The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 PAX IN TERRA The recent drive for peace in Ireland has seemed to be...

The miracle worker. M r John Major, the Prime Minister, and Mr Albert Reynolds, the Irish Prime Minister, issued a joint declaration on Northern Ireland. Some Unionists called...

Mr Major wrestles with the problem of retirement cut, SIMON HEFFER F letcher, Stewart, Constable, May, Barrington, Bedser, McIntyre, Lock, Laker, Loader . . . no, Lock,...

I have been watching a Channel 4 series called Plague which once again perpetuates the lie that women are infected with Aids by bisexuals. This exercise in blame-switch- ing...

Nicholas Coleridge gives a personal guide to the increasingly complicated and commercial world of the modem godparent ANYONE who has attempted to organise a christening, or...

`CUZAVUCAZPUMZWIB!' I heard my husband exclaim from the kitchen, prov- ing that the assumption that someone in a distant room can hear what you are saying is not a sex-linked...

John Simpson recalls a most unusual weekend, over 30 Christmases ago in Casablanca `HAVE YOU seen that extraordinary woman over there?' I asked hoarsely. `Dad?' I added; I was...

CRIMINALS too wear the old school tie; or rather, the old borstal tattoo. It is a small blue dot (or other symbol) inject- ed into the skin over the right cheek- bone. When two...

bachelor's guide to the joys of living on one's own BACHELOR LIVING is an art. Even if you think of your own bachelorhood as a temporary twist of fate right up until the moment...

By Edna O'Brien LIKE ALMOST everyone, Miss Dalton had a secret but, like everyone, she did not wish to know what that secret was. It was not that it got mixed in with other...

Anne Applebaum relishes the bad taste competition between great religions in the Holy Land Jerusalem CLICK, CLICK, CLICK: the heels of the shoes of the Orthodox Jews behind me...

By William Trevor MULREAVY would marry her if they paid him, Ellie's uncle said: she couldn't bring a fatherless child into the world. He didn't care what was done nowadays; he...

Hugh Massingberd meets Bernard Matthews, the man who 'produces' — in one form or another — over ten million turkeys a year THE BRANCH of every tree in Norfolk had a...

THE ZOO IN A FROST Sudden and severe cold, however trying to human constitutions, seems almost harmless to animal health, provided the weather be dry, frosty, and undimmed by...

Auberon Waugh reviews the past 12 months and discovers some unlikely patterns, composed mostly of irrelevancies January The Queen's Speech, speaking of her `sombre' year, was...

Adam Nicolson argues that Christmas allows every family to give of its worst A FEW Christmases ago I was given half a brown plastic colander by an aunt-in-law. `You only need...

James Buchan says forget Australia, New Zealand and the Americas; France is still the only producer of great wine A RECENT catalogue from Oddbins, a wine merchant with 184...

The farmers and landlords of Central Europe are quite beside themselves with fury. The "agrarip" party in Ger- many declare formally that they will never pardon Count Caprivi...

Ian Thomson recalls a Christmas spent in the cranial traumatology clinic of one of Rome's more primitive hospitals `I'M AFRAID you've had an emergency operation for a fractured...

Set by Christopher Howse Verb sap? This year: 1. Who told an audience of country-house owners: 'You, the freelance custodians of our historic country houses, are - if I may say...

London isn't burning but getting better, in many ways PAUL JOHNSON London is burning, disintegrating, sink- ing into a morass of poverty, class hatred and violence. 'A...

FOR a big-hitting bonus earner — say, a general partner in Goldman Sachs — this Christmas offers the chance to buy an unusual present: the Ritz Hotel. Its owner, Trafalgar...

Thank you for our smashing Christmas bonuses, kind Uncles Eddie and Helmut CHRISTOPHER FILDES I do hope the City boys and girls now opening their Christmas stockings will...

WHEN NOT selling Government stock, the Bank of England has another line in its hand. It sells Premier Quality Fudge. Wide- ly thought to be the secret ingredient in the...

THE CABINET committee on not making up its mind about bank holidays has turned its attention to the twelve days of Christ- mas. My man in the stationery cupboard says that the...

A FRIEND OF mine has returned to top up his seasonal goodwill, after a frustrating time spent trying to do business in Italy. The trouble is, he says, that he needs to deal with...

I SHALL MISS the Treasury's Christmas party this year. I missed it last year, but that was because of the previous incumbent, who had, understandably, weeded his list. This year...

Sir: The Irish question has bottomless depths, and it is tempting to do as Simon Heifer does and concentrate on what is going on now and likely to happen in the near future...

