Public confidence T wo serious rail crashes took place within 48 hours — at Purley in Surrey and in Glasgow: five people were killed in the first; two in the second. The railway...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 NEMESIS IN 1992 T he recent history of British relations with the EEC has...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY — Save 15% on the Cover Price! - RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £49.50 0 £26.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £60.50 0 £31.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $99 0 US$50 Rest of...

DOMINIC LAWSON F rom the Ayatollah Khomeini to Lord Rees-Mogg, the puritans are closing in on us. But while these venerable gentlemen probably imagine themselves to be re-...

week.

Mrs Thatcher should privatise, close down, or blow up the BBC AUBERON WAUGH I t is a pity that general reaction to the White Paper on broadcasting was recorded before two...

A. N. Wilson explains why he believes he must come down from the political fence on the Left side ENGLISH politics are excruciatingly bor- ing, English politicians even more...

Alexander Norman is the first journalist to speak to the Dalai Lama about this week's rioting in Lhasa Dharamsala, India THIS week's rioting in Tibet cannot have surprised...

Patrick Marnham heard Bernard Ingham make a joke which he now denies making Paris UNTIL I met Mr Bernard Ingham, the Prime Minister's press secretary, I did not realise that I...

Karan Thapar recalls friends from a past Afghanistan HAJI Baba, 'Stick' Suleiman and Jahanara Jan used for me to typify Afghanistan: its colour and individuality, its romance...

Poultry Chit-Chat. By 'Major B.' (Eyre and Spottiswoode.) — This volume — which might, by-the-way, have been of a more handy shape — contains the outline of the writer's...

Half a century ago Ivan Jelinek was asked to broadcast his country's surrender to Germany ON 14 March 1939 I was about to announce the regular late-night transmis- sion of the...

In 'Ale and the Althing' (4 March) by Tony Samstag, the first paragraph referred to Iceland's 'unique form of publication'. This should, of course, have read 'unique forrn of...

Roy Kerridge attacks the classification of people by colour alone SOUSA Jamba, writing in this journal (`An African in America', 7 January) described meeting a black American...

Michael Heath

Michael Trend assesses the record of Kenneth Baker, an Education Secretary with higher ambitions I STOOD with Kenneth Baker in his ministerial waiting room looking at the...

The media: Paul Johnson on the latest merger-mania in communications THE new buzz-word in the world where men do billion-dollar deals is 'synergy'. The term is medical: it...

Sir: Richard West (`The jewel in the crown of India', 4 March) states that the root of the immigration problem lies in the fact that in order to make the British withdraw- al...

Sir: Andrew Kenny (Nuclear power? Yes please', 11 February) misses the real objec- tion to nuclear power, because he does not give a proper analysis of the notion of risk. As...

children with access to television full frontal nudity'. If Asians' sensibilities on this matter 'are so vulner- able why is it that seemingly all the many Asian-run newsagents...

Sir: I'm all in favour of you giving trainee journalists a chance to shine. But judging by her piece about the ailing [sic] Fulham Labour Party ('Red rose, thou art sick', 11...

submit a piece of information for the historical record? The late Sir John Foster was Assistant Secret- ary of State for the Colonies during the Silly Sixties. He told me that...

Sir: If Heath's cartoon (11 February) of the water company executive sprawling in the desert sand, watched by a vulture and gasping 'profit', had been aimed at a proper target...

Sir: Stephen Handelman's article (`The breaking of the icons', 4 March) alleges that a new personality cult is emerging from the innermost recess of the Russian soul. To avoid...

Sir: Peter Fuller's rather long and probably even paid for 'letter to the editor' (`Britain in the picture', 4 March) complaining about the very intelligent Mr Mount (as he had...

Sir: Writing about breast screening and cervical smears Dr Sharon McCullough ('Useless smear campaign', 11 February) suggests that assessing their value is 'vir- tually...

Sir: Auberon Waugh (25 February) depicts Salmon Rushdie as 'cowering under the protection of the British police'. Does he mean a) that the threat of death is not real or b) that...

AMORTORTAK WILLIAM T. ,VOLLMANN THIS is the third annual award of the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize. It is awarded to the entrant 'best able to describe a visit to a foreign...

This is the fifth in our Lent series on English spiritual authors. WHEN Dr Johnson was an undergradu- ate at Oxford he picked up William Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy...

TIM CONGDON A s the annual pre-Budget guessing game becomes more technical by the day, it needs to be remembered that the 1988 Budget was a disaster for the clever civil...

THE Abbey looks beyond the war, and is not overjoyed by what it sees in the prospective peace. The population has stopped growing. It is ageing, which means fewer first-time...

The Abbey canvasses five million voters on the road to Wembley CHRISTOPHER FILDES T hrough the letter-boxes of distant Orkney the fat envelopes now drift like snow. Thence the...

