`Wait until Count Tolstoy hears about this.' he forced repatriation of Vietnamese boat people began with a flight carrying 51 refugees back to Hanoi from overcrowded camps in...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WCIN 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST W as it, we wonder, our marvellous British sense of...

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Mr Heseltine gets up full steam and plunges of the rails NOEL MALCOLM T here is a book waiting to be written. If well done, it would rank with the works of, say, Dr...

T hirty years ago the Foreign Office successfully prohibited the playing of the East German national anthem at an athle- tics meeting at the White City. The West- ern line was...

How the blonds swap babies for toads AUBERON WAUGH O ne of the joys of writing this column, from which I must shortly take an extended break while I apply myself to my...

As communist Europe is being turned upside down, Murray Sayle views a changing world from a Far Eastern perspective Tokyo THE BELLS peal out in Berlin, in Valetta the Maltese...

ELITISM. The doctrine that extraor- dinary ability should be fostered. It is strong in the Soviet Union in order to put excellence in the service of the state. English socialism...

Michael Heath

Timothy Garton Ash watches the East taking readily to democracy Warsaw IN revolutions, those who were at the bottom suddenly come out on top. Prison- ers take charge of the...

Sweeteners NOBODY can tell precisely what makes a particular substance taste sweet to you — not even organic chemists who are professionally engaged in synthesis- ing...

In John Simpson's article from Prague last week, the heading should have referred to `the turncoats revolving at Czechoslovak television'.

Amity Shlaes discovers that in post-communist central Europe, it is all right to be royal Prague 'SORRY, all full,' whisper the pale clerks to the businessman from Zaire who...

A philosopher has just fought a free election in Hungary. Charles Moore joined him Budapest `WHEN I was a boy,' Gaspar Miklos Tamas told me, 'my idea was to be Doge of Venice,...

Anthony Daniels discusses the repatriation of the Vietnamese boat people `CHOW time!' exclaimed the CBS camera- man, rushing over to the main gate of Sham Shui Po Closed...

AN EPIDEMIC of influenza has appeared in Russia, Germany, Austria, and France, and it is feared it may spread to England also. In St Peters- burg and Vienna it has attacked all...

W. J. West suggests what Gorbachev is really try to get out of the European Community HAS anyone heard of the Jackson-Vanik amendment? Not in Britain, to judge by the media...

Cassandra Jardine hears the story of a man obsessed with fighting fraud charges IT didn't matter being half an hour late for supper with Ernest Saunders. He assured me most...

Pole this Christmas. Cheques for £35 per subscription should be sent to: Spectators for Poland, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. Full details of the scheme...

The media: Paul Johnson advises Tory MPs not to be conned by the duopoly ACTS of Parliament, especially big and complicated ones, rarely have exactly the effects intended by...

PUBLIC service broadcasting (defined by its practitioners as 'What we do, old boy') has some odd effects on those who do it. Look at TVS, the company with the plum franchise for...

JOHN MAJOR has been rallying his back- benchers with talk of inflation and unem- ployment. What with statements in the House, questions, debates, run rounds with the Treasury...

Water, wine and an unconvincing claim for popular alcoholism CHRISTOPHER FILDES A watery smog of self-satisfaction comes drifting down from Whitehall. The Government's new...

Nigel Lawson: who says they never come back? Compare V. P. Singh, who resigned as Rajiv Gandhi's finance minister and dis- avowed higher ambition, saying that he would make a...

BRITAIN as the workshop of the world may have lost some of its markets, but when it comes to printing bits of paper and selling them to foreigners we are still tip-top. Our unit...

Sir: Your readers, I hope, will forgive me for not responding to John Evershed's long letter (9 December) about my views on the EC. I set them out plainly in my article and,...

Sir: In his otherwise excellent article 'Nor- mandy memories' (11 November) Gavin Stamp writes – 'Pegasus Bridge ... was taken and held by British paratroops dur- ing the night...

Sir: 'I suspect that Tynan has a lot to answer for,' writes Christopher Edwards, reviewing Brecht's The Good Person of Sichuan (2 December), 'for it was his advocacy that helped...

Sir: Sometimes I could just punch Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 2 December) on the nose. Anne Carr (Aged 47 and not even likely to be ordinari- ly rich in three years' time.)...

