Treachery, cowardice and Blair's assassins

Last weekend a group of plotters against Gordon Brown gathered at Tony Blair's £5million new mansion in Buckinghamshire. Although the purpose of the event was a house-warming party, many in Westminster are convinced that the occasion was also used to discuss the mechanism for applying the coup de grace to the Brown premiership. In private, Tony Blair makes no secret of his belief that his successor is not up to the job and should with honour resign. Gordon Brown's own ministers havestarted..

Publishers unleashing a double dose of Philip Roth

This is the second time Philip Roth has upstaged himself by publishing old and new work simultaneously and thereby dramatizing the falling off in his writing. Two years ago Library of America published a retrospective volume consisting of his “Zuckerman Quartet” (“The Ghost Writer,” “Zuckerman Unbound,” “The Anatomy Lesson,” and “The Prague Orgy”) at the very same time Houghton Mifflin was issuing Roth’s rumination on death,“Everyman.”