Cleaning up the City E rnest Saunders, the former chairman of Guinness, Gerald Ronson, Anthony Parnes and Sir Jack Lyons were found guilty in the 'Guinness trial' of rigging the...

56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex: 27124; Fax: 071-242 0603 HEART OF DARKNESS 0 ur ability to perceive evil is wonder- fully heightened by a...

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ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR I have been sent the summer newsletter of the Bath Preservation Trust, which reveals (among many other interesting things) that one of the Trust's proudest...

Guinness was a scandal, but not a City scandal. Christopher Fildes tells how unchecked power corrupted LORD Kylsant, chairman of the Royal Mail Line, stood in the dock beside...

John Simpson reports on the stifling tension in the capital of Iraq Baghdad WE ARE in a drole de guerre here in Iraq. Nothing has happened, and yet everything could be changed...

Charles Glass on the desperation of the press corps in Saudi Arabia Somewhere in Saudi Arabia SO FAR, 259 journalists have registered here with the United States Armed Forces...

GREAT complaints are made at Hast- ings of the wild and lawless conduct of the boys in the Board schools there, especially out of school. During last week, no less than eight...

Michael Heath

William Dalrymple hears the true story of the seven deaths of Abu-Zeid Ramallah, West Bank `ABU-ZEID — God burn his bones! was a very clever man.' Tariq re-arranged his...

Once again, The Spectator is offering its readers. he definitive Pocket Diary, offering all the facts and figures that are essential to any Spectator reader, bound in soft black...

Frederick Kempe on the costs of German unification MANY Germans blanched this week when Rudolf Seiters, the Chancellor's disting- uished chief of staff, suggested that his...

Samantha Weinberg on the threat of prosecution facing Winnie Mandela Johannesburg AS IF more than 500 deaths in the unrest since the ANC formally renounced the armed struggle...

to Captain Robert Shaw about his part in a great naval battle OSBORNE House, on the Isle of Wight, is an Italianate little palace, looking down over well-tended gardens to the...

Candida Crewe joins 20,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, and asks some questions THE crowd at the rugby ground at Twick- enham was no ordinary crowd. Its mem- bers spoke in soft voices,...

IN HOSPITAL wards, indignities are heaped upon the insane and the aged alike. Sometimes this is done consciously, in revenge for the suffering inflicted on the staff by...

Sir: I am surprised that Sandra Barwick made no mention of Lewis Carroll in her article (The naked truth', 18 August). His preoccupation with photographing or sketching naked...

Sir: My old friend Vane Ivanovic's charac- teristically self-righteous attack on Richard Bassett (Letters, 28 July) has been eagerly published here by the Serbian opposition...

Sir: When are hostilities with Iraq likely to begin? The astrological chartS relating to Iraq and the super-powers indicate active hostilities during the first three weeks of...

Sir: Hypocrisy is said to be a peculiarly English vice. The gentlemen with solemn faces who are so offended when the con- ventional veil is drawn aside from some public...

s nterests Sir: The image of a bunch of middle-aged, beer-gutted hacks, sitting safely behind their word-processors in Wapping and other places, stoking up the war-fever with...

Sir: I would be most grateful to any reader who might be able to help me to gather information about the following two American veterans of the first world war for a book I am...

Sir: Your correspondent Taki (High life, 4 August) attacks Anthony Blunt's friends for defending him after his exposure, and appears to attack me for allegedly not defending the...

Sir: I admire Hugh Montgomery- Massingberd's articles on country houses and his editing of the Burke's genealogical books, but agreeable anecdotes and anti- quarianism are...

right (Letters, 28 July) re Hearst and Remington who, by the way, was a superb Western artist and sculptor, rather than cartoonist. Hearst's now famous reply was, 'You supply...

Sir: The Spectator was far too kind in heading the carping letter from Mr Clifford Gardner (25 August) 'Texan pedant', even though it came from that centre of scho- larship,...

Wodehouse the inscrutable Anthony Powell YOURS, PLUM: THE LETTERS OF P. G. WODEHOUSE edited with an introduction by Frances Donaldson Hutchinson, £16.99, pp.268 I am an...

