Jeeves at the FO
Douglas Hurd was always measured, detached, a safe pair of hands, writes John Nott. In short, the perfect butler - as his Memoirs attest
Brought to book
As bad as the allegations against Arnold Schwarenegger are, what depresses most is the intellectual and moral poverty of the response to them. John Sutherland on sexual harassment, the California election and the Nobel prize for literature.
All in the imagination
Children's Book Week is the ideal opportunity to get children writing, says the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion.
The stroppier the better
Judith Hawley finds Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation enhanced by her collected letters and Barbara Taylor's study, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination
‘Three-dimensional chess in the dark’
Simon Callow admires the honesty of National Service, Richard Eyre's diary of his time as director of the National Theatre
If you want your biography to make a splash, sex it up
John Sutherland: There are - to repeat the joke - two kinds of biographer: those who don't know everything, and those who don't know anything.
My friend Edward
Christopher Hitchens remembers Edward Said, polymath, academic powerhouse, consummate musician and the most passionate advocate of justice for Palestinians.
The bear facts
Caroline G Bott's biography of Rupert the Bear's illustrator, The Life and Works of Alfred Bestall, reveals his integrity and his optimistic view of the world. Simon Callow remembers the bear with the red jumper
Hearing the right voices
The concluding volume of Roy Foster's monumental life of WB Yeats is a magnificent achievement, says Bernard O'Donoghue
Scholar Edward Said dies
Edward Said - scholar, literary critic and the most eloquent supporter of the Palestinian cause - died in New York yesterday after a long battle against leukaemia. He was 67.
Edward Said
Controversial literary critic and bold advocate of the Palestinian cause in America.