T he Bank of Credit and Commerce International was closed because of sus- pected fraud over a missing i1 billion of depositors' money. A quarter of all Asian businessmen in...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 A FAMILY AT WAR F rom the moment the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer became romantic- ally linked in 1980, certain sections of the...

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The ministers who are not all the President's men NOEL MALCOLM M rs Thatcher once told her Cabinet Secretary On a moment of speculative candour', according to Mr Hugo Young)...

F rom Victoria to Westminster is but two stops on the Underground — just time, I reckoned as I paused for literary refresh- ment at W.H. Smith's, to peruse the Sun newspaper...

Nigel Lawson reviews Nicholas Ridley's account of the Thatcher years, and finds more fiction than facts MARGARET THATCHER was one of the greatest prime ministers this country•...

Stephen Handelman unveils the ambiguities behind the Soviet leader's proposals to the West Moscow CAPITALISM is about to descend on the elegantly coiffed head of Olga Linkova....

George Bush has scattered his enemies with a mischievous Supreme Court nomination, reports Stephen Robinson Washington FOR THE 30 months or so that George Bush has occupied the...

A reader received this letter: We would advise you that as the premises stands at the present time, it would not exclude any loss or damage to your property, resulting from your...

should hand back Gibraltar to Spain in return for something better THE secretary-general of Gibraltar's Olympic Committee, Nigel Pardo, shares his surname with the name of the...

Shiva Naipaul was one of the most gifted and accomplished writers of our time. After his death in August 1985 at the age of 40, The Spectator set up a fund to establish an...

William Oddie is disturbed by the utopia envisaged by the virgin-birth enthusiasts `I THINK The Elephant Man was filmed here,' one of the other speakers said, looking round at...

Rory Knight Bruce attempts to discover which members of the royal family help the gossip columnists WHEN the Princess of Wales recently reached the dignified age of 30, she...

Charles Moore sees a reverse image of the Irish Union in the attempt to make Europe one state THERE is no universal law which asserts the superiority of the nation state or of...

FOUR men were executed by electricity in New York on the 7th inst. For some reason, the authorities had decided to exclude – the public, and as an additional precaution to...

persist.. . True observations are not necessarily new observations, so I expect no plaudits when I remark that Man is a complex being. For example, last week I spoke to a lady...

The media: Paul Johnson examines the claim that old folk get a raw deal JOURNALISTS are scratching their heads over a report by the Centre for Policy on Ageing, which accuses...

IT IS rude of Mikhail Gorbachev to burst in on the London Economic Summit and talk economics. That, as he ought to realise, is not the idea any more, for it led to argument, and...

IF YOUR bank shuts its doors on your money, you can get some of it back from insurance. This is the Deposit Protection Scheme. All the banks are required to chip into its fund,...

The Bank of Cocaine and Colombia adds a new terror to recession CHRISTOPHER FILDES Commerce International, (Lord Cal- laghan? Sheik Zayid? Manuel Noriega?) It was the world's...

SO IF everyone knew about BCCI — or everyone except its luckless depositors why did no one do anything about it? The Bank of England was leery from the beginning, and wrote a...

HOW to reward the Governor of the Bank of England? His modest increase in his modest salary was blown up to make him look like a gasman — boding ill for the rather larger...

Sir: Auberon Waugh wrote about what he called the 'dangerous myth' of date rape (Another voice, 22 June). His article was misinformed, irresponsible and an insult to women who...

The Spectator article on editors and high pay, William Cash managed both to spell my name incorrectly and get wrong the title of this newspaper. How much did you pay him for...

Sir: I read with interest Mr J. H. S. Turnbull's letter (22 June) which criticised me for being unfair to Lord Mountbatten. He began by saying that I wrote an article in the...

Sir: John Mortimer will be relieved to hear that reports in the Guardian describing my desire to make Punch `mega', `mega- mega', 'hip', 'trendy' or 'hot' have been considerably...

Sir: I wonder whether the 200 or so medals awarded to participants in the Gulf cam- paign represent an attempt to justify our involvement or whether they are a simple...

Sir: In my piece last week Mauls of paper money', 6 July) I unaccountably named the editor of the European as John Torode. The editor is, of course, John Bryant and I apologise...

Sir: I hesitate to cross rulers with Paul Johnson (The press, 29 June), but he claimed that on a previous Tuesday the Times gave 'only 74 column inches to Parliament, of which...

Sir: Ian Waller (Letters, 27 April) rumin- ates upon a particular design of female apparel: namely, the Kestos bra designed by Leo Klin. I remember this design well from Mr...

Sir: In 'The theft of character' (15 June) Paul Johnson complains that living people are often depicted, without permission, by actors or puppets. This opens the way for...

Sir: In an otherwise excellent article (Another voice, 18 May), Charles Moore overlooks one huge advantage of the elas- tic sheath — it could have spared us Sir Nicholas...

Sir: As Christopher Fildes's bizarre para- graph headed 'Family silver' (City and Suburban, 1 June) has gone unremarked I feel impelled to reply. The Silver Trust, set up by...