Sir: Jennifer Paterson's Food column on dry spiced beef (2 December) should send warning shots crashing across any cook's bow: `...though the time isn't given for the larger...

Sir: I was interested to read the reactions of your Polish readers to 'Spectators for Poland' (9 December), and in par- ticular the remark by Stanislaw Plewako from Warsaw that...

Digging up the Undertaker Alastair Forbes M y interest in the young historian from the University of East Anglia, Dr John Charmley, was first aroused some years ago when he...

Waking in the middle of the night, I used to prop the notepad on my knee To ward off all the agencies of fright, And chunter about immortality, The threat of cancer, living with...

Conor Cruise O'Brien A TORY SEER: THE SELECTED JOURNALISM OF T.E. UTLEY edited by Charles Moore and Simon Helfer Hamish Hamilton, £14.95, pp.346 I t was an excellent idea to...

source, Risk and relish, trust my language too, For there are messages which need strong powers. I tell their tale but rhythm rings them true. This is a risky age, a troubled...

Piers Paul Read ST THOMAS AQUINAS'S SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: A CONCISE TRANSLATION edited by Timothy McDermott Eyre & Spottiswoode, f40, pp.651 M odern times for the modern man...

Richard Ingrams T he only classy offering this Christmas is Ronald Searle's latest oeuvre, Slightly Foxed — but still desirable (Souvenir, £14.95), a large-format book of...

D. J. Taylor THE PALE COMPANION by Andrew Motion Viking, L11.95, pp.164 T he first volume, apparently, in a link- ed series of novels about English life over the last 20...

C. H. Sisson UNDER BRIGGFLATTS: A HISTORY OF POETRY IN GREAT BRITAIN 1960-1988 by Donald Davie Carcanet, £18.95, pp.261 T his is an odd book. It could hardly be otherwise,...

time as well as I do. • • Andro Linklater THE DEVIL'S MODE by Anthony Burgess Hutchinson, £12.95, pp.2 71 M ore than a quarter of a century at the top of English fiction...

Exhibitions Critical issues Giles Auty The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-war Britain (Hayward Gallery, till 4 February) Anish Kapoor (Lisson Gallery, till 4...

Inigo Jones exhibition at the Royal Academy. Christopher Edwards reviews some sea- sonal plays. Ursula Buchan rakes over the garden leaves and discovers some rather extra-...

The Prince of the Pagodas (Covent Garden) Problematic revival D eirdre McMahon B y the mid-1950s The Sleeping Beauty was indelibly associated with the Royal Ballet. However,...

When Harry Met Sally (15', Odeon Haymarket) Bittersweet treat Hilary Mantel T h is his amiable romantic comedy aid's to strip away the complications from a com- plicated...

Time trouble Peter Phillips R Nashville, Tennessee umour has it that your correspondent is about to be given a drubbing in a learned American academic journal on the subject...

Table talk Wendy Cope L ast week's big television event was The Mahabharata (Channel 4), which I missed because it was too long to go on a four-hour videotape. There didn't...

Too hot to handle Jeffrey Bernard L ike infants and geriatrics, diabetics have priority when it comes to having a shot of flu vaccine. Well, you could have fooled me. I have...

Toeing the party line Taki ast week I flew into London, went through Customs unscathed, and was in a taxi and homeward bound while some of the rich were still deplaning. The...

One problem licked Zenga Longmore C lawhammer Jones Bingo suggested I throw a surprise party, the surprise being that the guests would all be forced to paint the flat. The...

Dinner of the decade I FIND it difficult to convince people of the hardness of the wine writer's lot — the physical and mental slog of vertical and horizontal tastings, the...

Game of the Decade Raymond Keene T his week and next, I propose to sum up the chess environment over the 1980s. This week I choose the player, book and game of the decade,...

Mammon Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1604 you were in- vited to compose a sonnet to Mammon, indulging your fantasies, beginning, or not, with Belloc's line: 'Would that I had...

E 13 6 E R Nes NMI R 1 6 P I A N0 A0DER RI 11 3 R 0 A I I E l E l E D Y Eir liiR L L v 2 "?) 4 FI 7 Y F ° 0 el- O't A C30 D P I ETE 8 1 . ,...FLA 1 I 2 k rrr Al P U I AL P...

We all know 'An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,/ Boldly, by battery, besieged Bel- grade.' You are challenged to write a similar 'alphabet' poem, covering 12 con- secutive...

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...