Telegraph Blogs

If you want a definitive verdict on Krystian Zimerman’s Chopin anniversary recital at the Festival Hall on Monday, read this review by my colleague Ivan Hewett. He says: “At the end of his recital not a hair of his splendid white mane was out of place, and he bowed with that deep humility only a… Read more

The growing dispute between London and Buenos Aires over the Falklands escalated further yesterday, when 32 Latin American and Caribbean heads of state agreed to support “the legitimate rights of the republic of Argentina in the sovereignty dispute with Great Britain”. Argentina’s foreign minister, Jorge Taiana, is reportedly heading to New York to “demand secretary… Read more

Curiouser and curiouser. You remember that on Monday John Prescott was at his hectoring best, laying in to Andrew Rawnsley on every telly outlet. As I reported, one of his points of attack focused rather bizarrely on Andy Coulson. In strongly-worded terms, he suggested it was a bit rich to accuse Gordon Brown of bullying… Read more

And no, we’re not talking about His Eminence Cormac Card. Murphy-O’Connor. Are you kidding? Take a bow, Keith O’Brien of St Andrews and Edinburgh, who today revealed the full depth of his loathing for the government led by his fellow countryman. As the Telegraph reports, Cardinal O’Brien was reacting to the suggestion of Jim Murphy MP… Read more

A few years ago I wrote a piece about the enduring appeal of fur. My argument went roughly along these lines: I’ll never buy new fur, but if it’s a good fake or a hand-me-down from my grandmother or even further back, I will wear it. My grandmother’s furs (bought when people were much less aware of… Read more

Dismal figures from the housing market demonstrate that it is no exception to the iron law that there is no problem so bad that Government intervention cannot make it worse. Mortgage lending hit an eight-year low last month, according to the British Bankers’ Association – but the trade body was too polite to point out… Read more

In his time of sorrow (his wife Cheryl, the X Factor judge, has announced that they’re separating), Ashley Cole can at least feel grateful for one thing. Namely, that in January he was disqualified from driving for four months. In his 2006 autobiography, the England footballer recalled that, while driving one day, he received a phone call… Read more

“Why do why do so many ladies from the most sexually-liberated and educated society in history love the headscarf,” Ed West asked the other day. By which he meant, why are so many of our formerly free-wheeling friends, cousins, and neighbours flirting (and sometimes hooking up much more permanently) with fundamentalist Islam? For a man,… Read more

Heroic, monotesticular UKIP MEP Nigel Farage was bumped off the BBC Question Time panel at the last minute last week. Shame. That particular edition was broadcast from Middlesbrough and it would have been fascinating to hear the audience’s response to the choice things he was planning to say about the closure of their local steelworks. Here… Read more

A new e-book store opened to UK customers today. Kobo, which previously had been a US-only service, promises “eReading: anytime. anyplace”. It sells books in the ePub format, through mobile apps and in a format you can read on your computer. The good thing about the ePub format is that it is compatible with most… Read more

It’s official: according to her spokesman, X Factor judge Cheryl Cole “is separating from her husband Ashley Cole“. She returned to the UK from Los Angeles this afternoon, where she had gone after allegations about Ashley Cole’s infidelity surfaced in the press. The only question now, presumably, is what on earth to do with that tattoo?

This afternoon I fell asleep at my laptop and inhaled the combined fumes from thousands of hours of KitKats, sandwiches eaten at my desk and human skin (mine, I presume). The effect was like having hallucinogenic snuff blown up my nose by an Amazonian jungle shaman. I have thus just awoken from my dream-like state… Read more

The plot thickens around “Neathergate” (as no one is calling it yet). As the Telegraph reports: Opponents of immigration could be racist, warned advisers a decade ago People opposed to immigration in to Britain could be influenced by racism, a previously unseen Government paper signalled. The draft paper, drawn up for the Home Office, said “anti-immigrant sentiment is closely… Read more

The country is staggering towards insolvency. Our border controls have been dismantled. We can’t even allocate Olympic tickets without the say-so of our masters in Brussels – and what are the top political stories of the day? Well, they are whether Gordon Brown shouts at his staff, and how Lord Tebbit was roughed up by a… Read more

Forget Gordon Brown. Our World News page carries the exciting news that Pro Wrestler Ric Flair has been assaulted by his wife after they went out for dinner. Perhaps Flair was doing too much finger-wagging posturing, had overdosed on sequins and in-your-face screaming, and indulged in some showboat strutting round the dining table. All that… Read more

A conservative intellectual is, in Leninist terms, a class traitor. Lefties feel he ought to be one of them. And he, good Burkeian as he is, disapproves of himself. As Burke put it: “One sure symptom of an ill-conducted state is the propensity of the people to resort to theories.” Jesse Norman, a brilliant modern Burkeian, has… Read more

Poor old Jose Mourinho. As if he did not have enough on his plate defending himself from the blistering tirades and draconian penalties of the Italian FA, now Carlo Ancelotti has taken the opportunity to stick the boot in. “Apart from the Inter fans, all of Italy will want Chelsea to win,” the Stamford Bridge… Read more

Most people would presume that the spectacle of screen actors “blacking up” was an anachronism that belongs to less racially considerate times, when black people were patronisingly caricatured as lyrical, childlike simpletons. Yet blacking up is precisely what Gerard Depardieu has been accused of for the film L’autre Dumas, released this month. In it, the… Read more

Ooh, the National Secular Society is getting in such a state over the prospect of religion playing a role at the next election that it has taken grossly to distorting what leading politicians have to say on the subject. No sooner had I written yesterday that the Tories have an opportunity to tap into the… Read more

There is one side-effect of opioid (morphine-like) painkillers that practically every patient I spoke to for my article yesterday on the rise in opioid prescriptions reported. This is constipation. Constipation can be wretchedly demoralizing. One of the worst “bowel-freezers” is also the most widely-used opioid, codeine. But all of them have this effect of, as… Read more

You don’t need an expensive, high-tech, virtual nose to smell something funny going on with the way companies measure their carbon dioxide emissions. A group of scientists from University of London and University of California, San Diego have found – surprise, surprise – that when there’s an economic value on greenhouse gas emissions, factories have… Read more

Visitors to the excellent new Henry Moore exhibition at Tate Britain might notice that the artist’s estate gave a sculpture to HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax in 2002. Here is the piece, with apologies for the picture quality. It is called Bird Basket.

I wonder how much money the estate owed? And – more importantly –… Read more