'Which Side are you on?' h e Ulster Defence Association, a 'loyal- ist' paramilitary group, was proscribed, but Sinn Fein remained legal. Some 5,000 hip- pies and New Age...

A nong the responses to John Gum- mer's Spectator article on women priests and his strictures on the revised liturgy of the Church of England was a letter in the Guardian from a...

An appeal to save St Wulfram's, the perfect parish church CHARLES MOORE W e climb to the top of the tower and walk out onto the roof. Nearly two acres of lead are being...

Noel Malcolm on how Greece's profound neurosis about its own identity is the biggest single impediment to any sensible EEC policy in the region Salonica YOU BEGIN to notice it...

Robert Cottrell argues that a Chinese riot for shares could mean big trouble for Deng Xiaoping Hong Kong FOR A COUNTRY of a billion people, two stock exchanges and 37 listed...

John Keegan on how wartime experiences help explain the great debate about Europe WHAT HAS THE 40th anniversary of the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community...

Robert Seely on the row involving money, power and sex which has split the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine Kiev IN AN ORNATE refectory housing the bones of Petr Stolypin,...

IT HAS become known that the pur- chaser of the Althorp Library is Mrs Rylands, the widow of the millionaire of that name who died in 1889, and that she intends to present it to...

Norway's decision to defy the ban on commercial hunting has won the country no friends, as Tony Samstag reports Oslo THE MIDNIGHT sun is still shining; Greenpeace has given up...

Michael Heath

Isabel Wolff attends the International Vegan Festival and discovers the vegetarian Rottweiler THE FIRST thing I saw when I arrived at the International Vegan Festival, at...

LIKE LORD JUSTICE Butler-Sloss, Dr Marietta Higgs and all right-thinking people, I am against the sexual abuse of children, though it has fleetingly crossed my mind that the...

Sailing from Monte in the wake of the bouncing Czech PAUL JOHNSON Lord Beaverbrook, too, was critical of yachts, or `yats' as he called them, though for different reasons. He...

Sir: I was interested in Lord Hartwell's account of his involvement in the Kilmuir memoirs saga (Letters, 25 July), but there are some of his points that require correc- tion....

Sir: Quite possibly, Lord Hesketh (Politics, 1 August) tones down his behaviour when in the company of those more powerful and clever than he. Having observed the man at close...

Sir: Milan Becker (Letters, 25 July) is wrong to misrepresent a personal view expressed in the former ANC publication, Sechaba (Nov 1985) to criticise the Direc- tor of...

Sir: While I am hesitant to defend the American news media, particularly its weak foreign coverage, I must point out some mistakes in John Simpson's critique (The closing of the...

Sir: I have begun to ask myself why, as a convinced pro-European, I still look for- ward to reading The Spectator each week, in Spite of the ubiquitous articles complaining...

Sir: Noel Malcolm (Letters, 8 August) is absolutely correct to doubt Sir Fitzroy's claim and the Partisan myth that the Ger- mans used 20 divisions to check Tito and his...

Sir: The pastiche employed by Bishop Michael Hare Duke of St Andrews (Let- ters, 25 July) is evidence that counterfeit has to be better than that if it is not to be unmasked as...

Sir: I, too, am surprised that Charles Moore didn't hear the word 'twat' until so late in his life (Another voice, 4 July). Surely he is not too young to have been told the leg-...

Sir: Mr Alastair Forbes is wrong (Books, 18 July). Mathilde Kchessinska (Princess Romanovslcy-Krasinsky to me) did not live to be 100. She died aged 99. Hugo Vickers 62 Lexham...

Sir: P.T.A. Marlowe (Letters, 1 August) takes Auberon Waugh to task for stating that 'carbon dioxide is produced by vegeta- tion'. In fact Mr Waugh is quite right. All green...

A very special suburb Eric Christiansen NORTH OXFORD by Tanis Hinchcliffe Yale University Press, £25, pp. 261 T he way into Oxford from the north runs between a river and a...

Thomas Pakenham THE GONNE-YEATS LETTERS edited by Anna Macbride White and A.N. Jeffares Hutchinson, £25, pp. 560 I t would be hard to imagine Yeats with- out Maud Gonne, 'the...

