A breath of fresh air M r John Major, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, became Prime Minister at 47, the youngest since Lord Rosebery in 1894. Michael Heseltine and Douglas Hurd,...

56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex: 27124; Fax: 071-242 0603 UNFINISHED BUSINESS T he further you got from Britain, the more admired you found...

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Sans Thatcher, sans Heseltine, sans everything NOEL MALCOLM I was worried that I'd be elected against Mrs Thatcher as a negative choice of leader. Now we're going to elect a...

W ere you there when they crucified the Lord?' they used to sing in the Mission Hall. No, but I was when they brought down Mrs Margaret Thatcher; just as I had been when she did...

Why were all the Tory wiseacres so extraordinarily stupid? AUBERON WAUGH W hen, after the time of Mrs Thatch- er's tenth anniversary in office, I observed that she had never...

Parliamentarian of the year the winners T he seventh annual presentation of the Spectator/Highland Park Parliamentarian of the Year Awards took place on Wednes- day 28...

Bruce Anderson was part of John Major's campaign team. He tells how the battle for the leadership was won ON SATURDAY 17 November, John Major went into hospital for an...

John Wells mourns the lost nose of yesteryear I SHALL miss Denis Thatcher. So, no doubt, will my bank manager. But imper- sonating anyone it is impossible not to feel some...

John Simpson on the revolution that has overtaken the televising of politicians MICHAEL Heseltine's head jerked, and something came to his eyes. He had been planting acorns,...

Michael Heath

David Willetts on the myths of the former Prime Minister's character A DOCTOR providing geriatric care once told me of the damage Mrs Thatcher had done to the NHS. He used to...

Allan Massie wonders about a second coming, as he compares Mrs Thatcher to General de Gaulle WHO inveighed against 'a supra-national assembly sitting at Strasbourg and not...

Tim Congdon argues that the new Prime Minister should abandon his hard ecu CONSENSUS and reason do not always go together. The three candidates for the leadership of the...

President's future in the light of moves by the republics towards independence Moscow THE departure of the Iron Lady has elicited some glowing testimonials in Mos- cow. This is...

the leadership crisis showed power lies with editors rather than owners IF ONE can put out of mind the sheer nastiness of the way Margaret Thatcher was politically...

A straight man goes to No 10 a Tory without a green welly CHRISTOPHER FILDES John Major's City career seems to me a clue to his character. Just as in politics he is a...

Sir: Taki claims (10 November) that I went to Prague with him and John Bastias to pursue girls. What rot. Clio — with whom Taki had a brief platonic flirtation before succumbing...

Sir: Too many of the ills that threaten medical omniscience are being put down to `a virus' (Letters, 24 November). These are then dealt with by antibiotics. Is not this where...

Sir: To find out what `subsidiarity' is, Sandra Barwick (` "I want to see the Kingdom of God" ', 24 November) need look no further than her own text: it is a `commitment to...

Sir: The BBC's John Simpson seems un- happy that he didn't get to talk with Saddam Hussein while ITN's Trevor McDonald did (17 November). The fact is that ITN got their...

Sir: I think that Nicholas Luard and Christopher Fildes have erred in point of etymology (City and Suburban, 17 Novem- ber) by claiming that 'credit' means 'he believes it'. I...

24 November), can I respond as a member of the medical profession (retired)? Long before viruses were discovered and viral illnesses became fashionable — no- body has a cold...

Sir: Your normally astute political com- mentators all appeared to part company with their common sense in last week's issue. Your own editorial laid the blame for Mrs...

Sir: Anthony Howard erred on a small point in his discussion of Texas politics (Books, 27 October). Liberal Congress- man Maury Maverick did not lend his own surname to denote...

Sir: I am delighted that Nigella Lawson has stumbled, however inadvertently, upon an important truth about one of the major international fast food chains (Restaurant , 17...

Sir: In his article (`The Emperor and the Sun Goddess', 17 November), Murray Sayle seems to be disoriented. Rolls Royce Motors is based about 60 miles north-west of Derby, in...

Sir: Perhaps Johnny Gorman (Letters, 3 November) is right about the length of the Lord's Prayer and of the EEC directive on caramel, but I regret to say that even such a sublime...

