'The Archbishop of Canterbury entered 1 the miners' dispute: Dr Runcie told the Times that 'unemployment on an unpre- cedented scale, poverty, bureacracy, de- spair about the...

Jittery and jumpy Brighton 0 ne Nation Conservatism,' says Mr Peter Walker, . . . compassion . . ,' he goes on. When men, including Mr Walker, used words like that at the...

O ur note last week on the proposal of the Conservative MP, Mr Terry Dicks, that rapists be castrated was too *brief to allow mention of the Supreme Court jud g e in India who...

T he impendin g move of Mr Peter Crop- per, Director of the Conservative Re- search Department, to the Treasury, pro- vides the Government with an extremely useful opportunity,...

I t will be remembered – which means of course that it's been q uite for g otten – that in 1962 Franz Josef Strauss, then West German Minister of Defence, nearly ended his own...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £17.25 £17.25 £20.50 £26.50 One year: £34.50 £34.50 £41.00 £53.00 For special offer turn to p.45 Name........................

Yobs' Law Auberon Waugh W hat Alan Watkins has wittily de- scribed as the Rise of the Yobbish Tendency — referring to the Labour Party Conference's apparent readiness to defy...

W hy don't you write about being a single woman?' said my younger daughter; 'everybody's interested in that.' Too obvious at the outset,' I said; 'perhaps I'll write about in my...

Christopher Hitchens T hat was quite a show they put on there, down at the Kentucky Centre for the Performing Arts in Louisville. By the standards of presidential election dis-...

Timothy Garton Ash T hey call it 'simultaneous theatre'. Two quite different scenes are acted out on the same stage at the same time. It's the a vant-garde speciality of the...

The news of the week from Egypt is bad. General Gordon, with four steam- ers, carried out his threat of burning Berber, shelling the place till its defen- ders ran away. He did...

Jimmy Reid C cargillism, if it goes unchecked, will L./consign Labour to the wilderness for the rest of the century. We are a movement in search of a philosophy: Blackpool was...

Andrew Brown I Vs obvious now that it was a very bad mistake to appoint Mr MacGregor. He may be a very good businessman, and for all I know he cannot sleep at night for...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft N o other subject debated at this week's Conservative Conference arouses such passions as drugs. If the popular press is to be believed there is an epidemic...

Dhiren Bhagat S mirking at matrimonial advertisements in Indian newspapers has become a cliché of the British response to modern India. As soon as the diarrhoea-ridden...

Win two valuable aquatints and Super Club travel on British Airways. See page 48 for details. The Spectator Treasure Hunt Set by Caroline Moore This issue of the Spectator...

Late satisfactions Ursula Buchan T here is a moment, usually about the end of September after a few days of battering rain, when the garden's shaggy scruffiness may begin to...

Stone age BBC Paul Johnson T elevision advertising is now so popular that the ITV network cannot accommodate all the businesses which want to advertise their products and ser-...

F or sale: one Union Jack, desk-top size. It is the bad g e of the City's most exclusive club, which has never since its foundation elected a new member. Ownin g the bad g e...

H as the stock market g ot itself ri g ht — that is, have the brokers and jobbers who have been sellin g their birthri g hts g ot out at the top? Support for that com-...

A biscuit-sized campai g n medal for the column that brou g ht back the Bath Oliver. City and Suburban's account, two weeks a g o, of the Oliver's travels and stran g e, fitful...

Banks' rotten apple T he Hi g h Street banks should now break their sycophantic habit of timin g a cut in their interest rates for the week of the Conservative Party...

R odney Galpin, the Bank of En g land director who now finds himself chair- man of Johnson Matthey Bankers, must feel that he has been here before. Ten years a g o, all the...

Sir: If Cardinal Ratzinger has a more flippant and cynical attitude to his fellow men than Vera Buchanan showed ('Fraternal conversation', 6 October), he deserves all the prizes...

Sir: Apropos prayer against 'noise persecu- tion' by F. Knox (Letters, 22 September). Asked recently by a most polite waitress at a Crest Hotels restaurant in Southsea if I...

Sir: By mentioning Rugby council's ban on the employment of homosexuals (Portrait of the week, 6 October), you have placed on record a decision that is both monstrous and...

Sir: During an absence of Mr Peregrine Worsthorne from our shared office at the Sunday Telegraph, I took the liberty of measuring both our desks and found that while it is true...

50 Claremont Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent

Sir: Shakespeare is one thing, professional philosophy is another (Letters, 6 October). Many of us have no difficulty with Hobbes; it is contemporary philosophers we are unable...

Inauspicious Pilger Sir: In his review of William Shawcross's book The Quality of Mercy (Books, 29 September), Richard West quotes the author as saying I visited Cambodia in...

Sir: Talking of moles (Postscript, 8 September; Letters, 29 September, 6 Octo- ber), try castor oil seeds. Noel Kent `Dewlish', Southbroom, 4277 Natal, South Africa

Sir: It is sad to see your otherwise well- informed columnist Auberon Waugh championing nuclear energy (Another voice, 29 September). He must surely know that it poses two...

Sir: I have been reading with great interest in recent months your coverage of this chap Gordon, who appears to have gone out to govern the Sudan all on his own without any...

Sir: May I draw your attention to a factual error in Paul Johnson's article (The press, 29 September) entitled 'No more cleft sticks'. He says that there was a plan to close the...

