`It's either Rodney King or a tourist.' T he Government and Opposition joined in denouncing Lady Thatcher's proposal that Bosnian Muslims should be allowed to buy arms. The IRA...

JOHN OSBORNE A few weeks ago I received, by special delivery, a scroll (I suppose you'd call it), framed and mounted, proclaiming that I had been `nominated' (along with half a...

Piers Paul Read interviewed the survivors of the nuclear disaster seven years on and discovered that the western press were duped Power-station. The Swedes decided to phase...

THE BELGIAN Chamber on Tuesday rejected universal suffrage by a vote of 115 to 26. The workmen are exceedingly irritated, and have decreed, through their leaders, a universal...

Boris Johnson argues that the Foreign Secretary's fictional writings reveal a mind tormented by guilt over slaughter in Bosnia IN A BUILDING once intended to be a suburban...

Martin Vander Weyer talks to the friends of J. Paul Getty, the new owner of cricket's most sacred text THE 130TH annual Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, published this week, will...

Michael Heath

William Oddie forecasts that the split in the Church of England will ultimately lead to its disestablishment THERE ARE, pronounced the Bishop of St Albans, mysteriously, on...

I'M not saying that it is impossible to fight against change in language, well not quite, anyway. Take deprecate. Pedants point out that its 'true' meaning is to ward off by...

persist.. . ANTHROPOLOGISTS tell us — so it must be true — that there are two kinds of society, the shame society and the guilt society. In the former, people are kept on...

Stewed in corruption, honeying in the continental sty PAUL JOHNSON I f you collate the mass of judicial investi- gations now going on in many European Community countries, a...

Here comes the plan for Lloyd's, allowing for wise virgins and non-virgins CHRISTOPHER FILDES N ow under new management, the old firm of Lloyd's of London is about to reveal...

Sir: A collision between the imprecision of my writing style and the precision of your editing caused a sentence to appear last week in my article on Hong Kong (`Great wall of...

Sir: Has Richard Lamb (Books, 10 April) fallen for Goring's supposed charm and humour in writing that 'it is questionable whether he ought to have been condemned to death'? At...

Sir: I was interested to read Nigel Nicol- son's column of 13 March, in which he said that Nicholas Ridley's action in pouring steaming coffee over Mr Nicolson was `nobler than...

Sir: I do not have the direct experience of the courting and mating habits of the mod- ern German that your correspondents Anne McElvoy ('We might as well make love', 13 March)...

Sir: Last week, halfway up an Italian Alp at 6,500 feet, six of us living for a week stacked three high in a room like a 'Wagon - Lit' compartment, were all strangers gath- ered...

Sir: May I add to the teenage reading con- troversy by commenting on Caroline How- ell's letter in your 10 April issue? Miss Howell informs us that the only reason why anyone...

The slough of Anglican despond Caroline Moore THE PANTHER AND THE HIND by Aidan Nichols O.P. T & T Clark, f9.95, pp. 186 THE CHURCH UNDER THATCHER by Henry Clark SPCK (1 2.99,...

Francis King GHOSTS by John Banville Secker, £14.99, pp. 245 I t is difficult to give any accurate account of this novel. It is as though a superlative musician had sat down...

Red towel turban round your head, I surprise you, naked from the shower, caesarian and hysterectomy scars a crucifix on your soft turn, cradling tender tits giving way to...

Roger Clarke ALL THE PRETTY HORSES by Cormac McCarthy Picador, £14.99, pp. 302 C ormac McCarthy's new novel comes with a string of endorsements as long as your arm from...

Anthony Howard AROUND THE CRAGGED HILL: A PERSONAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY by George F. Kennan W. W. Norton, £16.50, pp. 272 I f the United States had its own army of the...

C. H. Sisson COLLEC71ED POEMS, 1945-1990 by R. S. Thomas Dent, f25, pp. 548 N ot everyone has the forbearance to defer the publication of his Collected Poems until his 80th...

