M r Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the week after the Bank of England had cut interest rates by a quar- ter of a percentage point, declared that he would not...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 0171-405 1706; Fax 0171-242 0603 FARM IT OUT T en thousand miners marching through the streets of Blackpool during...

How their Lordships ought to conduct their fight in the last ditch BRUCE ANDERSON It follows, therefore, that constitutional questions should be approached with humil- ity....

n the night train from Moscow to Smolensk, I shared a compartment with a white-haired psychopath who sat on the bunk opposite in his Y-fronts and stared at me with burning eyes....

For posterity, the problem is not indiscreet diarists, but discreet sources FRANK JOHNSON T hey have been in the Sunday Times these last two weeks. As I write, the last...

Alison Weir explains what lies behind yet another surge of interest in Elizabeth I She has ever been so. Since she came to the throne in 1558, Eliza- beth I has endlessly fas-...

I WAS wrapped up in a sort of horse blanket and standing in a field with Veronica by my side on the night of Thursday last week, ready to look at the spectacular shower of...

Mark Steyn on some of the novel arguments of Mr Clinton's defenders New Hampshire AND ON it goes: a vote to inquire into impeachment, followed by a vote to impeach, followed...

Irwin Stelzer on how the economy is changing the relative importance of Mr Brown and Mr Mandelson THE REVISIONISTS haven't waited until Gordon Brown leaves office; he has gone...

I HESITATE to bring my own suffer- ings, terrible though they undoubtedly are, before the reading public, but I am actuated by a profound sense of duty in doing so. It would be...

Toby Young on what suddenly made two unknown Britons known to all Manhattan New York WITHIN the small, close-knit group of British expats living here, something approximating a...

Piers Paul Read speculates that Paul Johnson might be a heretic who risks excommunication ALTHOUGH I have known Paul Johnson for around 30 years, I cannot claim to be a...

I HAVE lost count of the number of times I have expressed my strongly held view that electoral reform is central to the New Labour project. Roy Jenkins has convinced Mr Blair...

Michael Heath

Henry McDonald dissents from his fellow liberal journalists' admiration for Dr Mowlam's performance ONE of the first people to shake hands with Mo Mowlam on her maiden visit to...

Shaping up for a new moral catastrophe in the 21st century PAUL JOHNSON Strictly speaking, human germ-line engi- neering — altering a human sperm or egg to effect changes...

Frank Johnson is wrong and Munich was a disaster. But a disaster for whom? We now know, of course, what Hitler thought of Munich in retrospect (early 1945): 'From the military...

Sir: Richard Lamb makes some telling points in support of the view that 'Britain and France were far stronger vis-à-vis Hitler in 1938 than in 1939' (Letters, 10 October), but...

Sir: Simon Hoggart's article about the Troubles (The Thirty Years War', 10 Octo- ber) contained little to surprise regular readers of his Guardian column. In writing about...

Sir: I return to England after a month in France to find that the usual low standards prevail, exemplified by Sion Simon's child- ish abuse quoted by Liz Davies (Letters, 3...

Sir: What is wrong with the BBC? Michael Vestey (Arts, 3 October) describes the technical incompetence and perverse rescheduling on Radio Four. I wonder if he has overheard the...

Sir: Michael Heath's 'amusing cover' on your 10 October issue has indeed been a conversation piece. I asked the man in my life, 'Why are all the images used to depict sex and...

Sir: To return to that line from Phedre, Simon Gray energetically reminds us that it comes from a play and provides an admirable sketch of the dramatic context (Letters, 10...

Sir: Mr von Reimann is asking for justice for the Prussians who for the most part fled before the advancing Russian armies (Let- ters, 10 October). He might reflect on the fact...

Sir: Although I have been only recently persuaded of the religious advantages of Hinduism, I cannot be alone in concluding that in my next life a reincarnation as David...

Sir: Attending my first Conservative party conference in Bournemouth last week, I was more than a little disappointed to find that my car, which was parked in the Stakis Hotel...

