P reparations for a war between Britain and Argentina continued at a gentle pace. The Royal Navy's battle fleet steamed to the South Atlantic. President Reagan dispatched US...

A s the modern jargon would have it, the Falklands crisis is 'an ongoing situa- tion'. So ongoing, in fact, and so liable to change, that for a daily newspaper — and, more...

God's own kingdom A large part of my time seems to have been spent defending journalists. There is an ineradicable suspicion of them in England which I find hard to explain ex-...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington A t first Americans thought the Falkland Islands affair was a repeat of the blow- up in Anguilla a few years ago which ended when a planeload...

Stephen Roskill T wice in my lifetime has Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands proved an impor- ta nt link in the chain forged to exercise our World-wide maritime control. The...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £15.50 IR£17.75 £18.50 £24.50 One year: £31.00 IRE35.50 £37.00 £49.00 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made payable to the...

Christopher Hitchens Tripoli I n 1956 the United States prevented Britain, France and Israel from persisting in an armed attack on Nasser's Egypt. Apart from anything else,...

Tom Bethell Tom Bethell Washington J ohn W. Hinckley Jr, who was seized with a smoking pistol in his hand at the scene of the shooting of President Reagan and March, bystanders...

William Deedes T hey were digging up the middle square of the huge Melbourne cricket ground while I was there. The old wicket was said to be possessed of devils. So that struck...

Richard West Bangkok T he bicentenary of the Chakri dynasty, and of the founding of Bangkok, is more than just an excuse for a party, or for a bout of self-praise. The Thais...

David Tidmarsh Now my knowledge of law cannot stand comparison with that of the lawyers who have been devoting themselves to the civil rights aspects of mental illness over the...

R oy Kerridge enjy's one of my brightest pupils,' a teacher told me recently, looking ap- provingly at an earnest negro youth. 'When he leaves school, he's sure of a good job...

The great contest in the United States over the admission of Chinese im- migrants is not over yet. Both Senate and House of Representatives passed by large majorities a Bill...

Bewildered, Cheltenham Paul Johnson I t is heartening,' wrote reader R. Pirl rt eham to the Guardian, `to fi nd the British people so united in their resolve to repel the...

A new era? Tony Rudd S ince the Fleet left Portsmouth, two views have emer g ed in the City about the nature of the Falklands crisis throu g h which we are now livin g . One...

We have been informed that Michael Deakin's review of Within Whicker's World (20 March) has been construed as suggesting that Alan Whicker played less than a major role in the...

Letters Advice to travellers Sir: Further to Richard West's piece on the 1982 South American Handbook (3 April), I thought the following, taken from the same Handbook, would...

Sir: Simon Courtauld jokingly suggests that the Alliance of the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party might well borrow some ideas from Bakunin's Alliance of Social...

Sir: Victor Buchanan's patronising, naive and factually incorrect account of life in modern Burma (3 April) places him on the first planeload of the myopic and 'Hun- like'...

Sir: Richard West writes (27 March), ... for almost 70 years it has been the Spectator and the New Statesman that stood for weekly journalism'. Has he never heard of The...

Sir: In his review of the Dvorak cello con- certo (3 April), Anthony Burgess makes the point that recording engineers may highlight instrumental passages, contrary to the...

Sir: Mr. Frank Pomeranz (Letters, 3 April) was of course right in stating that no one would object to Smuts, Mountbatten or Wavell Fellowships. Of course Djilas pere was also...

White House Families Alastair Forbes All the President's Kin Barbara Kellerman (Robson Books £7.95) w hen Benjamin Franklin, no stranger to a Royal Court, bequeathed to...

Michael Wharton T he late Dr John Morris is probably best known to general readers for his Age of Arthur (1973), a splendid book which gives the gist of what is known about the...

John Grigg on Rab Butler. Francis King on Robert Nye. Anthony Blond on April Ashley. Terence de Vere White on Burne- Jones.

Peter Quennell Mortimer Wheeler: Adventurer to Archaeology Jacquetta Hawkes (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £10.95) I n the fi rst sentence of her new book ivlis s . Jacquetta Hawkes...

Peter Levi 1 -1 olin Macloed died young, by suicide, a few days before last Christmas. He was the classical tutor at Christ Church, and a mature scholar. Indeed he was the...

translator of Pausanias. Peter Quennell's many books include biographies of Ruskin, Pope and Byron. Harriet Waugh's most recent novel is Mother's Footsteps.

A. N. Wilson D ichard K. Fenn is aptly named, though IN.he could be called Swamp or Bog or simply Mud with equal appropriateness. Wading through his prose is not a great...

Kay Dick M r Bowers has embarked on an ambit- ious project: a series of novels about the Russian Revolutions, of which Th„ e , Spark is the fi rst. A gestation period of 4 b...

Harriet Waugh Before She Met Me Julian Barnes (Jonathan Cape £6.50) J ealousy is undignified: an unhappy mixture of violence and petulance. It is unpretty and rarely helps...

Duncan Fallowell The Great Perspectivists Gavin Stamp (Trefoil Books £11.95, £5.95) nne of the most romantic characteristics V of Great Britain is the way in which treasures...

Genius and dottiness Rodney Mines I Puritani (WNO, Dominion Theatre) T he Welsh National Opera's new pro- duction of Puritani is absolutely in- furiating. It is quite plainly...

Brought to light John McEwen I the arts — as no doubt in most other 'activities — one is continually being told by candidates for 'Great Bores of Today', that the situation...

An ancient theme Peter Ackroyd The Boat (`A', selected cinemas) T his German film, extolling the heroism of a U-boat crew during the second world war, has had an...

Food for thought Mark Amory Meetings (Hampstead) Song and Dance (Palace) • Boogie (May Fair) News Revue (Fortune) Beyond the Footlights (Lyric) I n a light-hearted even...

Old chestnuts Richard Ingrams -gras ped, some reason I have never quit e .11: grasped, TV over the Easter Holiday period is worse than at any other time at" ing the year. My...

War games Taki New York M y good friend Luis Basualdo is an Bnglish Argentinian who dresses like . an country squire but looks as English as an MGM castle. Luis used to be...

Poles apart Jeffrey Bernard F or a moment I thought I was going mad. There I was, sitting quietly in the Coach =and Horses minding my own business and having my 11 a.m....

To enable competitors to economise on postage, entries for one or more weeks of the competition and crossword may be posted together under one cover addressed 'Competition...

No. 1214: Purple on grey Set by Jaspistos: I'm not quite sure whether I know exactly what 'purple prose' is. Please show me by writing some very purple prose (maximum 150...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked to incorporate the ten words mentioned below, in the order given, into a plausible piece of prose. For your amusement, the...

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A Prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution oPened on 4 May. Entries to: Crossword 553, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. a r 4 IBM 7...

Three of the best Raymond Keene I n spite of an earthquake which rocked the playing hall during the last round, causing a sudden evacuation of Grandmasters, the great...

551 one of the unclued lights (a name) has been misspelt.