M r Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, visited Northern Ireland, where he met and shook hands with Mr Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political face of the Irish...

i• ))•• ***** dia:ta University The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC14LL Telephone: 0171-405 1706; Fax 0171-242 06031 * • * NOT DOWN TO SIZE a la T he Indian Prime...

The evil dead return to haunt the living BRUCE ANDERSON I t was as if midnight was striking on Walpurgisnacht in a sinister-looking church in a Gothic novel. One moment,...

PETRONELLA WYATT W omen are accustomed to complain- ing about heels — male ones, that is. Now certain members of my sex, led by the writer Judy Rumbold, are complaining about...

In this PR age, Ken Clarke's no PR is the best PR. But Mr Hague knows all that MATTHEW PARRIS M y friend Marlen is a beautiful woman and, like many beautiful women, always a...

It is a little-known fact that this Pope has created more saints than all other popes put together Dominic Crossley - Holland on the moves to speed a very famous name on to...

Anna Reid reports from German Transylvania, and finds mourners for Ceausescu Sighisoara, Romania MATHILDA Krestel fumbled in her skirts for an iron key, long as a hand and...

Michael Heath

Hugh Massingberd says the great houses are reviving north of the Border AMID all the yawn-inducing talk of devo- lution, somehow the effect it might have Oft Scotland's...

Toby Young on why Mr Martin Am is, for his own good, should not move to Manhattan New York MARTIN AMIS might want to reconsider his decision to move to New York which he...

MY father was unable or unwilling to distinguish etiquette from good manners, and, despising the one, he never acquired the other. Indeed, he came to regard tactlessness as a...

Edward Heathcoat Amory says Winchester shows that Mr Blair will not be able to make Labour ally with the Liberal Democrats AFTER the stained glass in the west win- dow of...

Robert Rhodes James offers a somewhat revisionist view of the recently deceased Viscount Tonypandy FEW political careers have ended so satis- factorily, and unexpectedly, as...

Sue Cameron explains what lies behind an officers' purge HITHERTO secret government proposals to close down Whitehall's entire informa- tion service are beginning to emerge....

old- fashioned if ramshackle hotel room wonderin g what the Spanish was for The lavatory chain has become dis- connected'. Translation is one of the most diffi- cult tasks in...

Sion Simon says Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman will see off the thinker of the unthinkable FRANK FIELD is a strangely unworldly figure. He sincerely believes himself to be, as...

Mark Steyn on how Mr Clinton differs from Nixon. He's not crippled with shame RICHARD Nixon's mistake was having only one scandal — one crummy little break-in whose trail even...

The wet nurse of Michelangelo, a Pictish queen and a Highland beauty PAUL JOHNSON T his week I had intended to write about the Rusbridger-Brittain affair, which is developing...

THE WORST job in the world of money is held down by Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's finance minister. Quite apart from all his other worries, he has to mop up after his excitable...

AN ECONOMIST is someone who, con- fronted with a tin of beans, will postulate a tin-opener. In Ernst & Young's Item Club he finds a home from home. Its latest effort is to show...

I ADMIRED the stately changing of the guard at HSBC, the Hongkong Bank group, but I shall find it hard to think of the bank without Sir William Purves, its craggy Cale- donian...

A CHANCELLOR who wanted to know where the money had gone to could have picked up a clue at his party's conference. There he would have heard Frank Dobson, the genial bearded...

BARCLAYS has an odd sense of timing. Its unhappy decision to demolish BZW and put its bids and deals business up for sale comes just when Europe's boardrooms are discovering the...

Kenneth Clarke delivers a hospital pass and Gordon Brown gets rucked CHRISTOPHER FILDES THE HOSPITAL pass is a term of art in rugby football. Its unlucky recipient gets the...

Sir: Lord Tebbit shows his distressing loss of touch with mainstream Conservatism (`Tories, don't cool down', 11 October) by interpreting my view that the Tories must warmly...

of the National Curriculum Council in 1989 and 1990. Our task was to set up a new curriculum. Though the Group was accused of being Thatcherite, it was melan- choly to see its...

Sir: While broadly agreeing with much of what Stephan Shakespeare has to say about school history teaching ('Old Britain, new history', 11 October), as the only so/us schoolbook...

the best-looking of the Conservative candidates in the leader- ship race: Clarke, too fat; Redwood, too thin; Hague, too bald; Lilley, not perfect, but, hell, beggars cannot be...

