S tephen Milligan, the Conservative member for Eastleigh, was found dead at home, apparently wearing some lady's underclothing, a noose of flex and a plastic bag; he had a piece...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WCIN 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124: Fax 071-242 0603 PUFF OF PREJUDICE F or some time now, the idea that ordi- nary people...

The problems of those who have greatness thrust upon them SIMON HEFFER However, if there is a campaign to hob- ble him, Mr Portillo himself seems to be leading it. His latest...

DEBORAH DEVONSHIRE T he ding-dong correspondence of my sister Nancy and Evelyn Waugh has been ably read on the wireless by Prunella Scales and Timothy West. It reminded me of...

Brevity or silence: the new code for safe speech CHARLES MOORE I f, like Michael Portillo, you are one of those public figures who worry that there are too many people...

Cinema screens and newspapers are full of evocations of the Holocaust. But, says Anne Applebaum, the victims of a different tyrant are denied the same memorial THIS WEEK and...

ON Saturday last, those who call them- selves the unemployed, but are, many of them, the unemployable, assembled on Tower Hill and marched to Trafalgar Square, where they held a...

John Simpson wonders why the West regards the death of 66 Sarajevans as a cause for action, after the murder of so many thousands Sarajevo AS I WRITE this, highly civilised...

I SETTLED DOWN the other Sunday morning after Mass to Mr Ferdinand Mount's interesting attack in The Spectator on me and other Catholic hack writers (I never realised how much...

Charles Glass argues that the Roman Catholic priesthood is in a state of unprecedented crisis; it may even be dying out Rome SPARE A THOUGHT for the humble Roman Catholic...

Anguillans are preparing for the Queen's first visit — with a certain amount of resentment, reports Christina Lamb Anguilla, British West Indies IT IS high summer on the...

persist.. . MULTICULTURALISM, someone once remarked, is not couscous: it is the ston- ing of adulterers. Of course, there is more to it than that, as I hope soon to...

From children to rent boys in one parliamentary vote PAUL JOHNSON N othing is more disagreeable than hav- ing to write about male homosexuality. The editor of The Spectator is...

NEVER A DULL moment with Tony O'Reilly. Diving on the shares of Newspa- per Publishing, he has mounted the first ever kamikaze dawn raid. The vessel was limping towards harbour,...

IF THERE IS such a thing as a moment of truth at Lloyd's of London, this is it. The offer to members closes on Monday, and Chatset, whose gloomy and accurate fore- casts have so...

I MUST protect the identity of the banker who sent me this leaflet on the fuller office life, but I can say that the bank he has in mind is notoriously committee-ridden. If you...

Why British companies have to make do with ersatz owners CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he latest attempt to make sure that the owners of British companies know nothing about them takes...

SOME OF them, of course, would prefer not to bother. Some spare themselves the effort of thought. The pension funds' trade union now offers its members a checklist, which marks...

EDDIE GEORGE of the Bank of England and Alan Greenspan of the US Federal Reserve sat next to each other in Guildhall last week. This week Mr Greenspan put his rate up, Mr George...

Sir: Paul Johnson should not be allowed to get away with his papist's jingo in last week's Spectator. That Catholics are still discriminated against is undoubtedly true, but his...

12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £77.00 0 £39.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £88.00 0 £44.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$125.00 0 US$63.0i) USA Airmail 0 US$175.00 0 US$88.00 Rest of Airmail 0 £111.00 0...

Sir: It must be very frustrating for John Plender to have spent six years writing hos- tile articles and fronting hopelessly one- sided television programmes about this company...

Sir: I have been amused and perplexed by the recent correspondence concerning the mutilation of papers and magazines in libraries. Here in Australia we have a system whereby one...

You taught me language . • Hilary Corke THE OXFORD COMPANION TO TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY edited by Ian Hamilton OUP, £25, pp. 602 C ompanionship is different in the 1990s....

not enough Albert Read NOW THAT YOU'RE BACK by A. L. Kennedy Cape, f8.99, pp. 248 A L. Kennedy's highly praised first novel, Looking for the Possible Dance, resulted in her...

Alasdair Palmer THE MAD OFFICIALS by Christopher Booker and Richard North Constable, f7.95, pp. 224 C apitalism won the Cold War. Communism collapsed and discredited state...

Pigs don't like walking very far that's why they decided to sty. After bran and psychoanalysis the horses admit to feeling much more stable. Old-fashioned cows flirt with the...