Sir: Martin Vander Weyer (`Satisfactory banging noises', 20 November) should have given the pseudo-dukes of Duchess County a miss and spent more time with 'beer-swill- ing,...

Sir: Many thanks to Mr Norman Davies for his excellent letter (27 November) in which he quite rightly points out my erroneous claim that our family title was bestowed by the...

Sir: I greatly enjoyed and agreed with Digby Anderson's article (Food, 20 Novem- ber). There is one point in it that needs cor- rection, however. We shaggy-fetlocked peo- ple...

RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £77.00 0 £39.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £88.00 0 £44.00 USA Airspeed M US$125.00 0 US$63.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175.00 0 US$88.00 Rest of Airmail 0...

December)? Do guard and cherish him, he speaks for millions who have never heard of him. I always turn to his writings first and all give me joy, but this week's is the best...

Sir: The expression 'Iron Curtain' to mark a divided Europe does not owe its origin to Joseph Goebbels as stated by James Buchan (Books, 13 November) nor to the Chutch Times as...

Sir: Dot Wordsworth's remarks (Mind your language, 27 November) about the proper and improper use of titles — 'Baroness' for `Lady' — are not new. The first edition of...

Quotations, the 1970 reprint, gives me 'early instance' of the use of the phrase 'Iron Curtain as being in 1920. It apparently occurs in Ethel Snowden's Through Bolshevik...

Sir: I welcome at last an article in your journal which has the honesty to describe Britain's uncomfortable relationship with Brussels from a viewpoint outside the camps that...

'I'm not sleeping, I'm just retiring from public life.' reviews. Once again, in his review of Julian Opie's exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (Arts, 27 November), Mr Auty...

Sir: There has been much speculation upon the dilemma of the Prince of Wales. The suggestion that Henry VIII could divorce two wives and still be king sounds a bit like `Bring...

They order things better in Alaska Eric Christiansen UNWRAPPING CHRISTMAS by Daniel Miller Clarendon, £25, pp. 239 I t tends to make adults very unhappy; there is little...

Charlotte Lennox-Boyd T hese two first novels of Rhoda Broughton (1840-1920) have just been reprinted as part of a collection of `sensation novels' of the 1860s. The...

Patrick Boyle FIRE OVER ENGLAND by Ken Russell Hutchinson, £16.99, pp. 192 W hy, you may ask, is a man responsi- ble for some of the worst British films ever made writing a...

Philip Mansel ISABELLE DE CHARRIERE (BELLE DE ZUYLEN) by C. P. Courtney Voltaire Foundation, 99 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 7RB, £49, pp. 810 T h e 18th century was a century...

Victoria Rothschild SEX, RECTITUDE AND LONELINESS by James Simmons Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast, BT14 8HQ, £2, pp. 48 T hese vivid, desolating poems by...

Nicholas Harman J umbo is not such a jolly fellow when you meet him on his own ground. Douglas Chadwick points out that in India, where the great beasts are regarded as pretty...

Montagu Curzon CHATEAU LATOUR: THE HISTORY OF A GREAT VINEYARD, 1331 - 1992 translated and adapted by Edmund Penning-Rowsell from the French edition by Charles Higounet Segrave...

Caroline Moore THE CONVERT CARDINALS by David Newsome John Murray, £25, pp. 418 T his is a 'brilliantly double-harnessed biography' of Newman and Manning, as the jacket...

Colin Welch WITNESS AGAINST THE BEAST: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE MORAL LAW by E. P. Thompson CUP, £17.95, pp. 280 W hen this book swam into my ken, my first reaction was sour and...

C.H. Sisson FOR SERVICES RENDERED: AN ANTHOLOGY IN THANKSGIVING FOR THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER compiled by Norman Taylor Lutterworth Press, 17.50, pp. 192 T he dereliction of...

Peter Levi A CHRISTMAS GARLAND by Max Beerbohm Yale, f16.95, pp. 197 M ax s Christmas Garland (1912) is not how you remember it. A new edition has appeared from Yale, which...

At her very first entrance she outshines All the sycophants and spivs She strides with tall ease on a stage that looks manageable now Its agoraphobic wastes seem amenable to...

David Ekserdjian THE ALTARPIECE IN RENAISSANCE VENICE by Peter Humfrey Yale, f50, pp. 352 I f the Renaissance was first and foremost the revival of classical antiquity, then...