Sir: Would you allow me to apologise collectively and in individual to readers who quite rightly wrote in to me (Low life, 10 November) to tell me that I am an idiot? Of course...

Sir: Jeffrey Peel argues (Letters, 10 November) that Conservative candidates will stand a better chance in future if they contest parliamentary elections in North- ern Ireland,...

Sir: John Diamond believes that Ambridge folk have only just caught a whiff of culinary innovation from the kitchens of The Bull and Grey Gables (Indigestible plots', 10...

WHENEVER great political events agi- tate the world, I recall Maupassant's story A Coup d'Etat. A provincial doctor is consulted by a peasant woman about a sensation of ants...

Sir: Is there really any prospect of Aube- ron Waugh (Another voice, 17 November) being brought to his senses by a taste of real poverty? D. Shillam 93 The Grove, Ealing,...

Unoriginally but unavoidably, my most satisfying and pleasurable read for a long time was provided by A.S. Byatt's Possess- ion (Chatto, £13.95). A capacious book of great...

Best Books: Crop Circles: The Latest Evidence by Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews (Bloomsbury, £5.99). A stun- ningly illustrated and cheap picture book about surely the greatest...

Books of the Year A further selection of the best and most overrated books of the year, chosen by some of The Spectator's regular contributors Denis Hills In The Other Russia...

I have particularly enjoyed reading John Paget's Hungary and Transylvania (2 vols, John Murray, 1839) even though I had to go to a library to do so. (Reprint pub- lishers,...

I much enjoyed Noel Annan's Our Age (Weidenfeld, £20) though my enjoyment was tinged with sadness as I read the pen portraits of so many friends now dead. I particularly...

The best new things I have read this year are Kit Wright's poems, Short Afternoons (Hutchinson, £6.95). The method is eclec- tic (a poem about the absence of God, written in the...

It's been a good year for Dickens. The social observation still seems as acute, his gallery of hypocrites, frauds and self- important jacks-in-office are still around us, and...

Though I make my living from reading new- books, I haven't had a lucky year. At the aeropittura exhibition at the Italian Academy, I found the English edition of Marinetti's...

I read no more enjoyable book published for the first time this year than John Kennedy Toole's novel The Neon Bible (Viking, £12.99; now also in Penguin paperback), the story of...

The only two books that have given me unalloyed pleasure this year have been Robert Gray's The King's Wife (Seeker & Warburg, £17.95) and the poet Paul Dur- can's new volume,...

The best present I gave myself this year was Mark Girouard's The English Town (Yale, £19.95). A sumptuous wallow of a book, it bursts with prints, paintings and photographs,...

British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volume V: Strategic Deception by Michael Howard (HMSO, £12.95). An elegantly written and highly diverting account of one of the...

A copy of Bread and Circuses by Paul Veyne (Allen Lane, £20) should be stuffed in the Xmas stockings of both Sir Alan Walters and Mr Nigel Lawson, for they would learn how well...

Clifford Stoll, an astronomer, was tempor- arily in charge of a sophisticated computer system on the Berkeley campus of the University of California when he became aware that an...

My first choice is the late W. S. Graham's Uncollected Poems (Greville Press Pam- phlets, £7.50). These include the last poems of a not quite neglected, but grossly underrated...

Memoirs of a Bastard Angel by Harold Norse (Bloomsbury, £25, £9.99) was pan- ned by most reviewers, mainly on the ground that if his reminiscences are to be believed Norse...

Christmas brings us towards the end of this centenary year of John Henry Newman's death. No one interested in Newman stu- dies would have expected yet another biography to...

The best book this year was Daddy, Daddy, the new collection of Paul Durcan's poems (The Blackstaff Press, £5.95). In one of the political poems he puts forward an original...

The Independent's marvellous Miles King- ton (Welcome to Kington, Penguin, £7) and t he cartoonist pair Alex (Alex III, Penguin, £4.99), have for my money been by far the best...

Dick Kingzett WISDOM AND STRENGTH: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A RENAISSANCE MASTERPIECE by Peter Watson Hutchinson, £18.99, pp. 379 H ere is a question for a Christmas quiz: what...

Peter Vansittart THE HANGING TREE by Allan Massie Heinemann, 113.99, pp.346 A llan Massie subtitles his book 'A Romance of the Fifteenth Century', pre- ceding it with...

