CHARLES MOORE I n his reaction to the Budget, Mr Kin- nock displayed a real hatred for the rich (of whom, in the tax definition, he is one). What is the reason for this feeling?...

Constraints of an empire on which the Sun never sets AUBERON WAUGH A curious incident which occurred at Barrow-in-Furness was reported in some of the newspapers on Sunday. On...

TEASING SOME OF THE PEOPLE... Noel Malcolm on how the Chancellor's delivery enraged the Opposition OH that Mr Lawson, he does like having his little jokes. I don't mean the...

THE HOLE IN THE HEART Jock Bruce-Gardyne detects Mr Lawson's abandonment of money management A FEW weeks ago in these columns I alluded to the plight of the distinguished...

MAKING TAXES COMPULSORY Christopher Fildes regrets the continued survival of the biggest perk of all NIGEL Lawson's cleverest trick of all was his first, five years ago. He...

Bohdan Nahaylo reports the popular anger against the nuclear power programme of the Soviet Union LONG before the Armenians poured out on to the streets of Yerevan demanding...

Charles Glass wonders how the Jewish conscience can cope with the violent use of power UNUSUALLY for a rebellion in which at least 80 unarmed civilians have been killed by...

Richard West finds that those who praise communist Vietnam hate prosperous Thailand Bangkok A FEW weeks ago, in northern Thailand, gunmen opened fire on some tourists making a...

ON Wednesday, a very curious scene took place in the House of Commons, Mr Bradlaugh — who was so lately kept out of the House at the sacrifice of weeks of valuable Parliamentary...

Christopher Howse on the relatives of Haile Selassie who have been shut in a room for 14 years IN 1950 Sybil Desta was a sporty Bet- jemanesque girl who liked tennis and...

Michael Trend sees a threat to the standards of sixth form education MUCH has been said in recent weeks about the new GCSE examination — the replacement for 0 levels and CSEs;...

Police evicted hundreds of squatters in Hackney last week. Phillip Swarbrick tells his own story FOR anarchists, squatting is part of their ideology. To young Sloane Rangers...

The press: Paul Johnson takes a cool look at Cap'n Bob's apotheosis ROBERT Maxwell must be feeling pleased with himself this week. He has done rather well with his flurry of...

quote Plautus, is not the better reading, 'Dictum sapienti sat est'? Tom Castro 82 Adelaide Grove, London W12

Sir: Mr Mitchell's response (Letters, 12 March) to your leader on the Cambridge admissions system is worrying. He says that 'A levels are the key element in admission' and...

Sir: I welcome many of Noel Malcolm's comments (Politics, 27 February) about the dangers of a return to devolution in Northern Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Agree- ment suggests the...

Sir: I enjoyed Enoch Powell's review of my new book (12 March) but I was mystified by your decision to accompany the review by a portrait of the present Taoiseach. I can assure...

Sir: Whether or not presenting a film on the civil service, even after 18 months' secondment to the Department of Energy, is the best way of learning about the perils of public...

Sir: I have lent, and therefore lost, the recent Spectator article on the Synod and its compromise, so cannot refer with accuracy, but I learnt of the Gay HQ in St Botolph's,...

Timothy Garton Ash NOSTALGIA is not a quality you would naturally associate with East Germany. But watching last month's brief television flashes from Dresden and East Berlin,...

How to save yourself 51 trips to the library . . . or almost £30 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it...

Paradise by way of wurst and beer Piers Paul Read T o most Englishmen Bavaria is a pic- turesque province of Germany where jovial peasants wearing lederhosen yodel, eat saus-...

Building on shallow foundations Julian Bullard I n 1963, when I first set eyes on it and on him, Bonn was what John le Cane later called it: a small town. .A single bridge...

How fast is the USA sinking? Ferdinand Mount THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREAT POWERS by Paul Kennedy Unwin Hyman, £18.95 H istories of civilisation come in one size — large —...

