters in what she calls a "very mom-and-poppy operation". "Almost by definition there was a sort of expectation that he was going to lose," she says of Barack Obama, whom this Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor advises on foreign policy. "Going [...]

"Ooooooof!" Colin Blakemore is stumped - a rare occurrence indeed. Professor of neuroscience at Oxford and Warwick universities, former chief executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC), the youngest ever Reith lecturer (in 1976) and winner of the Royal Society's Michael Faraday award for public communication of science, Blakemore is not a man known for shying away from controversy or being short for words. He thinks that alcohol and tobacco [...]