A national dock strike was called: in accordance with custom and practice, those dockers whose labour was least in demand were quickest to withdraw it. Felixstowe, Dover,...

D oes Mrs Thatcher really think that the miners' strike will go away if she pretends to ignore it for long enough? Even if it does, it will go by a method which severely damages...

ur future doesn't depend on k_lwhether Herr Honecker pays us the honour of his visit,' the parliamentary leader of West Germany's Christian Democrats recently commented. An in'...

A nyone who set out after the last general election to collect the con- tributions to policy made respectively by the leader of the Liberal Party and the leader of the SDP,...

UK Eire Surf ace mail Air mail 6 months: £17.25 LI7.25 f20.50 £26.50 One year: E34.50 £34.50 £41.00 £53.00 For special offer turn to p.34 Name Address US Subscriptions: $75.00...

Inglorious summer Auberon Waugh T here can be no doubt the great wet establishment in Britain has decided there is nothing to be gained, and much might be lost, by prosecuting...

Mo more tales from Wivenhoe this week, because we spent the bank holiday with my daughter in the Warwick- shire village of Whichford, where my son-in-law makes the best garden...

Christopher Hitchens Washington I n the memoirs of Ignazio Silone, which describe his mounting alienation from the communism of his youth, there is an anecdote of a visit he...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington L ong before Geraldine Ferraro became the first of her kind to be chosen as a political astronaut for a major party, numerologists and other...

Galina Koryagin In his article last week, Richard West mentioned the case of Alexei Nikitin, the Ukrainian coalminer, who died early this year after prolonged incarceration in...

Edward Theberton Dar es Salaam A mong the various African leaders whom western intellectuals affect to admire from afar, Julius Nyerere occupies a special place. He is thought...

Richard West Durham B efore the start of the football season 1-1 on Saturday, it was predicted that trouble would break out between the fans from counties like Yorkshire, where...

Peter Paterson A sudden vision of history as it might have been assailed me when Arthur Scargill the other day promised his men that General Winter is on their side. What would...

Roy Kerridge In this, the last of his four articles on the North, South, East and West of England, Roy Kerridge visits Devon and Cornwall. T came here for a holiday, and as...

Featuring a Heath cartoon Get yours now! See Classified Advertisements, p.35.

Gavin Stamp I t is most appropriate that the recondite subject of cottages of pise should have recently reappeared in this journal, for mud cottages were a particular...

The death of Lord Ampthill is the most serious loss to this country which its Diplomatic Service could have suf- fered. He combined all the qualities which go to make a great...

A master of wristwork Paul Johnson I n the obituaries of J. B. Priestley, his record as a novelist and playwright has L fully debated but no one has men- tioned what to me was...

management of /Lloyd's that Mr Hay Davison flexes his muscle. At the time of his appointment, some disaffected bureaucrat put it about that Lloyd's was appointin g a chief...

may be comin g in at the ri g ht moment ' ; when the lean years have finally force many weak insurers and reinsurers out 01 . under, and sent the business back Lloyd's. Whatever...

the familiar Committee, elected from the market, were added others elected by the membership at lar g e, and others a g ain nominated by the Gov- ernor of the Bank. 'There's no...

restore confidence in Lloyd's as an institution; to help set up the new systems of self-re g ulation laid down in the Act ; and to make Lloyd's better mana g ed. The third,...

Lloyd's refiner H i g h above Leadenhall Street at the summit of the City, the buildin g in pro g ress be g ins to look more like an oil refinery and less like a cucumber frame....

Sir: In his review of Christopher Hill's The Experience of Defeat (Books, 18 August) Eric Christiansen says: 'Levellers, like early Quakers, believed in brute force.' This is so...

Moonie sadness Sir: Andrew Brown's article 'Moonies vs the Reds' (4 August) makes interesting reading, not least because he freely admits to be willing to accept Moonie...

Sir: Paul Johnson in his strangely ambi- guous review of press comment on the Warnock Report (The press, 28 July), repeats the widespread error that abortion is permitted in...

Sir: Now that Sir John Betjeman has popped his clogs, the search is on for the Greatest Living Englishman. Geoffrey Wheatcroft nominates Lester Piggott (Diary, 4 August), but...