If it's true the miracle of life's sustained solely by God's attention, then something has distracted Him from me. My sins, perhaps? The kindly man who came and left hell's...

Byron Rogers LOVELY ME by Barbara Seaman Sidgwick & Jackson, £13.95 T he critic Gloria Steinem had to fight her literary editor to get the review into the paper. He thought...

Benedict Read RODIN: A BIOGRAPHY by Frederic V. Grunfeld Hutchinson, £30 I n 1902 a ceremonial dinner was held at the Café Royal in honour of the French sculptor Auguste...

Holy Patrick we need snakecharmers now, The snakes have crawled back again. Exorcise the demons of intransigence, Send your green fire into the frozen branch. Robert Greacen

Alan Watkins MAXWELL: A PORTRAIT OF POWER • by Peter Thompson and Anthony Delano Bantam, £2.95 MAXWELL THE OUTSIDER by Tom Bower Aurum, £12.95 MAXWELL by Joe Haines...

Anthony Howard MAN OF THE HOUSE by Thomas P. O'Neill with William Novak Bodley Head, £15 T here are some politicians — Rab Butler was one, Willie Whitelaw is another — whose...

Exhibitions 1 Schrecken und Hoffnung: Peace and War as Seen by Artists (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, till 28 April; Hermitage, Leningrad, 20 May-29 June) Artists of a shared...

Babette's Feast (`U', Lumiere St Martin's Lane) Barfly (`18', Odeon Haymarket) Not by bread alone Hilary Mantel W hen Karen Blixen no longer had a farm in Africa and had...

Hapgood (Aldwych) A Touch of the Poet (Comedy) Trick of the light Christopher Edwards T om Stoppard's new play shows him at the top of his ingenious form. With cun- ning (or...

Time to drop the bop Marcus Berkmann I have never been a great fan of dereg- ulating broadcasting — the forthcoming cable and satellite 'explosion' seems likely to supply...

Gerhard Richter (Anthony d'Offay, till 16 April) Germans abroad Giles Auty H ans Hofmann was born in Bavaria in 1880 but moved permanently to New York in 1937. Many see him...

Funny women Wendy Cope F rench and Saunders (BBC 2) was one of the comedy programmes I intended to review last week but the tape went missing until after my deadline. Once I...

Paradise with snakes Jeffrey Bernard T h Bangkok is is an extremely attractive oven. At lunchtime yesterday the mercury touched 90°F. I have now thawed out and heat has to be...

Slippery slopes Taki Gstaad I thought the best epitaph to all that very sad Klosters business was Adam Shaw's contribution entitled 'You can die for breaking the laws of the...

why, oh why? Alice Thomas Ellis M ysteries, mysteries. Why, wonders the fifth son, does walloping a bottle on the edge of the table enable one to remove its lid, and why does...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

To enable competitors to economise on postage, entries for one or more weeks of the Competition and Crossword may be posted together under one cover addressed 'Competition...

Dutch treat Raymond Keene T he Euwe Memorial in progress in Amsterdam is a key test for Nigel Short. Apart from the dangerous Yugoslav Grandmaster, Ljubomir Ljubojevic, Bri-...

Don't!'? J aspistos I N Competition No. 1514 you were invited to write a poem offering advice to a person about to marry. More people do than don't, and yet the advice was...

I AM not really into Hun food. I don't think they really have a cuisine, what they have is a lot of good produce and 1,500 types of sausage which they eat for break- fast, lunch...

was an Ibis, asleep on the Nile./ J was a Joke which made nobody smile,' are two lines from a jolly alphabet poem by Maurice Baring. Sixteen lines of your own poem, please,...

S7T_y_RGEN T 29 37 PUAIHRAM , LIIIR 141133UMENIEIOS-ELED U GI NIP D E 0 Al Ul TI NI LADL S ELT' . A. T R I 0 T PURDISPRISONE D A U A R N E pl. EH OLE/ E Thematic answers, each...