Peru's Asian populist

Alberto Fujimori, Peru's president of Japanese origin, is set to become one of Latin America's longest surviving political leaders. Janet Bush surveys the strategy of a man who strives to combine democracy with autocracy, and free market reforms with Asian-style social development

Russian lessons

Robert Skidelsky spent a month in Russia, playing bridge, monitoring an election, learning Russian, and observing the anxieties of ordinary citizens

The right stuff

American conservatism is radically distinct from its British and European counterparts. Imbued with a religious and populist sensibility, its enemy is liberalism, not socialism. Irving Kristol, one of the founders of American neo-conservatism, explains how populist conservatism has flourished in America and how it is better equipped than traditional conservatisms to correct western democracies' misguided elites

Two cheers for Brussels

Even pro-European commentators in Britain have been turning against monetary union and questioning the EU's democratic credentials. Charles Grant says that Emu would not have the dire economic consequences they predict and that Brussels institutions are imperfect but reformable

Ireland's British question

Garret Fitzgerald

Despite tensions over Drumcree, Anglo-Irish relations have been transformed over the past 25 years. Inside the EU, Ireland has become a more open, self-confident country, pursuing with Britain the goal of peace in Northern Ireland. But Garret FitzGerald and Paul Gillespie fear that differences over Europe and the rise of English nationalism threaten the entente

Publish and be small

It is not a happy time for big publishers in Britain. But Andrew Franklin, who recently left Penguin to set up his own company, Profile Books, sees good times ahead for nimble independent houses

The end of progress

Is the idea of progress dead? Alain Finkielkraut, the French philosopher, says that as we approach the millennium, our faith in progress remains undimmed, while progress itself has died.

Dangerous enough?

Labour needs greater policy precision to help win the next election and to ensure the success of the Blair government. Charles Clarke, former head of Neil Kinnock's private office, offers advice

No earthly paradise

Our century has seen the triumph of Eduard Bernstein's evolutionary socialism against revolutionary utopias. Stephen Tindale says that we must now prepare for evolutionary environmentalism

Tarantino goes to the dogs

Tarantino is a 1990s icon whose films are both delightful and dismaying. Anthony Julius decodes their appeal, saves the director from himself, but worries about his future

A biography of one's own

After six volumes of letters and five volumes of diaries we know what Virginia Woolf did and said on almost every day of her life. Penelope Fitzgerald considers why we care

Brussels diary

What's the October summit for?

Letter from India

Winston Fletcher describes driving to the Taj Mahal on an Indian dual carriageway

The net position

John Carr

Digest

Philippe Sollers

Two prominent French writers who have been married for 30 years, Philippe Sollers and Julia Kristeva, discuss their attitude to infidelity

Strictly personal

Frederic Raphael

Babel

John Lloyd

John Lloyd meets Max Clifford, the modern myth maker who yearns to represent Princess Diana