Commentariat

Telegraph

Muslim insularity must cease, says Ed Husain. As one country, we ought to realise that Muslims’ problems cannot be resolved in isolation by Muslims alone.

The writers of Anchorman - the 2004 Will Ferrell comedy about newsreaders gone bad - must be cursing their creative timidity, says Jemima Lewis.

The Prime Minister and his Chancellor are desperate for Britons to carry on spending like it’s 1999, but Jenny McCartney is going to hold on to her pennies.

We’re losing our sense of perspective, and losing the most prized of our British traditions: down-to-earth common sense, says Joan Collins.

Dr Terence Kealey fears the time will come when British scientists, like British Olympic medallists, will be largely public school alumni, and everyone else will be also-rans.

There is no excuse for tinsel at home until the first Sunday of Advent at the earliest, which is today. Holding out until Christmas Eve is admirable though, says Nigel Farndale.

The fact that America will soon be ruled by a man wholly under the spell of post-scientific hysteria may leave us in wondering despair, says Christopher Booker.

Awardwinning Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House and dreamed of joining the navy.

The events in India are linked to our past and are bound to have a knock-on effect on relations with Muslims closer to home, argues Charles Moore.

Damian Green’s arrest is a grave reminder of the Government’s contempt for parliamentary democracy, says the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

What is wrong with public outrage at the incompetence of public servants? In another time, says Gill Hornby, it might have been called a social conscience.

Sam Leith remembers a time when Little Chef was redrawing the culinary map. You could get fishfingers … in the actual shape of fish.

We are not going to let this pub close, declares Vicki Woods. We shall keep the bloody thing open.

Craig Brown anticipates the headlines for 2009 - and it’s going to be an all-singing, all-dancing time.

Justin Marozzi finds time to salsa amid the sirens and window-rattling helicopters of Baghdad.

The sale of a 63-volume Bible for £55,000 was a thumping great clue in a detective trail to a scandal over which church people are still fuming, writes Christopher Howse.

Alex Salmond has given Labour notice of the issue with which he intends to bash them in the 2011 Holyrood election, notes Alan Cochrane.

To describe the arrest and detention of Damian Green, the Conservative front-bench spokesman, as an outrage hardly captures the enormity of one of the most extraordinary events in recent parliamentary history.

Could Pakistani intelligence have been unaware of a paramilitary operation of this scale? This is a question that President Asif Zardari urgently needs to answer, and not just to satisfy foreign critics.

“I am very happy with the decision”, enthused Lance Bombardier Kerry Fletcher last Wednesday when an Employment Tribunal ruled that she had been sexually harassed and then victimised by the army. The Tribunal ordered the Ministry of Defence to pay £186,896 in compensation

Organist whose BBC Radio programme was so popular that 43000 complained when it was axed

Playwright whose successes included the postwar hits The Miracle Worker and Two for the Seesaw

Champion dog breeder who as a child terrorised her nannies and went gliding aged 96

The attack by Islamist terrorists on Bombay was the eighth such outrage in India since May, but by far the most sophisticated and bloody.

Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, leaves his post today after a turbulent few years in one of the most difficult jobs in public life.