A fter 30 years at the front of British politics Lord Whitelaw retired on the advice of his doctors and family. He was succeeded as Leader of the House of Lords by his former...

WHAT WILLIE FOUGHT FOR th the resignation of Lord Whitelaw, there will probably never again be a Cabinet minister who served in the second world war. It may be this change of...

THE newspapers report the reaction of Mrs Vera Roberts and her 14-year-old son Jonathan to the four-year sentence on the man who killed Mrs Roberts's husband by drunken driving....

A SUBSCRIBE TODAY — Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £ (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES 12...

Mr Baker appoints the board members of British Universities plc NOEL MALCOLM P oliticians . like having policies aoout things, just as woodpeckers like pecking wood. It's how...

W ith all the talk of homosexual priests, it is reassuring to hear of some of our rural clergy indulging in more healthy activities. There may be fewer sporting parsons today —...

The man who says that children are his recreation AUBERON WAUGH When he was later interrogated about his purpose in keeping this little list of troublesome journalists,...

Juries often react against the catch-all Official Secrets Act. Geoffrey Robertson explains how the Government exploits the law to get round this inconvenience and keep too...

Gerda Cohen finds out what difference David Mellor's outburst makes for Palestinian refugees Gaza YOU would think they'd be grateful, the doctors and nurses who have been...

Stephen Robinson on the courtroom victory of Chief Buthelezi Pietermaritzburg ANYONE who has read the accounts of the great battles of the Anglo-Zulu War knowns that Natal...

D. S. O'Connor confronts the threat of death to his family DURING the Festival at Avignon this summer a theatrical version of The Outsid- er was performed. One hot afternoon,...

Michael Trend focuses on a clear matter for Parliament, not the 'experts' APART from having been the birthplace of William Walton and Gracie Fields, Oldham has not had much...

Margaret's men: a profile of Friedrich von Hayek, prophet of anti-collectivism This is one of a series of profiles of men whom the Prime Minister admires. FRIED RICH August...

John Sweeney does not much regret the death of Michael Horton PITY for a killer seeped out of the Old Bailey last week. It is an uncommon emotion for a courtroom, but the...

the attempt by the Kennedy clan to worst the Dirty Digger WHEN Harold Macmillan paid his first visit to the Kennedys' Washington and was privately asked, on his return, to...

WHY, Sir Noel Coward would ask, do the wrong people travel? A similar lofty atti- tude can now be discerned in the high hall of Lloyd's: why do the wrong names join? More and...

FOOTNOTE to Russell Lewis's account (in last week's Spectator) of how Keynes played the market — so scientific, so responsible. . . . Nicholas Davenport, Keynes's successor at...

Soapy Molloy has a message for today's stock markets CHRISTOPHER FILDES T oday's stock markets make me think of Soapy Molloy. Soapy was the P. G. Wodehouse character who,...

I DON'T like Lord Young's idea of a Department of Enterprise. It is an example of the regressive euphemism through which Whitehall seeks to solve its problems by title...

Waiting for something to turn down JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE m r Robin Leigh-Pemberton believes in living dangerously. Two weeks into the new year he still awaits confirmation from...

Sir: Your issue of 2 January has just reached these shores. I read in it Mr Peregrine Worsthome's Diary, as charming as it was apocryphal, composed as though he had spent a long...

the National Health Service embodies the traditions of the Poor Law, rather than the alternative ethos of the Voluntary Hospit- als, which he believes was extinguished in 1948....

Sir: Even in the Soviet Union it has been recognised that problems must be acknow- ledged before they can be tackled, and articles like Alexandra Artley's ('Our medical...

Sir: Mr Mosley (Letters, 5 December) draws a lot of red herrings across his mistaken path. I criticised his first letter in which he complained that the education of the...

Sir: After so much that was spiteful or shallow, it was pleasant to read Alice Thomas Ellis (Home life, 2 January) on Canon Bennett, the death of loved animals and the mercy of...

Sir: Henry Newbolt for Poets' Corner? (19/26 December) — he would certainly have relished the prospect himself. But it may be fair to mention that he was surely guilty of a...

Sir: Mr Jeffrey Bernard need not be embarrassed that he filed for the second time the same column (Low life, 12 De- cember). I for one read each of Mr Bernard's columns twice...

Sir: My family detected two confusions of identity in attempting to solve your Christ- mas Quiz. It was not Dominic McGlinchey but his wife, Mary, who was shot dead last year....

Sir: Charles Glass rightly praises Philip Caputo's Indian Country in his books of the year choice (28 November), but is wrong to say that it is not available in this country. Mr...

