he failure of the Iraqi effort to topple the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini seemed, a fortnight ago, to be reaching its denouement. On 21 February Iran launched its long...

The 21st thing about Nigel Charles Moore A midst the large quantities of technical ra.information and still larger ones of guesses which preceded Mr Lawson's first Budget,...

Jock Bruce-Gardyne I f Mr Nigel Lawson were of a superstitious di sPositio n — which he isn't — he would have spent Wednesday morning chewing G arlic and ci rcumnavigating...

nne of the charges sometimes levelled L./against the Spectator is that the paper is too incestuous, that the regular con- tributors spend too much time addressing each other...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £17.25 £17.25 £20.50 £26.50 One year: £34 . 50 £34.50 £41.00 £53.00 For special offer turn to p.24 Name Address.. US Subscriptions:...

Gerontophobia Auberon Waugh The Prince of Wales had some distinctly old-fashioned thin g s to say about the new British sport of granny-bashin g when he addressed the lads in...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington A Super Tuesday approached, the Gary Hart phenomenon seemed to shudder, pause and then jump forward again. The hesitation may have arisen from...

Timothy Garton Ash San Salvador San Salvador I'm going to kill you,' said a voice behind me as our plane descended into Salvador. I jerked round in my seat. A small...

Geoffrey Strickland T he deliberate torture of a helpless fellow creature has long been regarded by civilised people with loathing and con- tempt, under whatever pretext and...

Richard West Amritsar O n the night train to Amritsar, in north- west India, one thinks of the horrors along this track at the time of the partition in 1947. Trains carrying...

Harry Eyres Barcelona O ne of the many things George Orwell does not write about in Homage to Catalonia is Catalonia. Almost as soon as he arrived in Barcelona, he was sent...

A. M. Daniels I 1836 Peter Chaadaev published his 'Philosophical Letter in the Russian Jour- nal The Telescope. Chaadaev maintained that Russia had no history worthy of the...

Peter Paterson T he most curious aspect of the miners' area strikes which pickets are strenuously attempting to turn into a national stoppage is that no one seems to be...

The Times of Thursday prints a letter, three columns long, in large type, from its correspondent in Hanoi, which it is perfectly heart-breaking to read. The French in Tonquin...

James Michie N el mezzo del cammin di nostra vita unlike Mrs Thatcher I felt neither con- fident that I was getting into my stride nor that the way ahead was clear. I had...

Peregrine Worsthorne (\ne does not need to be Sherlock V Holmes to know the reason why Mrs Thatcher refuses to disclose all the details surrounding the Oman deal. It is out of...

The sin of Oman Paul Johnson J ournalists are often obliged to feel ashamed of their 'profession, but I can- not recall anything quite so distasteful as the vendetta against...

Within the last year, readers have been told that Aleric Rich made his name in the penal world in 'the heady days of open borstals', that `Taufiq Wahby, the only Kurd to have...

Porton Down's syndrome Sir: I enjoy a weekly read of the Spectator, and with particular amusement (in case you are inclined, from what follows, to dismiss me as a mere...

Sir: Gavin Stamp took the Times to task ('Curious priorities', 3 March) for its failures in the obituary department. Quite so: it's a dying art. However, Mr Stamp does not...

21 January) says: 'With moral evolution and acquisition of wealth, with all its choices, things can get exaggerated.' But why has he missed the real link? The point is surely...

was refused by the Independent Cv onni '.1111311 Authority_ This was in accordance with the 111A's definition of *politic& which they applied to the Spoliator. We are now seTim...

Si: I am sorry to be so long in doing the Reid Mr Campbell (Letters, 4 February) the cosiness of a reply_ As he says, Si Faith is recorded as a martyr at .Agen by Si Jerome,...

ens* machos them_ Far from having couple of Clara paragraphs tacked on at are end', Anthony Blunt's obituary is the Timer ('Art historian who spied for the Russians' — 28 March...

Sir: Squabbling among contributors is oh e thing, miniat ure gang warfare is anothe r- In your issue of 10 March, on the sa page, Big Dick lngrams uncharacterist ic-11'Y summons...

Sin You do wee to expose the absurd IBA censorship of patina adscriiisemenis_ Two years ago, the &uncial paper I then edited had acq dual some British Steel documents. . and...

Sr. I protest strongly agains . it Your_ jx . no ial critic being subject to th e ' wa re* humiTtatien of having actual to televisien_ IL B. Chubb 5 Manor Farm Buildings,...