THE best outcome would be one which offers savers and borrowers more choice — between banks, conventional building societies, and Abbey hybrids. The worst would be a high street...

The digestive difficulties of gobbling up estate agents NISHA STEYN ost people care more about the value of their houses than the level of the stock market. Yet while there...

The muddle in the middle of the City PETER WILSON-SMITH T he London Stock Exchange — or International Stock Exchange as it now styles itself — is in a mess. The central market...

The conservative revolution Colin Welch THE FIRST SALUTE: A VIEW OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION by Barbara Tuchman Michael Joseph, £15.95, pp.347 J ust before I picked up this...

Peter Quennell CLARENDON'S FOUR PORTRAITS edited by Richard ()Hard Hamish Hamilton, £15.95, pp.144 A ccomplished literary stylists, in days gone by, have often also been...

Twenty feet apart, their arms light, They seem ready for a gunfight. One we see, the other suspect, By the images visors reflect, As if not a moment too soon The rules of duels...

Christopher Hawtree LOCATION REGISTER OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS AND LETTERS edited by David Sutton British Library, £90, two volumes, pp. 1100 A book...

Oliver Letwin EUROPEAN DIARY 1977-1981 by Roy Jenkins Collins, £25, pp.698 W hat is the EEC? A free trade area? A federation? A supra-national organisa- tion? All of these...

Richard West ALL THE WRONG PLACES: ADRIFT IN THE POLITICS OF ASIA by James Fenton Viking, £12.95, pp.269 W hen the young poet James Fenton was offered a grant in 1973 to...

Sousa Jamba IN THE DEEP SOUTH by Roy Kerridge Michael Joseph, £14.95, pp.332 T he New Orleans YCMA was one of the most depressing places in America that I visited: the walls...

Nicholas Lezard N ovelists, since Flaubert I suppose, have tried conscientiously to be as true to the Inner Experience of the characters they write about as possible, and one...

Exhibitions 1 Jacqueline Morreau (Odette Gilbert, till 26 March) Nicholas Volley (Browse & Darby, till 23 March) Felix Vallotton (JPL Fine Arts, till 14 April) Anthony Gross...

Disc trouble Peter Phillips h ere are unmistakable signs that the noble art of cutting a gramophone record is dying. A poll in a leading musical journal has recently shown...

Scandal ('18', selected cinemas) When sex began Hilary Mantel W hen the advance publicity began, last year, I hoped that some disinterested person — if one could be found —...

The Colony and Island of Slaves (Gate) Desert island discourse Christopher Edwards T he English are still discOvering Mari- vaux, the brilliant 18th-century French dramatist...

Islamic Calligraphy (Zamana Gallery, till 26 March) Mightier than the sword Roderick Conway Morris A lphabets come with religions. We in Western Europe write today in Roman...

Camera shy Wendy Cope T hey're advertising water on television now. Not just designer water, which has featured in commercials for some time, but ordinary tap water. If you...

Below the belt Taki I New York t is billed as the battle of the bil- lionaires, and for once the pre-fight bally- hoo doesn't do it justice. In one corner stands Donald Trump,...

Sprinkler system Jeffrey Bernard I f anyone who had spent their life in an English village, a clearing in a rain-forest,,a cave in a mountain or even a lunatic asylum were to...

In bad odour Alice Thomas Ellis 0 ii 6 July 1895 a young man fell over in the Champs Elysees. 'On inquiry it appears that this young man of 28 is suffering from the combined...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of EH) (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary' above) for the first three correct...

Red star Raymond Keene he 19-year-old Russian, Vassily Ivan- chuk, has, at a stroke, joined that elite group of young potential contenders for a 1993 challenge to Kasparov or...

Monorhyme Jaspistos n Competition No. 1564 you were asked for a ten .(or more)-line piece Of verse with only one rhyme, and that of two syllables. The most remarkable poem in...

• LAST week we had Laetare Sunday, a joyful day in the middle of Lent when you can break your Lenten resolutions with impunity, eat drink and have a jolly time. The priests are...

im 1 4 . I 6 S . 11 7 T I l a c 11 0 n i b S N D;ILI W A Y L OF -, i RONSOLTIt ' ARMENT , EI Pi lp 131U E I R EB L I N _ 110TELE7 17 AGbA l t A E TIIII 2 X M 2 b SI7 2 6AS j ....

You are invited to write a poem which contains the following rhyme-words in the following order: smile, pubs, homes, roams, style, stubs, accused, light, laughter, night,...

The Spanish travel quiz, which appeared in The Spectator of 21 January brought in a good crop of learned answers. The first prize winner, drawn by lot, is J. M. Bray of London...