Sir: 'Absolute lack of power corrupts abso- lutely ... ' (Pierre Trudeau's comment on a Canadian journalist). Practitioners of today's investigative jour- nalism get out of...

Sir: How ungrateful of my former 'brother officer', Nicholas Lunt (Letters, 3 Octo- ber), to imply that I am, or was, illiterate. If he were to cast his mind back, he might...

Sir: Ian Ousby is right to reprove me for allowing the illiteracy `marechale' to appear in The First World War, which he reviewed last week (Books, 10 October). He is wrong,...

Nice Mr Rusbridger sets that rough Camilla on us again STEPHEN GLOVER M y column last week about the Guardian contained an error which I shall come to. Let me first describe...

Opium and oblivion Philip Hensher COLERIDGE: DARKER REFLECTIONS by Richard Holmes HarperCollins, £19.99, pp. 584 A t the end of Peter Weir's magnificent new film, The Truman...

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£14 Plain £15 Initialled The Spectator 1999 Diary, bound in soft red goatskin leather, is now available. Laid out with a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the diary is 5" x...

Keith Cooper A HOUSE DIVIDED by Mary Allen Simon & Schuster, £16.99, pp. 304 F rustratingly, my review copy of Mary Allen's diaries had no index. Well, if you had worked with...

Sophie Ratcliffe T hey're all in it, in Daniel Menaker's The Treatment (Faber, £9.99, pp. 269). Set in a Therapy Central pre-Prozac New York, Jake Singer, a depressed...

Maurice Cowling ISAIAH BERLIN by Michael Ignatieff Chatto, £20, pp. 338 I saiah Berlin was born in Tsarist Russia in 1909 and was brought up by adoring par- ents in Riga,...

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Anne Chisholm THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER by Janet Malcolm Papermac, .E12, pp. 176 I t is not easy for other journalists and biographers to know what to make of Janet...

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW by Richard Dawkins Penguin, £20, pp. 337 W ith a profound, completely original thesis to unfold, as in The Selfish Gene, Richard...

BookoftheWeek ft. Save E3 16.99 (rrp £19.99) Coleridge: Darker Reflections The first volume of Richard Holmes' biography of Coleridge, Coleridge: Early Visions, won the...

Cressida Connolly PRECIOUS LIVES by Margaret Forster Chatto, £16.99, pp. 232 O urs is not to reason why, ours but to do and die, is about as unfashionable an idea as hot...

L. G. Mitchell GEORGE III S ubtitled 'a personal history', here is a biography that is a compilation of pleasant anecdotes. All the difficult bits are left out. Although its...

Philip Glazebrook THROWIM WAY LEG by Tim Flannery Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 326 T his jaunty book is an account by the Australian biologist Tim Flannery of 16 vis- its to Papua New...

Harriet Waugh R uth Rendell's A Sight for Sore Eyes (Hutchinson, £16.99) is a departure from her other psychological thrillers. There is a pithy, grim, satirical edge to her...

David Hughes FRINK by Stephen Gardiner HarperCollins, £24.99, pp. 326 W hen in 1972 Elisabeth Frink suggest- ed 'doing my head', as she put it, I carried my bonce proudly...

Nick Harman ZARAFA by Michael Allin Headline, £12.99, pp. 215 I f you think beauty is to do with due proportion, consider the giraffe and think again. The child was right to...

Bringing Europe to England Simon Blow on how Henry James persuaded John Singer Sargent to go to London J ohn Singer Sargent must have con- tributed to Henry James's...

Kaleidoscope of life Alastair Macaulay C ommon sense tells you that the avant- garde artists of yesterday ought to turn into the retrograde artists of today. With Merce...

Beyond Minimalism (Royal Academy, till 1 November) Tony Fretton (Architectural Association, till 31 October) Communing with nature Alan Powers A soon as a style label is...