Mr Anyone rash enough to act olla c music aide's legal rnisarivice will b e H ai to find it expenswe. Copyright , c1°c% expire on 'the very day' (Peter Phi l ti March) of the...

Sin Reviewing a new biography of ,Admiral ma tt (1g F e b ru ary ). Max Hastings writes. It is far more difficult to fiad an on of excuse for the professional service officers...

any of your radars tell me anything about St Pamela! To my surprise the calendar presented to us by the saperopornpiers here lists bor under I June and last year the room man on...

What are people for? A.N. Wilson Sex and Destiny: The Polities of Human Fertaty Germaine Greer (Seeker and Warburg £9-95) T he Warmer for Modernisation in Ev elYn Waugh's...

The Spectator for twelve months and receive FREE a signed copy of GOD'S APOLOGY A chronicle of three friends by Richard.ingrams Open to non-subscribers or to those who want...

Alan Watkins The Oxford Guide to English Usage Compiled by E. S. C. Weiner (Clarendon Press £7.95) U ntil about 30 years ago, a school that did not teach English grammar was...

Douglas Johnson Literature and the Left in France J. E. Flower (Macmillan £20) I t is well known that there is a close f 'between social history and the historYP, the novel....

Patrick Skene Catling J. P. Morgan Stanley Jackson (Heinemann £14.95) w hen a man's acne rosacea (whose main symptom is reddening of the nose) develops into rhinophyma (nasal...

Belloc will be published by }Tarnish Hamilton in April. Dorothy Bonn is on the staff of The Lancet. Brian Inglis's latest book, Science and Parascience, is published next week...

Brian Inglis The Mind Anthony Smith Anthony Smith (Hodder and Stoughton £10.95) 15 I n his Eddington Memorial Lecture • years ago, Grey Walter described 11°4 with the help of...

Blinded Frances Hill The Stories of Bernard Malamud (Chatto & Windus £12.50) T he American Jewish immigrants of Bernard Malamud's stories inhabit a world of their own...

No flights of fancy John McEwen The Pre-Raphaelites (Tate Gallery till 28 May) he main cniticiau oldie Pre-Raptadraes is that they were illtstratorss„ painters dependent on a...

Worth waiting Giles Gordon Waiting for Godot (Riverside) lin Power of Darkness ((Orange Tree, Richmond) The Aspern Papers (Theatre Royal, Haymarket) A l though Mr Godot may...

Nuclear family Peter Ackroyd Testament (PG', selected cinemas) A pocalypse, the end of the world, has been a favourite theme for artists long before pictorial representations...

Forgotten gold Maureen Owen ne suggestion amidst the recent batter- n ing taken by the BBC is that they should go for quality rather than quantity. Whatever that might mean it...

Slippery slopes Taki Gstaad T eke everything else in this world Gstaad, the beautiful alpine village in the Bernese Oberland, has changed for the worse. More cars, more...

Hard work Richard Ingrams I have been trying to adjust myself to the thought of not being a television critic after nearly eight years on the job. I think the nicest thing I...

Style (cont.) P. J. Kavanagh Tn this column last week I mentioned 1 what I considered a lack of style (defined as generosity to opponents) in the dealings of the present...

Review pages Jeffrey Bernard I t was towards the end of July 1938 that my father announced that he was to sail aboard the Normandie to Guadaloupe to have the first sex-change...

a poem by a candid pet in fact or fiction to its master or mistress. You rained cats and dogs on me, and many other beasts too. Often I was at a loss to know whether you were...

No. 1312: Conduct unbecoming Set by Jaspistos: 'Have you ever con- sidered asking your readers which single ac- tion in their opinion typifies conduct unbecoming a gentleman?'...

Age v youth Raymond Keene L ast Saturday the final of the Candi- dates' matches between Kasparov and Smyslov started up in in Vilnius, the capital of Soviet Lithuania, where...

Prize: £ 10 — or a copy of Chambers Dictionary, 1983 edition (ring the word 'Dictionary' under name and address) — for Ihe first cor- rect solut on opened on 2 April. Entries...

PRONOUN. CEMENTirlg the two part words and forming a new word. Winner: Mrs E. J. Shields, 51 Mead- way, London NWIL

M r Nigel Lawson's first Budget propos- ed major tax reforms: an increase in personal allowances equivalent to an in- come tax cut for most people of at least £2 a week; the...

PULLED THREAD EMBROIDERY by Moyra McNeill) Mills & Boon). S. H. Trembath, 7 Tayton Vale,. Newton Abbott, Devon TQI3 9XP. BATTLE OF NORMANDY vol t, victory in the West 1944-45...