Sir: Matthew Parris devoted a flattering amount of attention to Bye Bye Blues, my LETTERS autopsy of the Major government for Chan- nel 4 (`Getting Major', 4 October), but I...

women should `make the nation's cultural weather' (`Be cooler, gayer and less white', 4 October)? They sound like the very last groups that sensible people would look to for...

Sir: Simon Sebag Montefiore has left out some significant details in his story of Father Creagh and the appalling pogrom in Limerick in 1904 (`Arthur Griffith, anti- Semite', 11...

Sir: Peter Phillips applauds ITV's televising this year's Gramophone Awards, but then casts aspersions upon the voting (Arts, 11 October). He says that the Early Music cat-...

Sir: Is Judge Finney's choler (Letters, 11 October) oer Labour party supporters drinking champagne another example of the unattractive politics of envy? There is not much...

falling for the blandish- ments of a public relations consultant. I thus wonder why Mr Cole bothers to write and, for that matter, why you bother to publish. E.D....

Sir: 'She who would drown in the eyes' of Jeffrey Bernard, despite having been pillo- ried, humiliated and made a laughing-stock in his 'Low life' column over and over, would...

Sir: Sarah Gainham (Letters, 11 October), 'cloth protest too much', and in conse- quence completely misses the point. At the risk of sounding both didactic and boring, perhaps...

Sir: My review of Lorna Siggins's biography of Mary Robinson (Books, 11 October) contained a fairly serious blunder which I Should like to retract. It is not true that Mrs...

Sir: I tremble to trespass further on your space in the light of Mr D.J. Pimblett's reproof (Letters, 11 October), but I must tell him that I have not once initiated any...

Sit: Mr Justice Popplewell's haughty letter (Letters, 4 October) dismissing Alan Wat- kins's article does no more than deftly illus- trate what aught be called the Judge's Fal-...

More money on promotion, less on journalism — that won't save the Independent STEPHEN GLOVER F our weeks ago I wrote about the re- launch of the Independent. I didn't much...

1998 Diary and Wallet The Spectator 1998 Diary, bound in soft dark navy blue leather, is now available and at the same prices as last year. Laid out with a whole week to view,...

Robert Oakeshott I have watched the most able men and women of my generation, who might have created unexampled monuments in moral philosophy, mathematics or engineering, waste...

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Teresa Waugh GHOST CHILDREN by Sue Townsend Methuen, £12.99, pp. 192 h e brief opening chapter — or rather avant-propos — of Sue Townsend's new novel, Ghost Children, is a...

The result of Michael Jackson Wanting to be a shade more Anglo-Saxon Is that after umpteen operations He's a one-man disUnited Nations. James Michie

D. J. Taylor • F1NBAR'S HOTEL edited by Dermot Bolger Picador, £8.99, pp. 273 L iterary collaborations are all the rage these days. The poets Armitage and Maxwell have...

Harriet Waugh P . D. James was an eminent civil servant during much of her writing life. I do not know whether it was on retirement from her job that a secret rebellion took...

C. M. Woodhouse THE MILITARY IN GREEK POLITICS: FROM INDEPENDENCE TO DEMOCRACY by Thanos Veremis C. Hurst and Co, £16.50, pp. 227 h e present is a good moment for Professor...

Thomas Blade PROMISES LOVERS MAKE WHEN IT GETS LATE by Darian Leader Faber, £9.99, pp. 247 F . or a psychoanalyst, which is what this writer is, Darian Leader is a pretty...

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William Boyd AMERICAN VISIONS: THE EPIC HISTORY OF ART IN AMERICA by Robert Hughes Harvill, i'35, pp. 635 D uring the composition of this mightily impressive, beautifully...

Oleg Gordievsky THE ENIGMA SPY: THE STORY OF THE MAN WHO CHANGED THE COURSE OF WORLD WAR II by John Cairncross Century, £16.99, pp. 203 J ohn Caimcross, one of Moscow's most...

Tony Gould WALKING IN THE SHADE by Doris Lessing HarperCollins, £20, pp. 369 T his is the second volume of Doris Lessing's autobiography, taking her story from her arrival in...

Simon Hoggart DEAR BILL by William Deedes Macmillan, £20, pp. 413 I t's no wonder that this charming and self-effacing book is named after the Private Eye column; it is the...