Aubrey Beardsley (Victoria & Albert Museum, till 10 January) Explicit eroticism Martin Gayford A ubrey Beardsley, the Studio observed percipiently in 1893, 'distilled the...

A surfeit of rapture Roger Kimball W hat if Vincent van Gogh hadn't suf- fered from epilepsy, hadn't cut off part of his ear after a quarrel with Gauguin, hadn't, at the age...

Rich relations Susan Moore I t was always said in the Eighties that everything had its price. No more. Now even the auction houses have become rather choosy, preferring to...

I Della Robbia e 1"arte nuova' della scultura invetriata (Basilica di Sant'Alessandro, Fiesole, till 1 November) Family business Bruce Boucher L cy Honeychurch, the heroine...

Mary Stuart (Coliseum) Hard act to follow Michael Tanner E NO's opening performance of their new production of Mary Stuart began 46 hours after the Royal Opera's GOtterdlim-...

You and yews Ursula Buchan T he village has been slow to catch Mil- lennium Fever. Although invited, even exhorted, by both parish council and parochial church council to...

West Side Story (Prince Edward) A Huey P Newton (Barbican) A weary retread Sheridan Morley T he imminence of a recession can often be judged in direct proportion to the num-...

A Perfect Murder (15, selected cinemas) Missing the point Mark Steyn T he first thing Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder has going for it is a hit title, which is about 30...

Sixties twaddle Michael Vestey W hen, in 1966, I fancied myself as a drama critic, I was sent by a magazine, London Life, to review a play called US or `us' staged at the...

Hymn to a small town Edward Heathcoat Amory I n small-town America, if we believe Hollywood's cinematic anthropologists, children are born into home-made popcorn American...

Poor old Rhaps Robin Oakley Y ou don't go to Worcester for cham- pagne and caviar, more the sustaining curry and chips available in the main bet- ting-hall bar. (Indeed you...

Struggling writers Taki Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, an autobiographical novel about growing up as the daughter of the author James Jones, has inspired the latest film by...

Lessons in loving Leanda de Lisle M y mother-in-law has a series of pho- tographs of her eldest son as a toddler, looking very blond and angelic, with a fluffy little chick...

A tiny error Andrew Robson IT was breakfast time when Edith Dawson collected her prize for winning the Individ- ual Tournament at the summer bridge teachers' jamboree. While...

0.: BLACKPOOL AND BOURNEMOUTH N N `N.N. Alice Thomson LONDON, Paris, New York. Breakfast at Claridge's, lunch at La Coupole, dinner at Le Cirque. The life of a fashion...

Oz and under I HAVE been away again in Australia and Jamaica, hence my lack of a contribution last month. I was so involved with various forms of jet-lag that I totally forgot...

Patagonia rules OK? Jaspistos RECENTLY the self-styled King of Pata- gonia, a Frenchman, with an army of four `marines' formally occupied an uninhabited islet for a day. In...

Saint Matthew Raymond Keene IN SPITE of having sent what is most likely their strongest team ever to the Olympiad, England (officially designated the British Chess Federation...

A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Six Grapes Port for the first correct solution opened on 2 November, with two run- ners-up prizes of £20 (or, for UK solvers, the...

org ' A 0E10 4 ad im prom % R E 1113 Linn Un LI El id Tie a . n , 14 E R R riaridECIUM DENACCIECIa ", ri v ide III L. On 0 CI no E An imam A 1311MCMCIUEM L einallar...

You are invited to provide a radio com- mentary, in the breathless style of a boxing or football commentator, describing a 'lightning' chess match in which each con- testant has...

Winter promise Simon Barnes I THINK on the whole it's my favourite race of the year, the Dewhurst Stakes this weekend, a handful of horses hammering down the brutal...

Dear Mary.. . Q. Your correspondent in Sydney wanted to know how to ascertain someone's age without causing offence. This is how it can be done. Say, 'Think of a number (say...