Charles Maclean LAST OF THE PIRATES: THE SEARCH FOR BOB DENARD by Samantha Weinberg Cape, £16.99, pp. 272 T he appeal of this book would seem almost irresistible to those of us...

paladins Simon Courtauld IRREGULAR REGULAR by David Smiley Michael Russell, f15.95, pp. 218 T hough not mentioned by David Smiley in his account of wartime operations in...

Anita Brookner AFFLICTION by Fay Weldon HarperCollins, £12.99, pp. 172 T o lose one's husband to another woman is bad, to lose one's husband to another man may be slightly...

John Oaksey SCU: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHAMPION by Peter Scudamore Headline, £7.99, pp. 320 I f someone had written Scu as a forecast of the future 30 years ago, the facts and...

----• . 7 - 7.--716 -- — _ — _----- - E -- _ z 9 -- -----_--- 1 'cli " oA t t - --- .... -- "7 - 2 - 2•Is 0 . --- Continuing our occasional series, Byron Rogers reassesses...

The lost, in their imaginary wishes, rule In every place their living has vacated. He would have liked, we say, . . . to see the whole Garden trim as a tune, each path well...

Michael Glover T he award of the first T. S. Eliot Prize for the poetry book of the year was, as one of the hot and overwrought multitude that had packed into the dining room...

John McEwen ART AND THE BEAUTY OF GOD by Richard Harries Mowbray, f14.99, pp. 150 R ichard Harries is the Bishop of Oxford and this short book, dedicated 'to the clergy and...

Exhibitions New Displays 1994 (Tate Gallery, till January 1995) Young British Artists III (Saatchi Gallery, till August) Writing on the wall Giles Auty W hat we are...

Cavalier treatment Rupert Christiansen T o Glyndebourne, where we were shown round Sir George Christie's new opera house, designed by the Michael Hop- kins Partnership. I am...

The enigma of Palestrina Peter Phillips I t was with a palpable sense of unease that the Romans gathered to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the death of Palestrina on 2...

The Skriker (Royal Court) Dead Funny (Hampstead) April in Paris (Ambassadors) Eddie Izzard (Albery) Half Time (Donmar Warehouse) Laughter in the dark Sheridan Morley L et's...

Galanthus gallants Ursula Buchan L ast week I visited the garden of a galanthophile. This is not someone given to noble deeds, as you might think, but a lover of snowdrops....

More's the pity Martyn Harris T elevision dramas begin to flag on their third series. Writers get bored, plots are recycled, actors coast on their characters. Love Hurts...

The Three Musketeers ('PG', selected cinemas) Free Willy ('U', selected cinemas) Free for all Mark Steyn F ree Willy the whale, free the Guild- ford Four, free Musketeers . ....

Almost driven to therapy Taki What is incredibly annoying is that clowns like Coppel — a low-born German — have tremendous influence on a zonked- out-by-television public here...

Bring back elitism Nigel Nicolson J ohn Julius Norwich tells a story that as an illustration of snobbishness takes some beating. His parents, Duff and Diana Cooper, were once...

How to save yourself 51 trips to the library . . . or over £35 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it...

HAVING a morning free recently, Mrs Anderson went off to look round the dress shops. She returned with two new suits. Both were suits ideal for 'sitting on' things, the sort of...

SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA .C.uptkodu SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA CHESS Taghairm Raymond Keene THE BUSINESS of prophecy, whatever means one uses to predict the results, movements of...

COMPETITION , PURE MAL , S COTIrli WHI T SIO Dirty dozen Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1816 you were given 12 words beginning with n and invited to incorporate them into a...

I 11 11 . _ I N A 11 $ l0 P V AIR 1 Akre:3:0'9v IlUBYTAIL t INILI Vii I IN ..E.1 4 E IMONS U B PIE't frl B AR L L E 0 coLA Is_171 El ...k.0 S 1 4 L T U A SISENT IP ,I S...

i j GRAHAM ' S PORT CROSSWORD GRAHAM'S PORT A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 28 February,...

(Thank you, John Mellors, for this one.) The recently published The Poet's Kit by Katherine Knight has an appendix listing subjects which might be sources of inspira- tion for...

Dear Mary. . Q. My great-uncle-in-law has given us a house virtually next door to his own and now asks us to lunch at least once a week. As I am reputedly his favourite female...

Battles royal Frank Keating THE Guardian's compelling Centipede col- umn, which reviews each week various milestones down the 20th century, got round to prize-fighting the...