Sir: 'If Lobbs were to become the hat centre' (Diary, 25 August), then indeed the end would have come. Perhaps Mr Worsthorne was still a little dazed by the use of a...

Sir: Colin Welch writes a good comment- ary upon Labour's new defence policy (Centrepiece, 25 August). The obvious question to ask of Mr Kinnock is: 'What are you going to do...

The full list of institutions electing Trustees to the Soane Museum, mentioned in Sir John Summerson's letter last week, should have read: The Corporation of the City of London,...

Isherwood at eighty Peter Ackroyd C hristopher Isherwood has been pro- k.../claiming his fate all his life, but in Down There on a Visit it has its classic formulation: 'But...

Peter Quennell The Ludovisi Goddess: The Life of Louisa Lady Ashburton Virginia Surtees (Michael Russell £9.95) N ot many years ago, Bath House, the last private house in...

Eric Christiansen Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland AD 80-1000 Alfred P. Smyth (Arnold £6.95) St James's Catapult R. A. Fletcher (Clarendon Press £28) Prussian Society and the...

Francis King A Cruel Madness Colin Thubron (Heinemann £8.95) A friend of mine, who eventually killed himself, used to say of his periods of clinical depression, when he would...

John Jolliffe Journey to Kars: A Modern Traveller in the Ottoman Lands Philip Glazebrook (Viking £8.95) Dhilip Glazebrook, author of four novels" and brooding over a fifth,...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft In These Great Times: a Karl Kraus Reader Edited by Harry Zohn (Carcanet £12.95) U ntranslatable' is part illogical, part cop-out. Anything in words that...

Harriet Waugh A Parish of Rich Women James Buchan (Hamish Hamilton £8.95) A Parish of Rich Women is a first novel by James Buchan, the grandson of the classic story teller. It...

Philip Marsden-Smedley The Mendip Hills: a Threatened Landscape Shirley Toulson (Gollancz £10.95) A t the entrance to Wookey Hole's main chamber visitors are shown what look...

Lost world Christopher Edwards Twelfth Night (Barbican) J ohn Caird ' s production of Twelfth Night is a delight. It is a triumph of stagecraft, of acting and direction;...

Rabbit hole revisited Richard Calvocoressi European Resistance to. Nazi Germany 1938-1945 (Imperial War Museum till 21 April 1985) M y generation was brought up on books and...

Slow motion Peter Ackroyd Paris, Texas (`15'„ selected cinemas) the sounds of a single guitar, we se e the bareness of America; a weasel - faced man (Harry Dean Stanton) is...

Esoteric Peter Phillips A s the summer months go by one notices how the record review col- umns become thinner and paler, until by August they are in an apparently hopeless...

Ad nauseam Peter Levi Uor weeks I have been keeping a record of television advertisements, because one remembers a book for a long time and a play for longer, but one forgets...

Truman Taki I 've rarely heard Gianni Agnelli, that most charismatic and charming of men , sound sadder over the telephone. We spoke last Sunday and it was the chairman of...

Esprit d'escalier P. J. Kavanagh w hen we are young we are used to the sudden, inexplicable, verbal vio- lences of grown-ups — the swearing park- attendant, who thinks we are...

Nothing doing Jeffrey Bernard M y typewriter keeps giving me re- .proachful looks and obviously thinks m having an affair with a pub. What dear Monica Electric de Luxe can't...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for a letter of apolo g y to a country house host plausibly explainin g your discovery in an embarrassin g , bizarre and a pparentlY...

In memoriam Raymond Keene T his week I g ive three brilliant samples of the play of the former world cham- pion Ti g ran Petrosian, whose premature death in Moscow three weeks...

No. 1336: 'Ard lines Set by Jaspistos: Recently the Spectato r featured a competition for a poem on a Scottish subject. You are now invited to write a Cockney poem on a L ondon...

£10 - or a copy of Chambers Dictionary, 1983 edition (ring the word 'Dictionary' under name and address) – for the first correct solution opened on 17 September. Entries to:...

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sour , Imperative cooking: Bread I presume Spectator readers know what .good bread tastes like and already have one of the many books on the subject such as that by Elizabeth...

The Spectator for twelve months and receive free THE GAMES WAR A Moscow Journal by Christopher Booker Open to non-subscribers or to those who want to take out a gift...