Roger Gard THE COLLECTED LE1 1 FRS OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD, VOLUME III, 1919-1920 edited by Vincent O'Sullivan and Margaret Scott Clarendon, f35, pp. 305 I have an impression...

Adam Zamoyski A MAN OF HONOUR: ADAM CZARTORYSKI AS A STATESMAN OF RUSSIA AND POLAND, 1795-1831 by W. H. Zawadzki OUP, f45, pp. 374 O ne of the more irritating aspects of the...

Philip Glazebrook THE COLLISION OF TWO CIVILISATIONS: THE BRITISH EXPEDITION TO CHINA, 1792-4 by Main Peyrefitte Harvill, £20, pp. 630 T his absorbing book gives a moment-by-...

William Mount GUNS N' ROSES, IN THEIR OWN WORDS by Mark Putterford Omnibus, £7.95, pp. 96 NEIL YOUNG, DON'T BE DENIED: THE CANADIAN YEARS by John Einarson Omnibus £9.99, pp....

Fiction: The Children of Men by P. D. James, Faber, £8.99 Persistent Rumours by Lee Langley, Mandarin, £5.99 Serenity House by Christopher Hope, Picador, £5.99 The...

Music Repetitive noise syndrome Peter Phillips believes that Gorecki's chart-topping Third Symphony is part of a movement back to ancient church music with the religion left...

Georgia O'Keeffe (Hayward Gallery, till 27 June) Great misjudgment Giles Auty W ere one to have no knowledge of art other than from this century, it might be easy to imagine...

The Beggar's Opera (Barbican) The School of Night (Barbican) New Morning (Bush) Other beggars' efforts Sheridan Morley I nto the Barbican from last summer at Stratford, where...

The Ox (`12', Chelsea Cinema and Renoir) Leap of Faith (PG, Plaza 1) Biblical buzz words Vanessa Letts M ax Von Sydow has the distinction of starring in one of the worst and...

Duets from heaven Martin Gayford J azz history long ago ceased to be a straight-forward historical progression. Nonetheless, it might seem a little surpris- ing that the...

Give a stork a home Ursula Buchan I was alarmed to discover recently that the sales of trees and even shrubs are on the decline, whereas those of annuals and herbaceous plants...

Turkey by the sea Martyn Harris T here is a self-lacerating streak in the BBC which drives it, in search of 'main- stream appeal', to launch an annual turkey on the airwaves....

A matter of money Taki In a typical Hollywood manner, the film loses it right away because of the casting. Now don't get me wrong. I'm no fan of Redford's, in fact he reminds...

Forgotten forum Nigel Nicolson I t is curious that the European Parlia- ment, and the whole Strasbourg mecha - nism, has not been involved more closely In the Serb-Bosnian...

In need of a Mary Poppins Jeffrey Bernard 0 ne day last week I asked Norman if he would remove a photograph of my por- trait from the wall of the bar. I said that I didn't want...

SOME plans were never meant to be realised. Drawing up lists for parties, for example, uses up so much nervous anticipa- tion, boredom ('Who do we know who we don't know?' as...

For plutocrat and pauper Auberon Waugh T his is a lovely offer, with three brilliant wines at affordable prices (Nos 1, 3 and 5), two exciting new discoveries, if rather less...

Kitchen prayer Christopher Howse IN COMPETITION NO. 1774 you were invited to write a poem with the title `Kitchen Prayer'. What a haven of domestic pleasures you expect your...

Heroic Raymond Keene ONE OF THE MORE depressing aspects of Nigel Short's forthcoming championship challenge to Kasparov in London has been the whingeing from some quarters of...

A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 3 May, with two runners-up prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers,...

Traveller's tales Frank Keating FOR ALL ITS pooh-poohing of Poms, Australia likes to remain in close touch with backpage England. In steamy Brisbane a couple of weekends ago a...

Dear Mary. . Q. The proper procedure for the seatless officer in the situation mentioned (Dear Mary, 6 March), assuming that there is nobody present with visible mark of rank,...