'Let's hope it's just election fever.' T he City scandal surrounding the brew- ing company Guinness deepened. Morgan Grenfell resigned as the company's mer- chant bankers, over...

EXPLOSIVE JUSTICE O n Tuesday, a group of MPs and peers met the Home Secretary on behalf of 17 people convicted in connection with the first two great IRA outrages on the...

MRS Thatcher should certainly run for the C hancellorship of Oxford. When the dons snubbed her in the matter of an honorary degree, some, to make amends for the Insult, thought...

The third attempt to rid Britain of socialism PETER RIDDELL h e end of the nightmare is still no- where in sight, Professor Stuart Hall of the Open University concluded a...

H aving a programme suppressed — the PR word is 'postponed' — by the BBC is rather like having a book banned by the Clogthorpe Public Libraries Committee. It is a bureaucratic...

The reincarnated Sheriff of Nottingham awaits the return of Robin Hood AUBERON WAUGH A correspondent in Nottingham assures me that this year every police vehicle and every...

THE 'Song of the Land' was sung at Liberal Party rallies up and down the country. It was sung to the tune of 'Mar- ching Through Georgia'. Sometimes Mr Churchill himself was...

Ferdinand Mount proposes a revolution in our attitudes to land — leading to more houses, more jobs, more traditional landscape and less farming MOST of us have thought the...

FOR if God gave the land for the People, somehow the People do not seem to have collected. The dreadnoughts are long gone; the dukes are with us still. And they have been joined...

IT SEEMS to me not only possible but essential to try to work out a Land Reform programme of truly Lloyd-Georgian scope and vision which would undo a great deal of the damage...

Jasper Becker finds China-watchers baffled by the student action Peking S OMETHING very odd is happening in China. Nothing like the present wave of student demonstrations has...

Kedar Nath meets a stranger at an Indian railway station Quilon IT WAS an oppressively warm mid- February night. There was about an hour to go before I got my connection with...

J. Enoch Powell argues that Macmillan's 'pessimistic certainties' are already dissolving THE Earl of Stockton's departure has marked the passing of an era, but an era that had...

Julian Amery pinpoints the constant purposes behind Macmillan's diversity of accomplishments IN MOST people the formative influences on their character tend to merge into a...

THE will of Pius IX, which was trans- lated, not always very intelligibly, in the Daily News of Wednesday, supplies one explanation of the singular change which has passed over...

The press: Paul Johnson on the difficulties of setting up a new left-wing paper THE struggle for control of the News on Sunday, made inevitable by its complicated structure of...

TO WASH out the sour taste of Guinness, here is another merged company as seen by its chairman: 'We are on trial before the eyes of the world and especially the eyes of our...

PASS the hat round today in aid of the City's deserving rich, and you would be lucky to get much of your hat back. It was bold, then, of the Chancellor to talk about cutting the...

NEW Year's Eve. The little sub-Post- Office is open, selling its usual stock of sweets and papers, but over its postal counter there is a blanket. I ask for a stamp. The owner...

NEWS of profound but obscure import reaches me from a New York banker. He says that George Shultz, the Secretary of State (and former Treasury Secretary) has a tiger on his...

Reporting to the DPP's pending tray does no justice at Guinness CHRISTOPHER FILD ES T he Government has changed tactics on the Guinness inquiry. When it was first ordered,...

Sir: Allow me to follow up Alastair For- bes's letter (20/27 December). He could have underlined his point by naming the leaders of the 1944 anti-Hitler conspiracy, whose first...

Sir: I found Taki's column 'Big men' (High life, 29 November) offensive and provin- cial. It is offensive because every one of the individuals he belittles in his article is...

Sir: Surely Paul Johnson has completely missed the point when he writes (The press, 13 December) about the lack of 'a strong editorial world-view' and 'a distinc- tive tone of...

Homelessness Sir: Alexandra Artley's harrowing account of homelessness around King's Cross (`The London poor', 13 December) cannot fail to move the hardest heart....

Sir: The quotation from the Lord Chancel - lor's reply to a proposed amendment of mine (Free speech, 20/27 December) ma) / have been intended to demonstrate his quaint erudition...

Sir: George Gale's suggestion ('Compute a date', 20/27 December) for simplifying our system of dating seems, to have confus0 him rather than to have had a beneficial effect upon...

my inability to speak German has upset mY old friend Alastair Forbes. But it levels things out. His inability to write readable English has upset me for 40 years. Lambton...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY — Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £ (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES 12...

