,sn someone was flere here was renewed controversy over T the leaking of sensitive intelligence in- formation by security force personnel in Northern Ireland. Two full-time...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 MOVING TOWARDS FREEDOM W hatever eventual disappointments await the East...

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for cheap tickets to the forthcoming play, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell by Keith Water- house, starring Peter O'Toole. See our loose insert for details.

Captain Paddy boldly goes where no party has gone before NOEL MALCOLM addy Ashdown's first words to the Human Rights Rally on the eve of his party's conference were conveyed...

CHARLES MOORE W henever I am tempted to question the wisdom of anything the Prince of Wales says about architecture, I correct myself by the simple device of turning to the...

How to support the only worthwhile campaign of our time AUBERON WAUGH Now I come to look for the cutting again I find it has softly and silently faded away, otherwise waffled...

Dominic Lawson has lunch with Michael Heseltine, and chews over the ex-cabinet minister's plans for power A PLUSH new car had — to my surprise — met me at the station when I...

Timothy Garton Ash looks at the dilemma for both East and West Germany in the current westward migration 'WHAT would happen if they took down the Wall?' Last one out turn off...

Michael Heath

on the black who would be mayor Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York FOR a city that gives an impression of furious activity, New York is strangely like an archaelogical site. In some...

Elizabeth Endycott on the atrocities carried out by an organisation the churches love NAMIBIA, 'Africa's Last Colony', is a cause which the political Left in the West has...

MAJORITY. A mathematical idea meaning 51 per cent of anything, except in the context of British parliamentary democracy, where over about 25 per cent will do fine. Nigel Burke

The circle squared ONE of the minor allurements of mathematics is that it encompasses a roster of problems, puzzles, which have indefinitely resisted solution, even though they...

Anita Brookner on the life and writings of the author, who died last week GEORGES Simenon was very nearly a great writer. He was certainly a singular one. Thanks to his...

Michael Trend wrestles with his computer's creative nomenclature RETURNING recently from holiday to the task of compiling The Spectator's Por- trait of the Week', I was...

a critical look at an overcrowded market THE big lie being spread about Britain that the freedom of its media has been eroded over the past decade, gets a further knock this...

stated in 'The Shibboleth of Smears' (26 August) that '200 people' a year in Britain die from cervical cancer. This should have read '2,000 people'.

SP E Ct \TOR Foreword by Wallace Arnold Edited by Christopher Howse A splendid compilation of the best of SPECTATOR humour from the post-war years El 2.95 AVAILABLE...

Sir: Contrary to what Jonathan Fenby of the Guardian may believe (Letters, 9 September), no one is objecting to the placement of media recruitment advertise- ments in the...

Sir; John Casey (test we forgive', 9 September) has much to say about') 'the mysterious and paradoxical Christian doct- rine of forgiveness'. But he fails to disting- uish...

Our island story Sir: 1 am afraid your strong feelings con- cerning the British obligation to accept three million people from Hong Kong into Britain has led you to publish Ian...

is hopelessly con- fused. The key to forgiveness is that one human forgives another in spite of what they have done, not because of it. Such is the burden of Luke vi, 32: 'If...

difficulty in knowing what a sense of national identity is. But many people do not. For example, all my 32 great, great, great grandparents were born in England. Give or take a...

Sir: I have read Nigel Burke's article about crack (The Crack Crackdown', 2 Septem- ber), in which he invites anyone with an electronic database of news articles (we have access...

WAR. In 1940, we only had one phoney war, but now we have the war on crack, the war on inflation, the war on road traffic offences, and the vital war on litter. When push comes...

Sir: Christopher Hawtree (Letters, 2 September) really is a childish little man. Normally I ignore such people, but I shall make an exception in this case and provide a modicum...

Sir: I have been away on holiday, but 1 do not find on my return any great con- troversy raging in your letters pages about John Whitworth's criticisms (Letters, 12 August) of...

wonder whether any readers might like to join me on it. LETTERS The aim is to discover what lies in that Possibly dangerous territory, the gap be- hind the Spectator radiators....

Sir: I would like to support S. A. Rydberg (Letters, 19 August) with reference to A. Waugh's 'Voice on Rambling' (22 July): That article indeed was a big piece of shit, A. Waugh...

Sir: The word `nyaff' has been known in Glasgow for decades. It is a noun, implying the incumbent is a cocky fellow who should be taken down a peg. Thus, an adolescent...

Sir: 'How do you see Tuesday?' asks Angela Huth (Diary, 2 September). Easy: bright red. Just as Monday was grey, Wednesday will be Air Force blue, Thurs- day chocolate brown,...

Putting Mr Lawson in perspective TIM CONGDON T he last few years have seen a remark- able boom in private-sector credit. But there has been little discussion of how the recent...

IT was thought on Tuesday that the Whitechapel murderer had been at his work again. A constable, passing through Pinchin Street in that district, found in the railway-arch the...

