Another week of this, and I think I would have ended up voting Labour. Ann Toward, the widow of Guardsman Anthony Wakefield, who was killed near Amarah, southern Iraq, on Monday, said that Tony Blair was to blame for her husband's death. Although it is obviously true that if there had been no war in Iraq, Guardsman Wakefield would ...

Gadfly in Russia, by Alan Sillitoe (JR Books, £8.99) Gripped by an overwhelming desire to visit the USSR rather than work on a novel, Alan Sillitoe draws up detailed, annotated maps of Russia, kisses his wife and young son goodbye and makes a dash for it in a "boxy dark blue Peugeot Estate". It's 1967, when ...