Leaving the Speccie

I was drawn to the Wodehousean world of the Spectator, but its complacency was too much for me

Germaine Greer

The historian Stella Tillyard has just read the entire collected works of Germaine Greer. She finds that Greer has been remarkably consistent over the years, even in her many inconsistencies.

Bardolatry

William Shakespeare was a towering genius. But, contrary to the claims of American critic Harold Bloom, he did not invent modern consciousness and his works do not constitute a secular Bible. Bloom's bardolatry detracts from Shakespeare's actual achievements

The meaning of Bill

Just as Ulysses S Grant was the drinker, and Calvin Coolidge the napper, Clinton will always be remembered as the priapic president. But he does have a more lasting legacy. He reformed government for the post-cold war era and helped to change America's border between the private and public realms

The long peace

Robert Cooper

For centuries we have been shaped by war. But, as Nato turns 50, peace is now the natural order in the developed world. Its effect is already evident in the trend away from secrecy and centralisation in government, the lower status of politics and the higher status of women. What else will peace do to us?

The next oil shock?

The world is wallowing in cheap oil. But the oil industry's most authoritative data shows that Opec is set for a comeback

Less race, please

Contrary to the Lawrence inquiry, blacks and whites want to live in a society less aware of race, not more

Slowing the clock

Some of our cells are immortal and some die with us. Tom Wilkie reports on how understanding the difference may help us slow down ageing

The benefits of congestion

An awesomely erudite book about cities, including his home-town of Memphis, Tennessee

The Habsburg dilemma

Ernest Gellner was a brilliant polemicist, but his partisan history of ideas is a crude caricature of modern European thought.

The prisoner

Don't shoot me, I'm only the organist. But I'll never snitch on a fellow inmate

Babel

Pico Iyer

Babel: I am a Luddite who relies, every other moment, on technology.

Modern times

Jeremy Clarke

While browsing at Ron's second-hand bookshop, be careful not to tread on the sleeping tramps

Brussels diary

EU aid to Palestine, Mossad, and another scandal about to break

In fact

Digest

John O'Farrell

In the year since the Good Friday agreement, media attention has focused on how hardliners discipline their "own." John O'Farrell of Belfast's Fortnight magazine reports