Bruce Anderson WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE TORIES by Ian Gilmour Fourth Estate, .£25, pp. 440 his book contains two different, T though related, books. One is of great value,...

John Parry THE UNDERPAINTER by Jane Urquhart , Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 280 h ere is always a special delight in being seduced by the prologue of a novel. In this particular...

Retreat into decadence Are we living in a decadent era like the last fin de siècle? Philip Hoare investigates Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony (1882), courtesy of the National...

Martin Gayford talks to the director of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg M aybe one day we'll be rich enough to buy them back, and they'll be poor enough to sell them. But...

Felicity Owen on the outstanding National Museum and Gallery of Wales W hen Cardiff forswore the chance of building a world-class opera house as a key feature of the new Cardiff...

Julietta (Opera North, Leeds) Fooling around Michael Tanner I t isn't easy to think of another opera that is so sheerly tiresome as Bohuslav Martinu's Julietta, magnificently...

HRH (Playhouse) Dark visions Sheridan Morley atthew Bourne's new ballet Cin- derella (see review on page 66) is a work, it seems to me, of considerable genius based on one...

Edward II (Birmingham Royal Ballet) Cinderella (Adventures in Motion Pictures, Piccadilly Theatre) The wrong image Giannandrea Poesio I do not believe those who claim that...

Hercules (U, selected cinemas) Retread country Mark Steyn I ye never been that interested in the 'Kings of the Deal' or the 'New Establish- ment' or whatever other fancy...

Talking trees Ursula Buchan E veryone has their horror story to tell about the gales of 16 October 1987. In our garden, I seem to remember, a branch fell off a plum tree. But...

Grand old men Michael Vestey A autumn gives way to winter and the owls return with their comforting pleas to each other in the thinning trees outside my window, so do old men...

Too silly for words James Delingpole F or some annoying reason, most of the programmes I want to review seem to come up when it's Simon Hoggares week. It hap- pened a couple...

Heavy weather Robin Oakley B oth politics and racing have their sea- sons. En route from the new caring, sharing Conservative party to the most enticing Sport I could find on...

The Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize is awarded annually to the writer best able to describe a visit to a foreign place or peo- ple. The award will not be for travel writing in the...

I agree with Tebbit Taki he Bagel is enjoying an Indian sum- mer that would make Geronimo proud. If evanescence is the defining aspect of all beauty and of all pleasure,...

Marketing me Leanda de Lisle Y ou would think that the whole joy of being a writer is that nobody ever has to see your face — but you'd be wrong. The more you are...

Pointless? Andrew Robson T he standards for opening the bidding seem to fall by about half a point every decade. That makes South's 14 opener come from the end of the 21st...

Impressive wines and prices Auberon Waugh A though this is only the second offer we have had from Simon Wrightson in Manfield — the first, also all French, was last January —...

c/o Wrightson and Company Manfield Grange, Manfield, Nr Darlington, N. Yorks DL2 2RE Tel: (01325) 374134 Fax: (01325) 374135 Price No. Value Wlute Honore de Berticat 1996,...

Edgehog Raymond Keene RICHARD RETI, a grandmaster whose career was mainly framed by the 1920s, was celebrated not just for a number of brilliant games and a handful of...

II ISLE OF I WO i RA COMPETITION ■ ••■:,E ,L1,; . :1C11WHISIO - RA .1.11COTCHIMAI A game with the great Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 2004 you were invited to give an...

You are invited to choose 11 cricketing terms (e.g. Chinaman, sledge, retired hurt) and, using them in a non-cricketing sense, incorporate them into an entertaining piece of...

w. & J. GRAHAM'S PORT 1333: Wedding ring by Columba A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1991 Port for the first correct solution opened on 3...

lI u lailiiir uummEmi F EWE T El WiliCliAlg"s N EMU E -r ' 3 t r MEE INIEICEICIEEIrt IVA AOS CIE E r L A IR , L / HO 111 liali Or1113 3 ° 08 R Hil ESI N E...

Seeing is believing Simon Barnes OCCASIONALLY you run into two people Whose destinies are inextricably intertwined. Caught uneasily between such roles as friend and rival,...

Q. Grand neighbours who live near us in the country give a huge fireworks party each Year. I find the event frustrating since I am aware that virtually all my local friends are...