Peter Mandelson has visited Disneyland to get ideas for his Dome ler Scottish newspapers decided that the law in that country allowed them to publish the name of Jack Straw, the...

1706; Fax 0171-242 0603 ELECTED SOCIAL WORKERS T ony Blair is a generous fellow. This week he is reported to be about to increase the amount of taxpayers' money that goes to...

Even Mr Patten couldn't make the long grass work this time BRUCE ANDERSON But the Hagueites were justified as well as tactically astute in segregating Mr Pat- ten. Chris...

ter half a century of suffering I believe I have finally cracked it: the ideal Christmas holiday. The secret lies in the things one does not do. Remember, where Christmas is...

PR is the profession of the decade. But, says Jenny McCartney, the industry may be on the point of self-destruction IN EVERY decade, one profession emerges to lay claim to...

Mark Steyn complains that Kennedy deaths aren't what they used to be New Hampshire `YOU have to wonder if it's something in the genes,' said the veteran Time magazine man,...

I REMEMBER, with all the vagueness with which the human memory is so infuriatingly endowed, that I was once taught the elements of the science of ecology. It seemed to involve...

Post-Diana, reports William Cash, the paparazzi have fallen on hard times Klosters THE last time I was in Klosters, back in January 1992, when I was sent out by the Daily...

Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, is preventing crime stories from reaching the press, says Kelvin MacKenzie A CRIME reporter I have known for more than a...

`Very in-your-face,' said the man on Radio Three about the music for River- dance, the popular entertainment. Yes, three days into the New Year and up had popped one of the...

The Chancellor's claims that the workfare state is an Old Labour idea, says Robert Taylor, are a fraudulent sop to the Left GORDON Brown, the 'iron' Chancellor, is as much the...

contrast' in Roy Jenkins's article on Baldwin in our last issue. This was the result of a transmission error for which the author was not responsible. •

Remembering the other Companions of Honour whom Stalin murdered PAUL JOHNSON I t is already horribly clear that, in impor- tant moral respects, the new Labour gov- ernment is...

BARCLAYS always did things differently. Thirty years ago it was opening up in Cali- fornia, swallowing Martins, bidding for Lloyds, bringing in Barclaycard — the other banks...

EUROPE'S governments now have a scheme of their own. They mean to stamp out competition in money. They intend to issue a brand new paper currency, and to give it a monopoly...

BOONDOGGLE fanciers should keep their eyes on the seventh arrondissement in Paris, where a promising newcomer is look- ing for a home. On New Year's Day it acquired a...

Gold is on your side, and governments aren't, so keep it under your rice-patch CHRISTOPHER FILDES G old stands by you when governments fail you. The Thais and Koreans have...

I LOVE it when our great insurance com- panies run true to form. This is the time of year when the life offices declare their bonuses, and General Accident, followed by the...

Sir: Most people will by now be aware what motivates a top Tory like Lord Gilmour to resent my work on British 20th-century his- tory (Letters, 20/27 December). Now he denounces...

Sir: I am reluctant to take issue with such an eminent fellow Antipodean as Mr Humphries (Diary, 20/27 December), but I must point out that the 'unfinished' limer- ick which he...

Sir: May I be pedantic and correct Mr Simon Hoggart's use of the phrase 'shag- ging like a belt-fed wombat'(Television, 20/27 December). In fact he correct military idiom is `to...

Sir: It apparently takes one 'poet' to spot another CA not very Franco account', 3 January.) In As I Walked Out One Midsum- mer Morning, Laurie Lee's charming evoca- tion of his...

Sir: I've never heard of Sion Simon (`Turn- coats, traitors, cowards', 20/27 December), but he's obviously made little progress beyond elementary lessons in diatribe. Frankly,...

Sir: This old hound has sat mum for months through Paul Johnson's baroque barkings over the Aitken and Hamilton cases. But every dog must have his day and Paul almost got...

A revolution under way Hugh Lawson-Tancred HOW THE MIND WORKS by Steven Pinker Allen Lane, £25, pp. 660 D o you enjoy the view of a well laid- out park, a gently undulating...

Richard West T he Argentine cult of the tragic victim may have begun in 1935 with the death in a plane crash of Carlos Gardel, the tango composer whose mournful songs spread...

Jane Gardam BIG WOMEN by Fay Weldon Flamingo, £12.99, pp. 345 T his novel is such quintessential Weldon that you feel that you must have read it before. Let it be said that you...

run-of-the- Robert Rhodes James WHEN THE GRASS STOPS GROWING by Carol Mather Leo Cooper, f2I.95, pp. 248 I must frankly confess that when I was a parliamentary colleague of...

Book of the Week How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker Spectator Reader Discount £22.50 + FREE p&p REDUCED FROM RRP £25.00 Please quote SF001 when ordering All the books reviewed...

Anne Somerset UNICORN'S BLOOD by Patricia Finney Orion, £16.99, pp. 454 H istorical novels make me uneasy. All too often the juxtaposition of established fact with invention,...

12 Months 6 Months UK O £93.00 U £47.00 Europe (airmail) ❑ £104.00 D £52.00 USA Airspeed U US$151 01 US$76 Rest of Airmail ❑ £115.00 D £58.00 World Airspeed .. • 0 £107.00 0...

Richard Shone SOUNDINGS by Anita Brookner Harvill, £16.99, pp. 214 T hose of us of a certain age who remember Anita Brookner as an art histo- rian before she became the premier...

The reputation of the poet Spenser Couldn't be immenser, Yet those who have finished his Faerie Queene Are very few and far between. James Michie

Robin Denniston THE ROMAN OPTION by William Oddie HarperCollins, £16.99, pp. 256 T he Roman option is, or was, one inter- esting reaction to the decision of the Church of...

John Michell PARADISE FEVER by Ptolemy Tompkins Bloomsbury, £12.99, pp. 286 P tolemy has a remarkable father, Peter Tompkins, who drove him crazy while pro- viding the...

Marcus Berkmann R ock stars these days have all the advantages, which may be why so few of them are of much interest as human beings. If the rock biography has become debased...

`Through a verbal hedge backwards' The novels of Henry James may seem dense and unreadable, but Selina Mills urges us to try again In heaven there'll be no algebra No learning...

Peter Carrier on how Berliners cannot agree on plans to build a memorial to Holocaust victims N early every street or square in Berlin bears the scars of 20th-century history:...

Peter Pan (National) Flights of fancy Sheridan Morley A ong with no other theatregoer I have ever met above the age of ten, I have all my life believed that J.M. Barrie's...

The Jackal (PG, selected cinemas) Global terror Mark Steyn B ack in 1973, it was The Day of the Jackal. But they've simplified the title, and just about everything else. In...

Where was Byrd? Peter Phillips T he guessing game of what famous con- temporaries would have said to each other if they had met is a good one for long dark nights. A...