A fter a private briefing to Sunday newspaper journalists, Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for Health, was reported as suggesting that more money might be made available...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 AFTER THE PLAGUE Alas, his overthrow, while much to be applauded, is not the...

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Why Mr Clarke should drink more deeply from his poisoned chalice NOEL MALCOLM A Government minister once told me that whenever he wanted to know what the Conservative Party...

CHARLES MOORE T his magazine has now been owned by the Telegraph group for nearly two years. This ownership has been beneficial to The Spectator in every respect except one: it...

The Prince of Wales is now having an unintentionally bad influence on architecture. Gavin Stamp charts the hard-fought retreat of Modernism That was in 1984. But today it...

Blood sampling SO THE Department of Health really is going to set about blood-testing in a reasonably big way, with the aim though not blatantly specified, because of previous...

Stephen Handelman reports from Lithuania on the rush to independence Vilnius JUOZAS Kuolialis's mother once hoped he would become a priest. She would be pleased to see him now....

G. M. Tamas looks back on his strange life in Ceausescu's Rumania I SUPPOSE I should explain first that I am an ethnic Hungarian from Transylvania. This was at first a...

Following his tragic and untimely death in March 1987, The David Watt Memorial Prize was Introduced in 1988 to commemorate his life and work. Organised,funded and administered...

Simon Sebag-Montefiore meets the energetic editor of Hungary's new tabloid PETER Toke, the founder of Reform, Hungary's privately owned weekly tabloid that has spearheaded the...

Michael Heath

Simon Blow speaks of his rejection from a sinking family MY second cousin Henry Tennant died of Aids last week. The Evening Standard diary at once linked my book on the...

The press: Paul Johnson on the media's most enjoyable row in years THE furious row that has broken out between the Telegraph's owner, Conrad Black, and his former Chief...

I WAS pointing the finger last week at our biggest and least excusable importer, Her Majesty's Government. Of last year's appalling £20 billion balance-of-payments deficit,...

THE Bank of England consoles itself with its scope for influencing the whole range of economic and fiscal policy, but its Deputy Governor, Sir George Blunden, owns that he...

THE high-stake poker game at Eurotunnel is working out as the odds have for long suggested. All three players — the com- pany, the contractors, the banks — have bid as far as...

No more political ravishment when the Old Lady wears the trousers CHRISTOPHER F1LDES I have won the Bank of England's first prize. What glory! The Old Lady, the Bank's...

HASTILY posted posters now invite you to guess which retailer sells one out of every five television sets we buy. No prize is offered for guessing Dixons (well, it wouldn't be...

Sir: One of the casualties of the tragic events in Bucharest was the University's Central Library. Its gutted remains fea- tured prominently in recent television coverage. Much...

Sir: Alan Watkins has a clearer memory of his appearance on What the Papers Say than most of us, so we must take his word for it that he was a poor performer (Diary, 23/30...

Sir: I am in complete agreement with your correspondent David Astor (Letters, 23/30 December): Wallace Arnold is a carbuncu- lar addition to your organ. His jottings are tedious...

Sir: I am not the egghead whose advice Mr Robak (Letters, 6 January) is seeking, but as one of the 'well, Czechs', I would like to reply to his sour grapes. I believe a quick...

HISTORIC RIGHTS. Until quite recently, it meant rights we have always had, but now it tends to mean rights we used to have, and that are now history. A useful television series...

Their titles taken Adrian Lyttelton ITALY AND ITS MONARCHY by Denis Mack Smith Yale, .06,95, pp.402 E arly in this century the Italian prime minister, Giolitti, refused to...

Francis King POSTCARDS FROM THE END OF THE WORLD by Larry Wolff Collins, £15, pp.275 A lthough in recent years we have had ample evidence of mothers acquiescing in, or even...

J. Enoch Powell POLITICS AND THE PEOPLE OF LONDON: THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL, 1889-1965 edited by Andrew Saint The Hambledon Press, f30, pp.278 T he governance of London is a...

You're home, all smiles and bags and creases, where easterlies fluster the Albertines and improvise on their old mouthpieces. You stare at all the unbearable greens and,...

wise- man: 'Over-handsome people are skeletons in disguise.' Benjamin Ivry

Michael Trend THE MUSIC OF LENNOX BERKELEY by Peter Dickinson Thames Publishing, £15.95, pp.240 P eter Dickinson's book on the music of Sir Lennox Berkeley appeared just two...

Patrick Skene Catling N ot since Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark has a cuckold been so grievously tormented as the protagonist of Patrick McGrath's diabolically clever first...

Simon Blow TO NOTO, OR LONDON TO SICILY IN A FORD by Duncan Fallowell Dent, £13.95, pp.291 S ince Bruce Chatwin published In Pata- gonia to such acclaim 12 years ago, travel...

Sudden sounds of excitement. 'Such wickedness as you never heard of!' chortled the devils. 'Child abuse!' `Oh?' said Beelzebub, dead bored for many a long year. `Something new...

Peter Quennell CECIL GRAY: HIS LIFE AND NOTEBOOKS by Pauline Gray Thames Publishing, £13.50, pp.208 T owards the end of this usually interest- ing and sometimes sharply...

Art Greater Danes Giles Auty The Museums of Copenhagen 0 ne of the great myths surrounding written art history is that it is without national bias. While the intelligent...

Turning a deaf ear Marcus Berkmann T he pop-music world has been having a good chuckle this past fortnight over the antics of Denis Vaughan, the musicologist who suggested...

Redundant entry Peter Phillips t was in vain I searched the pages of the leading musical journals published in Janu- ary 1980 for words of prognosis from the tribe of seers,...

Last Exit to Brooklyn (`18', Odeon West End) Sleazy street Hilary Mantel 0 n a street corner, a young man and woman quarrel. Obscenities are screamed and a soldier is beaten...

Walking tall Wendy Cope T here comes a point in the lives of many of us when we reluctantly recognise that we have got to look after our health. People who have always eaten...

Culture shock Jeffrey Bernard A friend of mine who is well ac- quainted with Scotland tells me that the reaction of the inhabitants to having Glas- gow made the Cultural...

Tinpot despot Taki ike captains, who no longer go down with their ships, dictators nowadays ain't what they used to be. I thought of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo last week, while...

Berth right Zenga Longmore D uring a light chat which took place between my sister Boko and myself, it was revealed that Omalara has never slept in a cot. Boko blanched...

PLOUGH Sunday and Plough Monday are the first ones after the twelfth day after Christmas, the feast of the Epiphany, but, as they moved the Epiphany on to 7 January this year,...

Coruscating Raymond Keene S ince its inception in 1895, when Steinitz, Lasker, Tchigorin, Pillsbury and Tarrasch were in the lists, Hastings has had a reputation for...

Abecedarian Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1607 you were chal- lenged to write an 'alphabet' poem cover- ing 12 consecutive letters, either rhymed or in blank verse. The great...

(Suggested by N. E. C. Colthart) You are invited to provide a story (maximum 150 words) which either begins or ends with the words: 'Then the dog rolled off my face.' Entries to...

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