Metal fatigue M r Lawson presented a cautious Budget, his sixth. Income tax rates re- mained unchanged, as did excise on drink and tobacco. A reform of National Insur- ance...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 GREEN FOR DANGER Y ou damage the earth just by living on it.' This was not the Ayatollah passing judgment on some hapless miscreant, but the...

THERE will be a Memorial Meeting for Dhiren Bhagat in the Art Workers' Guild, 6 Queen Square, London WC1, at 11.30 a.m. on Monday 20 March. All are wel- come.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £49.50 CI £26.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £60.50 0 £31.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $99 0 US$50 . Rest of...

CHARLES MOORE A s soon as A. N. Wilson submitted to me his article (`Time to turn to Labour') which we published last week, I knew that the piece would strike a chord. There is...

A revulsion that is irreversible and terminal AUBERON WAUGH N o figures are supplied by the Home Office for the number of minor injuries suffered in road accidents involving...

SURFING ON THE TIDE Commons, observes a Chancellor becalmed IT WAS not until I had left the House of Commons, got home and switched on my television in time for the...

NEVER DULL EXCEPT ON PURPOSE Christopher Fildes detects a certain harshness under the smooth surface NIGEL Lawson has taken his cue from his great predecessor, Benjamin...

THE FIREMEN'S FRIEND Jock Bruce-Gardyne finds more to worry about than to laugh at HUMBLE pie is said to be good for both the figure and the soul. So I shall take my portion...

WAITING FOR BUSH Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is impatient to know what the administration will do to save the Western alliance Washington I RECENTLY attended a boisterous din-...

Sousa Jamba explains why he has broken with the leader of the movement he loves BREAKING with Unita, the movement that has been fighting the Marxist regime in Angola, has been...

Michael Heath

on British spiritual writers. GEORGE Macdonald was a heretic. That at least was the judgment of the dissenting chapel in Arundel where he had served as a minister for two...

The French do not understand why Kent hates the Channel Tunnel. Dominic Lawson reports from Calais THE French, as everyone knows, are not like us. While the villagers of Kent...

NEXT week, a Member of Parliament will publish a pamphlet which calls on church schools to take advantage of the Govern- ment's new 'opting out' proposals. The Church, it says,...

THE Transvaal and Orange Free Re- publics have, it is stated on authority, concluded a defensive and offensive league. The two Boer States are there- fore fused for certain...

that what the Government needs is a marketing manager IN some ways the Thatcher administration is very like the Gladstone government of 1868-74: it has set about reforming, one...

Sir: Patrick Marnham's story about Mr Bernard Ingham's remark ('Camembert - faced effrontery', 11 March) reminds me of a story which the late Sir John Foster told me many years...

Sir: At Scarborough this weekend, the Conservative Party's National Union meets. Although many constituency asso- ciations submitted motions supporting the acceptance of the...

Sir: Not having yet read the Mearsheimer book (reviewed by Michael Howard in The Spectator, 25 February), I am at a disability to assess his criticisms, but I would just like to...

BOOKMAN, SPARE THAT TREE ALEXANDRA ARTLEY I n 'What Shall We Call Beautiful?', an essay from Form in Civilisation (1922) by William Lethaby, the self-effacing Arts & Crafts...

Through the hospital gate, the world ... We're strangers here. It's all too sudden, an astonishment of detail, every leaf too clear, the raddling of old brick in smog and...

Anita Brookner HAVE THE MEN HAD ENOUGH? by Margaret Forster Chatto, £12.95, pp.251 M rs McKay is old. Not to put too fine a point on it, Mrs McKay is senile. She is not yet...

Christopher Brett THE BFI COMPANION TO THE WESTERN edited by Edward Buscombe Deutsch, £19.95, pp.432 H eading west and south last summer from Denver through the Rockies and on...

David Wright WILLIAM PLOMER: A BIOGRAPHY by Peter Alexander OUP, £25, pp.397 I n 1926 two young South Africans in a Durban coffee-shop heard an Afrikaner lady bawling, 'I...

Peter Levi A WRITER OR SOMETHING by Penelope Tremayne Unwin Hyman, £12.95, pp.305 T here are a few books where the in- terest of the story overrides all incoherence of style...

Adrian Dannatt L iterary cult figures are as inherently dubious as any others, often revered more for sexy life-stories than their oeuvre. Harry Mathews is undeniably a cult,...

Non-fiction The Count-Duke of Olivares by J. H. Elliott, Yale, £12.95 Time Was Away: A Journey through Corsi- ca and The Bandit on the Billiard Table: A Journey through Sardinia...

`Ah, love, let us be true to one another. . (Matthew Arnold in 'Dover Beach') You almost wish they weren't there sometimes, those peace-pirates or Mad Mercyists you can't place...

Opera Cosi fan tutte (Covent Garden) Wit and wisdom Rodney Milnes here's no pleasing some people. Last week the Royal Opera mounted a strongly cast new production of Cosi...

Bed (Cottesloe) Metropolis (Piccadilly) Dream world Christopher Edwards J im Cartwright's latest work takes us into the world of sleep. The stage is dominated by a huge bed,...

Investing in ignorance Peter Watson W ere Scott Fitzgerald alive today, he would observe not only that the rich are different but that the very rich, of which there are more...

The Moderns (`15', Odeon Haymarket) Rain Man (`15% selected cinemas) Travelling picnic Hilary Mantel T he American bohemians of the 1920s, the intellectual fast set and their...

Best of British Marcus Berkmann T he British do very well out of pop music: besides academics and Fortnums hampers, it's one of the few things we export in any quantity....

Funny money Wendy Cope D . Spectator readers wear red noses on Comic Relief day? Probably not. In the past, I was always against these appurte- nances. A way of telling the...

Flying high Taki I write this 30,000 feet in the air, on board a KLM 747, sitting next to a pleasantly plump American lady with a ham-like face who began the conversation by...

Horse sense Jeffrey Bernard T here is a small light at the end of the tunnel. Flat racing starts again a week today. That, for me, has always been the first day of spring and...

Bump in the night Alice Thomas Ellis W hy has Janet found our leaden statue of Our Lady of Victories lying broken on the kitchen floor? It was set well back in a small niche...

John Diamond JUST as basic physics holds that when matter meets anti-matter a molecular Armageddon blows the end out of the test-tube, so when fashion meets anti- fashion there...

Getting knotted in style Nicholas Coleridge T he most striking thing about modern wedding receptions is the garishness of the ties worn by men with their tails. Their clothes...

Going for gilt Jane Mulvagh T he ten-year fashion cycle, identified 50 years ago by the historian James Laver, has predictably turned full circle as we leave the Eighties. At...

. . or almost £30 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it can be to track a copy down. Now you can save...

The Seventies Margate with the Bowie Boys Roy Kerridge Y oung hooligans today have a nondes- cript, loutish appearance. By slouching with their hands high in their brown...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word `Dictionary' above) for the first three correct...

Playtime Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1565 you were in- vited to incorporate the words of the titles of at least ten plays or films currently running in London in a passage...

Computer slayer Raymond Keene G randmasters are coming under in- creasing siege from chess computers. Hans Berliner, the guru of computer chess in the US, is on record as...

the cooker showing a harassed woman slaving over a hot stove. The inscription underneath read, simply, 'One man's meat is another woman's Sun- day gone.' It was with these...

You are invited to invent an extract (max- imum 150 words) from the diary of Lupin Pooter. Entries to 'Competition No. 1568' by 31 March.

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ARE California wines a match for tradi- tional English food? This was the second subject for discussion at the annual Califor- nia seminar held by our leading importer of...