In 2003, an estimated three million people in the area became infected for the first time, while 2.2 million died. Life expectancy there has plummeted from 57 years in 1990 to 34 in 2002.In Swaziland, where one in three people between the ages of 15 and 49 are Aids sufferers, life expectancy has dropped [...]

He has convictions for incitement to racial hatred.The former member of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party has appeared at far-right rallies in Britain and praised the British fascist Oswald Mosley He is also a fervent advocate of “racial purity”. In a book on the subject, he wrote of the “disastrous effects of bastardising races” [...]

I enjoy catching up a thousand times more now than I did.”RORY BREMNER AND TESSA CAMPBELL FRASERRory Bremner, the impressionist, married Tessa Campbell Fraser, sculptor and landscape artist, in 1999. They have two daughters, Ava, three, and Lila, one.He said: “I think it is alarming how little time couples spend talking to each other. [...]

Around 15 million Britons were forecast to be heading for seaside resorts over the weekend and temperatures were expected to reach 23C (73F) in some parts of southern England.A spate of accidents led to major delays on London’s orbital M25 by lunchtime. The celebrities are off looking for somewhere new and the tourists don’t [...]

Britain has become a nation of “clone towns” where chain stores are spreading “like weeds in a garden” and the traditional high street is a thing of the past, according to a report published today. “We are very disappointed that the House of Bruar has gone back on their word,” said a spokeswoman for [...]

They fear it will not resonate with many voters the Tories need to win over, especially younger ones, and will rekindle memories of Mr Howard’s record as a minister, when he was seen as a hardline and unsympathetic figure.The concerns were heightened by a YouGov opinion poll yesterday showing the Tories neck and neck [...]

There is a sense in which Bram Stoker will always be in the shadow of Dracula, because, without Dracula, what possible reason would we have to be interested in him?Paul Murray’s useful new biography sets out the facts squarely. Stoker came from an Anglo-Irish family of shaky prosperity and was a sportsman in his [...]

Lodge was “pretty devastated” when he heard about the Irish writer’s book after finishing his own. He has not read it yet, but will soon, while pondering the flutter in the Zeitgeist that blew in his biographical novel, others by Toibin and Emma Tennant, and Jamesian works by Toby Litt and Alan Hollinghurst. Everything [...]

Her retreat from the real world is her aunt’s house in Norfolk, home to her glamorous cousins and scene of her mother’s accident. Tyler’s narrative voice is more melancholy than in previous novels, but her seamless depiction of unfolding lives is as deft as ever. Her innocents are trapped as much by bad timing [...]

That’s rugby for you.12: How to avoid rugby politicsBrittleism, Cottonism, Baronism, club-before-countryism, country-before- clubism – these rival orthodoxies still lurk deep down in rugby’s body politic, and every so often they explode on to the surface like a particularly virulent strain of acne. Woodward was seemingly congenitally incapable of allowing an argument to happen [...]