Byron Rogers MODERN MANNERS by Drusilla Beyfus Hamhln, £16.99, pp.352 I once had quite an odd conversation with the late Lady Megan Lloyd George, then our constituency MP. I...

William Green THE ABSOLUTION GAME by Paul Sayer Constable, £13.99, pp. 204 N ovels never suffer from being narrat- ed by curb-crawlers, paedophiles, cowards or murderers. One...

D.J. Taylor HAR.POLE & FOXBERROW, GENERAL PUBLISHERS by J.L. Carr Quince Tree Press, £4.95, pp. 155 J .L.Carr's story ought to occupy a promi- nent place in 'how to' manuals...

John McEwen THE HIGHLAND GAME: LIFE ON SCOTTISH SPORTING ESTATES by Glyn Satterley, introduced by Michael Wigan Swan-Hill Press, £1295, pp. 136 G lyn Satterley's commitment to...

Montagu Curzon BEFORE I DIE AGAIN by Chad Varah Constable, £17.50, pp. 370 C had Varah, the founder of the Samaritans, has written, at the age of 80, a jaunty autobiography,...

Janet Barron THE JEWESS: STORIES FROM BERLIN AND NEW YORK by Irene Dische Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 213 A t first glance, this appears to be an ominously worthy collection,...

James Howard-Johnston THE IMMORTAL EMPEROR by Donald M. Nicol CUP, £18.95, pp. 147 C onstantine Palaiologos, last, half- Serbian Emperor of Byzantium (1449-53), ruled over a...

Exhibitions 1 Lee Miller's War (ICA, till 30 August) Aspects of a natural surrealist John Henshall M any might think that Lee Miller's life had been eventful enough before...

Turn of the screw Robin Holloway W ith some famous exceptions the superstar conductors of recent times have not also composed. Sir Georg Solti's mythological tetralogy,...

The Mother Tongue (Greenwich) Absent Friends (Lyric, Hammersmith) A Midsummer Night's Dream (Olivier) Skeletons will out Sheridan Morley I n a thin time for new plays about...

Eye of a beholder Ursula Buchan n the past, I have resisted requests from gardening clubs to visit my garden, on the grounds that it was still in the process of being...

The Avant-Garde in Catalonia: 1906-1939 (La Pedrera, Barcelona, till 30 September) Flying the flag John London T he Olympic Arts Festival is already a fact. You have the...

FernGully — The Last Rainforest ('U', Odeon West End) Daydream Believer ('15', selected cinemas) Nauseous nirvana Vanessa Letts T he new cartoon from Australia, Fern- Gully —...

In hot pursuit Taki D Gstaad ouble fives are very good in back - gammon — unless you're on the rim, uf course — but depressing when one reaches them as an age. I'm 55 today,...

Palate for the dish Simon Heffer L le several hundred thousand others, I bought a satellite dish in order to spend my winters sitting by the fire watching cricket. Friends...

Banged to rights Jeffrey Bernard I have just received a letter from a for- mer Coach and Horses customer, Patsy, Who is at present resting in what he calls the Ford Country...

Presiding genius Nigel Nicolson L ast Friday Lilo Milchsack died in Dils- seldorf. That may not seem a very startling announcement, for her name is not familiar in England,...

I HAVE finally managed to get the receipt of the macaroni pie described in The Leop- ard by Guiseppe Lampadusa. This comes from Anna Tasca d'Almerita, and is how the family make...

Serious delights from Australia Auberon Waugh I t was a Brown Brothers chardonnay, many years ago, which first introduced me to the serious delights of Australian wine, but it...

'HIGHLAND MALT COMPETITION Rhyme royal Jaspistos n Competition No. 1740 you were in- vited to imagine that one of our queens was a secret poet and to provide a poem by her...

Titanic Raymond Keene T here are various scenarios possible if the heralded Fischer-Spassky match actual- ly takes place. Amongst these is the unfortunate possibility that...

PORT W. & -I. GRAHAM'S PORT CROSSWORD 1072: August by Mass A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on...

Essex men Frank Keating IN THIS insecure world of new brooms and neuroses, could it be that the derided quality of continuity is a crucial reason for the resplendent...

Dear Mary. . . Q. I recently had lunch with someone who I was hoping would give me a job. I was dis- concerted all the way through the lunch by the fact that this person's nose...