Nicholas Henderson HANGING ON: DIARIES 1960-1963 by Frances Partridge Collins, £15, pp. 192 D ear Sophie, Your grandfather, Ralph Partridge, said once, though not to me,...

Ned Sherrin AS THOUSANDS CHEER: THE LIFE OF IRVING BERLIN by Laurence Bergreen Hodder & Stoughton, £20, pp.608 S pectator readers need not fear. The Winston...

Jonathan Clark THE WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF EDMUND BURKE: VOLUME VIII, THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 1790-1794 edited by L. G. Mitchell, textual editor William B. Todd Clarendon...

Christopher Hawtree D. H. LAWRENCE by Jeffrey Meyers Macmillan, £19.95, pp.446 B oulder, Colorado does things to peo- ple. It either renders them comatose or has them frantic...

Anita Brookner THE GATE OF ANGELS by Penelope Fitzgerald Collins, £12.95, pp. 167 T he gate in question could stand as a symbol for the novel, or for what I take the novel to...

Andrei Navrozov THE GREAT TERROR: A REASSESSMENT by Robert Conquest Hutchison, £19.95, pp. 570 W hen this book was first published, Czechoslovakia was reminded that, while the...

of 18 August was, of course, by Hilary Corke, not Corbe, as was mistakenly printed. We apologise to the author.

Richard Ingrams DEBRETT'S DISTINGUISHED PEOPLE OF TODAY edited by Patricia Ellis Debrett, £72.50, pp.2,039 I t is hard to see any point in this large and expensive book except...

James Michie N eat and unobvious, like the answer to a chess problem or the solution of a good detective mystery, happy textual emenda- tions give a special kind of pleasure. I...

Francis King A BOTTLE IN THE SMOKE by A. N. Wilson Sinclair-Stevenson, £13.95, pp.279 W hile the puff-puffs of so many of his fellow novelists dawdle their way to their...

Museums Islamic artistry Patricia Jellicoe The al-Sabah Collection (Kuwait National Museum) A late as 1963, in Ernst Kuhnel's survey Islamic Arts, its publishers noted that...

The Day You'll Love Me (Hampstead) Last tango Christopher Edwards T he Hampstead Theatre has succeeded in finding yet another interesting new work by a contemporary writer....

Wild at Heart ('18', selected cinemas) Don't take the vicar Hilary Mantel I f you live on the margin, you meet other outcasts; if you are crazy, you belong to a secret...

Musee Fesch (Ajaccio, Corsica) Holiday address Giles Auty R ecords I keep tell me this is the 250th art review I will have written for the The Spectator. I began this most...

by The Spectator's regular critics MUSIC One of the high points of the Proms this month should be the visit of the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnanyi. On the 5th...

Ill judged Wendy Cope I s it normal for a Finn to travel with a zip-up case containing 11 toothbrushes? A question like that would only occur to someone who is very bored...

If I ruled the world Taki omeone once wrote, and very correct- ly indeed, that the most important factor for a man who has enough money to do as he pleases is the will to...

Better luck next time Jeffrey Bernard It is odd that in spite of the grief I can feel about the human race and the likes of Paul Potts I didn't really like him all that much....

A welcome in the valleys Zenga Longmore W hat I'd like to know is, why are men so brave when it comes to standing in front of television cameras and spouting on about...

Les Alouettes FOR us metropolitan types there used to be just two reasons for venturing into the suburbs. The first was to watch football matches, and the second was to commune...

` Let sleeping dogs lie ' has been poetically hyper - inflated to: If somnolescent on the ground you view Some huge exemplar of the canine crew, Beware with fierce and...

Arabian knights Raymond Keene W ith Baghdad in the news it is in- teresting to point out that this city was once the world capitalof chess. In the 9th and 10th centuries AD...

V ITAS REG. 44 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY ININ I n Competition No. 1640 you were in- vited to invent words which ought to but don ' t exist, accompanied by definitions and...

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...

Winners: Peter Stevens, Tadworth, Surrey (£20); E.C. Hunt, Norwich; Bertram Franco, Croydon. Dictionary prizes are sent out by the 'Post-a-Book' service.

From Split to The Gambia Frank Keating I MISSED the big kick-off. Not for being too busy yawning, but because I am in Split for the European athletics. Next best thing to...