M r Rupert Murdoch once again an- nounced his intention of closing The Times and Sunday Times unless overmann- ing was cut by 600 — about a quarter of the workforce. The rail...

Ugly is as ugly does Ferdinand Mount N orman Tebbit is gloriously common. Neither his manners nor his diphthongs have been strangled by gentili- ty. It is hard to imagine Lord...

I t is entirely appropriate that the British section of Amnesty International should have chosen Mr Jeremy Thorpe, out of 42 applicants, as its new director. He has ex-...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £12.00 £13.00 £14.50 £18.50 One year: £24.00 £26.00 £29.00 f37.00 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made payable to the...

The rape of Britain Auberon Waugh T he Chief Inspector of Prisons seems to approve of an experiment in Maidstone Prison whereby victims of rape and sexual assault are...

Nicholas von Hoffman A merica is going through one of its periodic national snivels about the in- gratitude of a planet which repays with disloyalty the many favours received...

Christopher Hitchens Lynchburg, Virginia T n his novel 1985, Anthony Burgess has a lcharacter who says: 'A tyranny can come about through the American democratic process, with...

Peter Nichols I think it was Alfred Einstein who said that Mozart's use of Turkish effects in a comic opera (Die Entfuhrung) expressed confidence that ,the Turkish threat to...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Johannesburg N o one will ever know how Neil Aggett died. Early last Friday he was found hanged in his cell in John Vorster Square, the headquarters of the...

Murray Sayle T his weekend we might easily have had enthusiastic crowds feeding the pigeons in Tokyo's historic Singapore Square, with incense rising, Nikons snapping and...

Richard West Reykjavik T he late journalist and Bohemian, Peter Duval-Smith, once told me that Reyk- javik was the only place he had been where everybody was drunker than he...

Roy Kerridge N o one knows what racial justice may be, and I for one do not like the sound of it. Will there be one law for the black and one for the white, and will the scales...

William Rees-Mogg I t is not difficult to make the case against Sir Freddie Laker. He ran his business on too little capital; he regarded overbor- rowing as a problem to be...

The Session opened on Tuesday, and the Royal Message informed the Houses that the country was in cordial relations with all Powers, and that the Treaty for the cession of...

C. H. Sisson 'There is good reason for thinking that 1 Members of Parliament are not drawn from as wide a circle as they might be. There is no shortage of lawyers, company...

Donald Gould C ixteen years ago Sir Peter Medawar, one of the world's most respected natural scientists, said 'Test-tube babies are out', and Alex Comfort, poet, novelist,...

Alas, poor Freddie Paul Johnson F leet Street rightly recognised the collapse of Laker as the biggest story so far this year, one of those occasions when a huge mass of...

Laker's crash Tony Rudd Tn commercial terms Laker didn't just Icrash; it disintegrated in mid-air. One moment the biggest cut-price operation in the civil airlines business in...

Sir: I was astonished to read Mr Richard West's comments about British Airways' cabin crew in his article 'Fly the foreign flag' in your 23 January issue. I have not the...

Alcohol and the Church Sir: I am an occasional commuter to Lon- don. On my return journey to rural Sussex, I sometimes purchase your periodical ex- pecting thereby to be...

Sir: Alexander Chancellor's welcome assessment of Britain's position in the European Communities (Notebook, 23 January) constituted a useful contribution to the current debate....

Sir: Mr Booker's excursion into Poland in your issue of 9 January has just been brought to my attention. He seems to be on the point of accusing me of all sorts of nastiness but...

Sir: I have a high regard for Richard West but an even higher regard for my friend Bruce Beresford, whose film about Australian Rules football is called The Club, and not, as...

Sir: Pundit von Hoffman, my fellow citizen, is now revealed to readers of the Spectator (23 January) for what we in the US know him to be: a liturgist of liberalism. His effort...

Sir: Surely none of the editorial compar i- sons (Notebook, 30 January) to justify the increased price of the Spectator goes to the heart of the matter. The paper remains...

Sir: May I suggest to the Laker Airways Receiver through your columns that in the light of the enormous public support for Sir Freddie, the Receiver should announce a scheme...

Sir: It is evident that Alexander Chancellor (Notebook, 30 January) has not the fog- giest notion about the place in history of HM the King of Serbia. He lumps him together with...

No sir, don't mean Maybe Arthur Marshall Home James• The Chauffeur in the Golden Age of Motoring Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and Patrick Macnagh ten (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £9.50)...

William Shawcross The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera (Faber £7.95) T f President Reagan or Mrs Thatcher were inclined to read, they would do much more for...

Max Hastings O ne of the more pathetic delusions of the western Allies both before and since 1945 has been the conviction that somewhere among the ranks of their foes, there...

Nikolai Tolstoy M r Rositzke has not been very well served by his publishers, who have provided his book with a title and dust- jacket almost indistinguishable from John...

A. L. Rowse Luther: a Life J. M. Todd (Hamish Hamilton £18) Y et another book about Luther? Mr Todd tells us that 'in most big libraries books by and about Luther occupy more...

David Williams Massacre: the Story of Glencoe Magnus Linklater, Photographs by AnthonY Gascoigne (Collins £7.95) Elagin belongs to Cruikshank almost as much as to Dickens....

Francis King The Gypsy's Baby Rosamond Lehmann (Virago £2.75) The Gypsy's Baby Rosamond Lehmann (Virago £2.75) rr he whirligig of time brings not merely 1 revenges but also...

Toby Buchan K ipling's famous poem did no more justice to civilians than did 'brutal and licentious' to soldiers. For all that, and in spite of its ironic title, this...

Made to measure Anthony Burgess Carlo Curley J. S. Bach Organ Music (RCA RL 25369) A whole series of recordings of 'Classic Film Scores' has recently become available for the...

Esprit de core? Mark Amory Operation Bad Apple (Royal Court) Skirmishes (Hampstead) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gate at the Latchmere) Murder in Mind (Strand) T he...

Evergreen John McEwen I von Hitchens died in 1979. Waddington's accordingly present his first posthumous one-man show (till 27 February) in the form of a memorial...

Brian Sewell A the Royal Academy's annual press conference in January it was announ- ced that lack of capital resources had resulted in a deficit of almost half a million...

Richard Ingrains CC it Peter Parker, chairman of British ORail, devotes a lot of time and money to public relations, all to good effect. Whe n the telly tells us about the...

Party time Peter Ackroyd The Contract ('AA', Gate Camden) he film opens with a horse galloping 1 out of control; one smiles wryly and jots down a phrase, 'horse = Poland?' It...

Fallible Jeffrey Bernard protected major pubs and parsimon- r ious banks are being blamed for the fall of Soho layabout Jeffrey Bernard. But a closer analysis suggests that...

Revised editions Taki New York W hen I used to write for William Buckley's National Review, one of the staff's favourite games during Wednes- day's editorial meeting was...

No. 1205: Useless knowledge Set by .laspistos:You are invited to supply an extract (maximum 150 words) from an imaginary Encyclopaedia of Useless Knowledge. Entries to...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for an extract from an autobiography or diary of a domestic pet with an uncongenial owner. Among the menagerie of unusual and...

To enable competitors to economise on postage, entries for one or more weeks of the competition and crossword may be posted together under one cover addressed 'Competition...

A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution Opened on 1 March. Entries to: Crossword 544, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. Ra....

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Time for reform Raymond Keene T he present qualification route to a world title match lasts three years and consists of three progressive stages, the Zonal, Interzonal and...