Sir: Malcolm Gluck (Letters, 5 December) remarks that he reads this publication backwards, which I understand to involve starting on the inside page of the back cover and...

Sir: I salute Mr Speaght's scholarship (Letters, 19/26 December), but am sur- prised that he has not found the earlier reference to `waugh the pilger' in The Proude Cropure by...

Sir: I read, with interest Paul Johnson's article 'When is a Foetus Disposable?' (5 December). I wonder whether any of those who advocate the disposal of a foetus on the grounds...

THE Daily Telegraph has sunk a shaft once more into the great reservoir of letters, but this time little oil is forth- coming, or, rather, the oil is not of a good quality. A...

A revolt not a revolution Geoffrey Wheatcroft SIXTY-EIGHT: THE YEAR OF THE BARRICADES by David Caute Hamish Hamilton, £14.95 1968: A STUDENT GENERATION IN REVOLT by Ronald...

William Scammell S. J. PERELMAN: A LIFE by Dorothy Herrmann Simon & Schuster, £14.95 DON'T TREAD ON ME: THE SELECTED LETTERS OF S. J. PERELMAN edited by Prudence Crowther...

Radek Sikorski SOVIET POWER: THE CONTINUING CHALLENGE by James Sherr Macmillan Press, £29.50 W hat is Mr Gorbachev, we all ask ourselves? A revolutionary trying to break the...

Anita Brookner THE MESSIAH OF STOCKHOLM by Cynthia Ozick Andre Deutsch, £9.95 L ars Andemening, his name picked out of a dictionary, is a book reviewer on a Stockholm...

Richard 01lard HORATIO NELSON by Tom Pocock Bodley Head, f15 T he period of Nelson's fame can only be the end of time'. The majesty of Sheridan's epitaph still seems both...

Peter Conrad SELECTED LETTERS OF RICHARD WAGNER translated and edited by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington Dent, BO A nyone who loves Wagner's music will be horrified by his...

Peter Quennell FRIENDS IN FOCUS: A LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS by Frances Partridge Chau° &Windus, £12.95 W eekly book reviews are sometimes all the livelier if they reflect a violent...

No other language but that of the Creed Will serve to say the things which must be said. And what things are they? All things, I said: Or did not all things come from the same...

New York theatre The show that takes the biscuit Matt Wolf I s there life in the New York theatre besides Phantom of the Opera? These days, it's difficult to tell, as Andrew...

Rodney Milnes ow new does a production have to be? Some of my younger and sterner confreres have been casting doubts upon the newness of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's Ita- liana at...

Candida (Arts Theatre) Mother love Christopher Edwards R eally first-rate productions of flawed plays can be very beguiling. Frank Haus- er's staging of Shaw's comedy Candida...

Christopher Cook (Benjamin Rhodes, till 6 February) Patrick Graham (Fischer Fine Art, till 4 March) Fond imaginings Giles Auty T he artist who uses the least of what is...

Rare specimens Ursula Buchan A l that is left of Christmas are the precious memories — of piped carols in the shopping centre and disaster movies on television — and there is...

Piste off Taki I was warned by some of the most important people I know that London would be quiet this time of year. What they didn't tell me was how quiet. Annabel's this...

Keeping out of trouble Wendy Cope I t's a quiet time of year, a good oppor- tunity to stay home, do some work and avoid fattening food and drink. Dylan Thomas said that no one...

Facing the music Jeffrey Bernard S ome contemporary composer or other should write a concerto for Norman. He is the only man in the world who can play a cadenza on a cash...

January sails Alice Thomas Ellis I 'm all at sea. Well, not precisely sea. To be perfectly honest, I haven't got much idea where I am. I think we started from Gosport and...

where our mouths are. The chef is the most important person in a restaurant, not the architect, and certainly not the interior decorator. But this is how things should be, not...

Drawing board Raymond Keene W ith one round to play in the Foreign and Colonial tournament at Hastings Nigel Short leads with 81/2 points, followed by Jon Speelman with 8. The...

Toenails under the hammer Jaspistos I N Competition No. 1505 you were invited to name and describe, as in an auctioneer's catalogue, six odd items of personal property of the...

Undued lights: 79 21 52 14 12 & 61: The first nowell the angel did say was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay 1A: Song of the Nuns of Chester 10: This New Christmas...

You are invited to write quatrains in praise or dispraise of a particular edible. Entries to 'Competition No. 1508' by 29 January.

A first prize of 120 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...