Melanie Phillips

A faithless but repentant wife; a desperate, obsessional lover; and a stoical and forgiving husband trying to salvage his family. It's the stuff of cheap fiction. But the revelations about David Blunkett's private life were ratcheted up yesterday from unseemly soap-opera to high political drama.

Published in: Daily Mail

Last September, the Times reported some startling remarks made at a private Anglo-Italian conference by the British ambassador to Italy, Sir Ivor Roberts.

Published in: Jewish Chronicle

From time to time, government ministers fret publicly about national identity and fragmenting common bonds.

Published in: Daily Mail

Last week the Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, attacked the Prince of Wales for remarks he had made in a private memo about Britain's climate of unrealistic expectations.

Published in: Daily Mail

According to her mother, Melissa has become pregnant again to replace the baby she had lost. Mrs Smith was furious that the school had organised that abortion behind her back. Melissa was furious because she had apparently changed her mind and had wanted to have the aborted baby after all.

Published in: Daily Mail

The Conservative leader Michael Howard's decision to sack him followed newspaper stories which appeared to confirm that, despite his earlier denials, Mr Johnson - who is also editor of the Spectator and married with four young children - had resumed a long-standing affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt, which subsequently e

Published in: Daily Mail

The government outlined plans for local authorities to guarantee the availability by 2001 of ten hours of child care at school for every child aged between 5 and 14. This is principally to accommodate the needs of working parents.

Published in: Daily Mail

Astonishingly, Michael Howard has declined to express any pleasure at the re-election of President George W Bush, and defiantly insisted instead that he would not allow the White House to tell him how to do his job.

Such coolness towards the President is all the more remarkable, since this week Tony Blair gets a privile

Published in: Daily Mail

With the re-election of President George W Bush, the United States has shown that - as a contemporary book has famously claimed - America really is from Mars, while Britain and Europe are from Venus.

Both the election result and the reaction to it here suggest that America inhabits a completely different political unive

Published in: Daily Mail

This has got to be one of the strangest, as well as most momentous, American presidential elections in history.

It is momentous because the choice being made tomorrow by American voters is not just between two rival candidates but between two diametrically opposed views of the world.

Published in: Daily Mail