Peter Levi THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES by V. S. Pritchett Chatto, f.25, pp. 1220 LASTING IMPRESSIONS by V. S. Pritchett Chatto, f15.99, pp. 171 T o say that Sir Victor...

Jennifer Paterson Next in size is Marco Pierre White's White Heat (Pyramid, £16.95, pp.128), with photographs in simple colour for the food and black and white for glorious...

Celestria Noel THE PARCHMENT MOON compiled by Susan Hill Michael Joseph, £14.99, pp. 371 WAR FEVER by J. G. Ballard Collins, £12.95, pp. 176 ON THE EVE OF UNCERTAIN...

The letters which I send him. Pitiful indeed The tears that flow from self-contempt And all un-needed need.

If no one calls, I'm glad; and, if they do, Narked that they blunt the edge of my loneliness, Of my watching the flowers wilt and the slow wind strew Untrodden pathways red....

fact one forgets whatever was lovely. Ah, but how long One remembers the hurtful, the saddening things, All the things that went wrong.

Whether I had or not, Now that I know you ask such questions Only a you-know-what Would fail to see that a man like you Were someone best forgot. Lady Izimi Shikibu...

Antony Lambton THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEA R by Gregor von Rezzori Chatto, £16. 99, pp.290 h is is an extraordinary and fascinating book which lifts a veil on the interwar years in...

Caroline Moore JEAN RHYS by Carole Angier Andre Deutsch, £17.99, pp.762 F rom time to time reading this superb biography of Jean Rhys, I would tiptoe next door to look at my...

Dance 1 Dancers unite . . T he three symbols of the pre- Gorbachev Soviet Union were supposed to be the cosmonaut, the matrioshka stacking doll and the ballerina; and one of...

Metropolitan ('15', Lumiere) Polite young things Hilary Mantel I had a letter this week from a man who, when he was at Uppingham, had been forced to read Emma as a holiday...

Egon Schiele and His Contemporaries (Royal Academy, till 17 February) Schiele appeal Giles Auty iven the extraordinary reputation of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in the...

Minimalist monotony Deirdre McMahon L ucinda Childs was in the vanguard of American post-modern dance in the 1960s. Much of her early choreography was cre- ated to be...

forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics CINEMA The Sheltering Sky (18). Bernardo Bertolucci's version of the Paul Bowles novel, set in 1947 and shot...

The bartered Bride Gavin Stamp makes a plea for the preservation of a unique pub H ope dies when possibilities are final- ly extinguished. For years I have nurtured an...

Abdication special John Diamond T he best campaign of all was run by Mrs Emma Nicholson. 'It's a rather fasci- nating new game,' she told Channel 4 News on the night of the...

Sea change Taki J ohn Latsis, the Greek billionaire whose speciality is making expensive gifts to royals, is the man to save the royal yacht Britannia for the Queen. He once...

The art of suspense Zenga Longmore winsome aquaintance of mine named oddly enough, Winsome, called round last week, just as I was writing UP Olumba's shopping list....

Eggs over easy Jeffrey Bernard L ast Monday I went to the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award at the Café Royal and sat at Frank Muir's table. What a charming man he is. But...

off: 'My wife and I are eating more and more fish at home these days,' said Clive. 'I think everyone is, we certain- ly have lots of fish, I love fish,' gushed Margaret. It's...

choose pop and jazz records for Christmas.

The Terrace at the Dorchester THERE are, as the novelist Paul Bailey's mother might have said, hotels and hotels. And the Dorchester most definitely be- longs to the latter...

Scotch Game Raymond Keene T he World Championship resumed at the Palais des Congres in Lyon last Satur- day with Karpov taking the advantage of the white pieces for the 13th...

Recently a man was fined £50 for leaving a tarantula without food and water for nine days. You are invited to comment on this either in verse (maximum 16 lines) or in...

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...

COMPETITION 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY Worst best man Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1653 you were in- vited to provide an extract from a toe- curling best man's speech at a...

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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') for the first three correct solutions...

Leftward swing Frank Keating ONE of the most poignantly misty images of the fortnight was that grainy longshot of Denis Thatcher giving himself a final swipe at golf in one of...