Sir: Paul Johnson is wrong (The press, 29 September) to assert that no British news- paper matches the foreign correspondent networks of the American press. The Financial Times...

September). I am not joking when I suggest the magic cure is a cabbage leaf wrapped round his foot under his sock. Try not to laugh but it works. Eve Henley Welch Apartado...

Sir: While agreeing with Jake Fletcher ('Black market discipline', 15 September) that teachers in desperation sometimes practise 'unofficial' physical punishment. I cannot...

Sir: Let Peregrine Worsthorne (Diary, 29 September) consider the words of the gouty nobleman to his commiserating friend: 'I believe I live too chaste; 'tis not a common fault...

Colin Welch 1 . had a great-uncle James (my first name itoo) who, when playing bridge, had to be soothed and restrained by the eirenic ministrations of his wife standing behind...

The Lucian of Trinidad Peter Levi Beyond the Dragon's Mouth Shiva Naipaul (Hamish Hamilton £12.50) S hiva Naipaul has powers of observa- tion, let alone of expression, which...

Stan Gebler Davies The Great Dan: A Biography of Daniel O'Connell Charles Chenevix Trench (Jonathan Cape £10.95) Scum condensed of Irish bog, Ruffian, coward, demagogue! T he...

Francis King The Burn Vassily Aksyonov Translated by Michael Glenny (Hutchinson £10.95) S ome years ago a literary visitor from Moscow remarked to me that, of the 6 ,000...

Autumn Books with Patrick Leigh Fer- mor, A. N. Wilson, Eric Christiansen, Humphrey Carpenter and many more.

Gregory Martin Dicture – as did Terborch in Le Galant Militaire, currently lent by the Louvre to the Royal Academy Dutch genre exhibi- tion — a pretty woman and a burly soldier...

Wilfred De'Ath The Lone Conformist Roy Kerridge (Chatto & Windus/The Hogarth Press £9.95) 'Then Roy Kerridge was at grammar school, many years ago, his teachers were of the...

Patrick Skene Catling Between the Eyes Ralph Steadman (Cape £16, £9.95) C ontrolled virtuous hysteria pervades the marvellous works of Ralph Stead- man, a cartoonist who...

Peter Black Agatha Christie Janet Morgan (Collins £12.95) I t is next to impossible to pass through life without having picked up a score or so of Agatha Christies. She is one...

Drawing power John Martin Robinson Getting London in Perspective (Barbican Art Gallery until 26 October) T he Barbican Art Gallery is impossible to get to, or to find when...

The grand scale Peter Ackroyd Once upon a Time in America (`18', selected cinemas) T his film has excess written all over it: not only is it almost four hours In length, but...

Abundance Peter Phillips The concert season which is now under- 1. way in London promises to be as full as ever with experiments in repertoire. I am inclined to concentrate...

Reality Noel Malcolm rr hink of the tone of voice in which the man on telly says: 'Coming up after the break: the duck-billed platypus who We ill for a walk; the man who...

David Wake- field in his review of the Dutch exhibi- tion (15 September), was in fact pub- lished in 1983 by John Murray.

HERON CARV IC: Any novels by. L. Lawrence, Thurrock Technical College, Woodview, Grays, Essex, RMI6 4YR. ROBERT SERVICE: Any of the novels or autobiographies. D. CaIlard, I...

Attuning in Alexander Chancellor uor the past week I have been hovering round the television set, giving it side- long glances, shrinking away from it with fear and revulsion....

Young Writers In association with Lloyds Bank The Spectator is launching a competition on October 27 to find the best young journalists and writers in schools and universities....

Dinner with Dinna Taki uonda La Paloma is the only place in New York where one can enjoy a spicy meal of the Mexican persuasion and emerge with both the wallet and the...

French fancies Jeffrey Bernard L ast weekend in Paris was delightful, exhausting and extremely expensive. I was driven there via the Dover-Calais ferry by two friends who...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for a friendly and not necessarily solemn poem on the appearance of Prince Henry Charles Albert David. The challenge to stand in for...

Cupittity? P. J. Kavanagh I am becoming increasingly concerned for . the Revd Don Cupitt. Not because of his v iews on Christianity, which seem reason- a° le and humane —...

No. 1342: Reference cooks Sei by Jaspistos: Tusser in his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1573) lists ten things to look for in a perfect cheese, among which three are:...

Outlook gloomy Raymond Keene Moscow K asparov, apart from being three games down before embarking on Game 9, has fallen into the classic match syndrome. As Black he is...

'One, two! One, two!' is half of a line irl i s 'Jabberwocky'. The unclued lights are v'c' t f „ / occurring in the poem. 'Borogroves . Borogoves' is the American spelling....

Prize: 110 (or a copy of Chambers Dictionary, 1983 edition, value £10.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first correct solution opened on 29 October....

THE SPECTATOR for twelve months and receive free LOURDES A MODERN PILGRIMAGE PATRICK MARNHAM Open to non-subscribers or to those who want to take out a gift subscription....

j went to a lovely party the other day all in the aid of Dutch chicory. The party was fun because all the Dutch people were so nice. A beautiful girl called Ireen gave us...

SPE 1111 OR Treasure Hunt * A pair of 18th century hand-coloured aquatints by Thomas and William Daniell, illustrating the Race Ground at Madras (1798) and Sheva Gurry...