Sir: After J. B. Kelly's `Toujours la blague' (11 May) and Jeanne Strang's counter- offensive (Letters, 1 June) balance seems to have been restored on the culinary front....

The middle class make it John Kenyon PUBLIC LIFE AND THE PROPERTIED ENGLISHMAN, 1689-1798 by Paul Langford Clarendon Press, £48, pp. 608 T hough it is written with great...

Frances Spalding THE DEATH AND LIFE OF SYLVIA PLATH by Ronald Hayman Heinemann, £16.99, pp. 220 THE HAUNTING OF SYLVIA PLATH by Jacqueline Rose Virago, £14.99, pp. 288 H...

George Clive COUNTRYBLAST by Clive Aslet, with drawings by Michael Heath John Murray, f9.95, pp.135 T his is a fascinating and disturbing book. Clive Aslet's proposition is...

Mary Keen Mil 1 ERFLY COOING LIKE A DOVE by Miriam Rothschild Doubleday, 125, pp. 215 P eople hardly talk about the two cultures any more. Does this mean that artists and...

J.G. Links JAMES ABBOT McNEILL WHISTLER: A LIFE by G.H. Fleming Windrush Press, £19.99, pp. 367 S ome artists can communicate only through their art: not Whistler. He never...

Anthony Howard . AS I SAW IT: A SECRETARY OF STATE'S MEMOIRS by Dean Rusk I.B. Tauris, £19.95, pp. 672 T here are not many US Secretaries of State who make it even to the...

The St Michael's Group for Social Action came to play with us today: Wheelchair Basketball was the name of the game. So that everyone might suffer from the same handicap, they...

Charles Glass CRY PALESTINE: INSIDE THE WEST BANK by Said K. Aburish Bloomsbury, £9.99, pp. 205 I n a passage destined to chill the con- science of every loyal supporter of...

Isabel Colegate THE GREEN HAT: A ROMANCE FOR A FEW PEOPLE by Michael Arlen Robin Clark, £6.95, pp.245 I n his later years Michael Arlen rejected offers to reprint what he...

William Rees-Mogg FROM SAMMY TO JIMMY: THE OFFICIAL HISTORY OF SOMERSET COUNTY CRICKET CLUB by Peter Roebuck Partridge Press, £16.99, pp. 443 S omerset cricket has not normally...

John Charmley LES ANGLAIS by Philippe Daudy Barrie & Jenkins, f16.99, pp.303 T he first thing to do with this book is to remove the grossly unpleasant dust-jacket. How are we...

Art And on the other hand... Giles Auty encounters some genial stonewalling from the director of the Tate Gallery I n recent articles I have mentioned an extraordinarily...

Two birds in the bush Mark Amory T here is no need to speculate about the success of a good film — that people want to see The Silence of the Lambs does not mean that they are...

Sex Please, We're Italian (Young Vic) In the fettucine sauce Christopher Edwards T here is something quite special about experiencing a really bad play. It is always...

A play for all seasons Robert Tanitch argues the case for reviving a neglected American classic O ur Town by Thornton Wilder is such a well-known play that most people feel...

The Building of an 18th-Century City: Bath Spa (RIBA Heinz Gallery, till 3 August) Beauty of Bath Alan Powers F or all its tourist coaches and twee shops, Bath remains a...

And then there was one Marcus Berkmann I n these recessionary times, it's oddly sat- isfying to note that even the pop industry, once universally recognised as the last bas-...

Toast of the town Taki always I got the Wimbledon win- ners wrong, but otherwise things here in the Big Bagel are hunky-dory, as most of the chic Bagelites are in London or in...

Gray area Martyn Harris T he other week I said that Paul Mor- ley's programme This Is It (Channel 4, 9 P.m., Tuesday) was 'sort of about architec- ture', but it has now been...

Excess baggage Jeffrey Bernard T he lease of this flat runs out on Sunday and I shall be on the move again. Where to? You tell me. I shall be homeless for two weeks. Similar...

Bit of fluff Zenga Longmore Y ou are no longer a baby, you are a little girl!' I said proudly to Omalara as she sat perched high on Olumba's shoulders. `Little girl,' repeated...

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY Gr-IVAS REAV 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY Malediction Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1684 you were in- vited to write ' a Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse' on...

Pink tiger Raymond Keene P ergamon Press have just issued a weighty tome, The Games of Tigran Petro- sian: Volume 1 1942 — 1965. It contains over 1000 games by Tigran (`the...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

A description, tinged with disapproval, by a historical or fictional character of a scene obviously unfamiliar, such as a public house or a television show. Entries should be...

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A beaker full of the warm south Auberon Waugh A lthough I have drunk some good sauvignon blanc in South Africa, and take my hat off to numerous small growers there who are...

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Business is business at Silverstone Frank Keating WATCHING Grand Prix motor racing seems a futile activity. Also deafening. Yet all Northamptonshire this weekend will be...