A new commander changes the guard at the Stock Exchange CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he City got Andrew Hugh Smith wrong. When he was chosen to follow Sir Nicholas Goodison as...

The confessions of an investment addict JAMES BARTHOLOMEW I can't give it up. It takes over, like infatuation with a woman or an obsession with gambling. If anything, it is...

Change for drachma on the Clapham omnibus? JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE A nyone remember the launching of the £1 coin? Probably not. I do, since I had the job of breaking the bubbly. We...

Anatomy of a legend Colin Welch THE QUEST FOR EL CID by Richard Fletcher Hutchinson, £18.95, pp.220 M ost of us British have a vague Picture of El Cid, most Spaniards a much...

Michael Davie THE BRIDESHEAD GENERATION: EVELYN WAUGH AND HIS FRIENDS by Humphrey Carpenter Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £17.95, pp.523 n Humphrey Carpenter and his pub- lishers...

Anita Brookner FALLING by Colin Thubron Heinemann, £10.95, pp.152 h e obsessive love affair used to inspire more novels than it does today, as if obsessive love were the one...

Clare Pollen FLUDD by Hilary Mantel Viking, £11.95. pp.I86 0 n Wednesday the bishop came in person. He was a modern prelate, brisk and plump in his rimless glasses, and he...

Denis Hills THE USES OF ADVERSITY by Timothy Garton Ash Granta Books, £13.95, pp.305 I n these articles and essays written be- tween 1983 and 1989, Ash examines the Communist...

Jeremy Lewis THE WIT OF THE SPECTATOR Edited by Christopher Howse Century, £12.95, pp. 224 F ew things are more off-putting than the self-proclaimedly humorous or witty — as...

Michael De-la-Noy KEITH VAUGHAN JOURNALS 1939-1977 edited by Alan Ross John Murray, £17.95, pp.213 0 ne of the greatest pieces of confes- sional writing to emerge this...

Allan Massie FOR KING AND COUNTRY by Magnus Linklater and Christian Hesketh Weidenfeid & Nicolson, £16.95, pp.244 h e hero of this biography, 'a soldier of distinguished...

THE SPECTATOR BOOK OF W( )R I,D WAR It REWORD .BY 1.1DOVIC KENNEDY FIFTY YEARS after the outbreak of the Second World War comes a collection of the best contemporary writing...

Four women stand on a gravel path With an ivied wall behind, My pretty mother, my granny, my gran (The two old ladies didn't get on But I didn't know that) and Auntie Cath, My...

Architecture Intelligent intervention Gavin Stamp A Vision of Britain (V & A, till 19 November) T o any architectural critic who has been around for a decade or more, the...

As You Like It (Stratford) Man, Beast and Virtue (Cottesloe) Harmless fun Christopher Edwards 0 nce Rosalind finds the verses pinned to the tree, life in Arden invariably...

Gauguin and the School of Pont-Aven: Prints and Paintings (Royal Academy, till 19 November) More Seguin than Gauguin Giles Auty H ere is an exhibition which I found...

In the abstract Peter Phillips T hings did eventually look up at the Proms. No one doubted the quality of the Oslo Philharmonic under Jansons on 23 August: it was one of those...

sex, lies and videotape ('18', selected cinemas) Yuppie comeuppance Hilary Mantel like sex okay,' says one of the characters in this prize-winning film. 'But . 1 don't think...

The CD con Marcus Berkmann o compact discs have finally done it. According to the trade paper Music Week, these nasty little silver laminae are outsell- ing proper vinyl...

Liberal dose Wendy Cope T here can't be many people who want to sit down at 7.50 p.m. on a Saturday and watch a politician being interviewed on television. It didn't please me...

The last resort Taki T Mykonos he worst invention since television is the jet-ski. It is noisy, it pollutes, it's extremely dangerous to swimmers in general and snorkellers in...

Blissed out Zenga Longmore T he hippies next door have recently taken to banging on the wall whenever Omalara cries. Everyone agrees that this is most unfair. After all, she...

The uses of literacy Jeffrey Bernard I took it for about ten minutes and then I cracked. I leapt at him — I thought my athletic days were long gone — banged him up against the...

The Wine Society You might think of the Wine Society — I always have — with its quaint title (Inter- national Exhibition Co-operative), its bookish name-plate, school of...

# The Malabar NOW that we are in the a g e of the Upmarket Indian, when whitewash has taken over from flock wallpaper and the travelogue-menu has taught us that there is more...

Cudgel your brains Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1591 you were chal- lenged to write a 16-line rhopalic blank verse epistle with four words per line. Yes, it's tough at the...

Player power Raymond Keene A t their annual congress in Puerto Rico last month, Fide, the World Chess Federation, took various controversial de- cisions concerning the 1990...

An extract, please, from the brochure for either the Hotel Genghis Khan or the Dickens Hotel. Maximum 150 words. Entries to 'Competition No. 1594' by 29 September.

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...

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