Hugh Massingberd REMINISCENCES OF THE HON. GALAHAD THREEPWOOD edited by N.T. P. Murphy Porpoise Books, f12.99, pp. 266 T he conventional literary view of P. G. Wodehouse used...

friendship Gavin Millar A DEDICATED FAN: JULIAN JEBB, 1934-1984 edited by Tristram and Georgia Powell Peralta, distributed by Faith Evans Associates, Clerkenwell House,...

Roy Kerridge A TIME THERE WAS: MEMORIES OF RURAL LIFE IN SUSSEX by Phoebe Somers The Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, Singleton, Sussex, £6.99, pp. 79 T wenty years ago, I...

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Charlotte Joll S ince the early 1980s the work of women crime writers has undergone radical changes. A new formula has emerged which looks set to take over the genre; it is...

Heritage Small miracle in Bohemia Jonathan Marsden on the preservation of a unique baroque private theatre B efore the war the historic South Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov...

Backing Britten Rupert Christiansen chooses his opera recordings of the year here is absolutely no doubt as to the outstanding operatic recording of the year: Britten's...

Ten-year stretch Giles Auty reminisces about the ups and downs of being an art critic T he arrival on my desk of a smart new Spectator pocket diary for 1994, in a beguil- ing...

Talking about angels Tanya Harrod on the art of Patrick Reyntiens, a master of stained glass J ust after the second world war was an optimistic moment for all the arts. It was...

ANNUAL THE BOOK OF THE YEAR , Edited by Dominic Lawson 'Mr Mellor should, of course, have remembered the advice of Arthur Hugh Clough: "Do not adultery commit, Advantage...

Happy homes Alan Powers on the lessons Beatrix Potter can teach us about good architecture M rs Tittlemouse had trouble with her Intimacy Gradient (127) when Mr Jackson, the...

School for Wives (Almeida) Cabaret (Donmar Warehouse) Jane Eyre (Playhouse) Magnificent Molfere Sheridan Morley W e may have had to wait until the very last moment for the...

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (PG', selected cinemas) Trite fit Mark Steyn T ie standard Hollywood line is that the associate producer is someone who's pre- pared to associate...

A bit of a fraud Martyn Harris T o Play The King (BBC1, Sunday, 9 p.m.) ended uneasily with a double car bomb, which killed off both Stamper, the Tory chairman, and Sarah...

When the cows came home Alistair McAlpine I have for some time believed that the art and antiques trade is now finding similar trading conditions to those experienced in the...

Christmas offerings Jeffrey Bernard But it isn't just slow payments that annoy me at this time of year; it is the way news- papers phone up every day for quotes on the subject...

Dodgers and phonies Taki he worst traffic jam since the French army retreated en masse and in a terrible hurry back in 1940 took place last Monday in the Big Bagel. The War...

Fun and games Nigel Nicolson T his is the season, or should be, for indoor board-games. How many of them lie forgotten, the dice and half the counters missing, in bottom...

A NEW epidemic of not-eating is sweeping the country — just in time for Christmas. Experts say it can strike anyone, though I have never known any proper chap catch it. The...

Op • N London House, Winkleigh HEADING WEST from London, I sang along lustily with the Sunset Boulevard tape on the car cassette machine: 'I had to get out. I needed to be...

COMPETITION . Pt RE %I I 8r0 r T(11 111S10 Nunc est bibendum Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1809 you were invited to compose a drinking song in praise of, and to accompany...

guDaiiildLt3 SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA CHESS SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA bt 1 3'0111)11 Lin Annus mirabilis Raymond Keene THE EVENT of the year has undoubtedly been the breakaway from...

(maximum 16 lines) addressed to or about the New Year. Entries to `Competition No. 1812' by 6 January.

Verb sap? 1. The Prince of Wales; 2. Lord Palumbo; 3. John Major; 4, David Banks, the editor of the Daily Mirror; 5. George Michael; 6. Lady Thatcher; 7. Lord Howe; 8. Peter...

E M E N 14.1 R / I R T IU 5 2 6iTP U T 40 5 E A E RiR R SY I NGSOIsHE GEDNESS The title, and the lights at 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 19, 21, 25, 31, 39, were all SKIING terms....

r j GRAHAM'S PORT r ! CROSSWORD GRAHAM'S PORT r Festivities by Doc A first prize of £100, three prizes of £25 and six further prizes of The Spectator Annual (publisher...

A black-edged list Frank Keating AS EVER, a bumper year for obituarists. The merciful release from Alzheimer's for poor Danny Blanchflower — in his prime the brightest,...

Dear Mary.. . Q. I work in a television production compa- ny where everyone gets on very well; yet whenever our office goes for after-work drinks one of our colleagues always...