Most of us like Ike Edward Hamilton IKE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER by Piers Brendon Secker & Warburg, £12.95 EISENHOWER: AT WAR 1943-1945 by David...

Dennis O'Keeffe THE RED PRUSSIAN: THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF KARL MARX by Leopold Schwarzschild Pickwick Books, £16.00 W hat intellectual status should we accord Karl Marx today?...

Kevin Sharpe POLITICS, RELIGION AND SOCIETY IN ENGLAND, 1679-1742 by Geoffrey Holmes Hambledon, £24.00 ecently an eminent young historian R q am increasingly attracted to...

Alan Ross CRICKET by C. L. R. James Allison & Busby, £14.95 W hen I met C. L. R. James in Trinidad 25 years ago he was already over 60, frail and in poor health. His fragility...

Patrick Skene Catling SKYWRITING BY WORD OF MOUTH by John Lennon Pan, £6.95 Y oko Ono has probably retarded the sanctification of her late husband. In ample compensation,...

'Mind, if he's anything like his dad he'll be observant; You were barely talking and said "Granma, why have you got Hairs on your lip?" — And your mum did vex!' Those hairs are...

[Mostly it's other people's death sentences one has adopted, striking an attitude; suddenly, though . . .J Among a mess of skeleton, puckered skin, part-consumed flesh, I tug a...

Anita Brookner MARYA: A LIFE by Joyce Carol Oates Cape, £10.95 I n her new novel Joyce Carol Oates has dealt herself a superficially attractive prop- osition: to tell the story...

Martin Spence JUST-RICHMAL by Kay Williams Genesis Publications, £12.95 RICHMAL CROMPTON: THE WOMAN BEHIND WILLIAM by Mary Cadogan Allen & Unwin, £12.95 F unny', said William...

(After the manner of Maurits Escher) Ti-turn ti-ti-turn ti-ti-turn, Ti-turn ti-ti-turn ti-ti-turn; Ti-ti-turn ti-ti-turn Ti - ti - turn ti-ti-turn,...

A fter battling bravely against cancer for more than a year, the great Russian film director, Andrey Tarkovsky, died in Paris last week aged only 54. The loss is profound not...

Fighting goose Alistair Hicks Most of the EEC proposals on VAT would seriously damage Britain's ability to make money out of art and antiques. The question of export of...

Beaujolais and old lace Peter Ackroyd T he film begins with a religious bless- ing, which always spells trouble in French films — especially since this is what is generally...

Alice in Wonderland (Lyric, Hammersmith) King Charming (Players' Theatre) Victorian delights Christopher Edwards T his is a skilful and enjoyable adapta- tion of Alice in...

On the ball Wendy Cope I rarely watch football or glance at the sports pages but I had acquired some background information before switching on Match of the Day Live (BBC1) on...

Shady dealings Ursula Buchan hen one is single, the world seems full of ugly men; when one wishes to make a lovely garden, the world seems equally full of ugly plants. These...

Down by the riverside Jeffrey Bernard I went back to Lambourn last weekend and it still possesses characteristics that are really heartwarming. Apart from the race - horses...

Good time girls Taki ell, one more year has gone the way of Ivan Boesky, and ever since New Year's Day my liver has been acting as if it was about to be indicted for insider...

Glittering occasion Alice Thomas Ellis W ell, after all the mutterings of 'hum- bug' and worse, the festivities passed off almost painlessly and a glittering occasion was...

H aving only recently discovered the lighter style of red riojas I thought I would start the year with a Spanish offer of some ordinary drinking wines which take us away from...

Go Oliver Burridge & Co. Ltd., Burridge House, Priestley Way, Crawley, Sussex RH10 2NT Telephone (0293) 30151 and 30104 Product 1. Santa Dana '85 red 70 c112 bots. 2. Vina...

Home fires Raymond Keene E nglish Grandmasters have not abated their activity over the festive season and no one is to be observed resting on laurels after the silver medals...

Surprise, surprise Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1453 you were asked for a review of a book written by Mrs Thatcher, no longer in active politics, on a Most unexpected...

. . nen= tireanill 'E D R A I I C A ill 0 Maar N Winne' 0 11 el T c)., R M S OM N I' rir 774' E U Ea . D eno , ri s iii R ono W E B A I C L A I M co 25 RI I PI U I NA Oil ON...

A verse epitaph, please, serious or comic , for a pet, conventional or eccentric (max- imum 10 lines). Entries to 'Competition No. 1456' by 23 January. No letters , please,...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £12.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...