I n the last Budget to be held in the spring, the Chancellor, Norman Lamont, predicted a Public Sector Borrowing Requirement for 1993-94 of £50 billion. To help meet this,...

VICKI WOODS A though Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and I live in a village just south of Newbury, we can't vote at the upcoming by-election there. Our postal district is Newbury; both...

Let's not pretend we can make sunbeams out of cucumbers CHARLES MOORE What would I be thinking now, when it is increasingly obvious that the convergence criteria for economic...

Simon Heifer on a Budget that broke the most important of last year's Conservative election pledges, and left many Tories unconvinced about the Chancellor's future SOMEONE...

Mr Lamont does not surprise Christopher Fildes by paying his bills with post-dated cheques THE FIRST Budget of a new Parliament is the moment that a Chancellor must seize...

persist.. . HUMAN folly is without beginning or end, thank God, else what should we who are stricken with graphomania have to write about? Perfection, like Switzer- land, is...

Anne McElvoy on a country where all the politicians think they are democrats and their opponents are Bolsheviks Moscow OUR OFFICE driver ventured this week that we should have...

William Dalrymple reports on the activities of Indian terrorist apes and the measures taken to disarm them Jaipur I HAD just come out of a crowded 17th- century temple in the...

`I SHOULDN'T like them to go into care,' said a grandfather about his motherless grandchildren on the wire- less the other day. Thus our social conventions devalue the meanings...

William Oddie investigates the financial and other consequences of a divided Church of England THE ADDITIONAL Curates Society (which was not invented by Anthony Trol- lope)...

Michael Heath

Nick Gilbert says that insurance companies are defaming the British husband in order to drum up business RECENTLY, the papers were full of catchy headlines about how much a...

MR. GLADSTONE evidently finds it hard to remember that he is not as young as he used to be, and ought to take more precautions against chills at eighty-three than he has been...

Emma Forrest, sixteen, explains why so few of her contemporaries read books A RECENT survey enthused that people are reading more than ever. I'd like to know, first, what it...

Who exactly wants Birt burnt at the stake? PAUL JOHNSON T he witch hunt launched by the Indepen- dent on Sunday against John Birt is one of the nastiest on record. As I write...

post of Western civilisation, I often receive my Spectators somewhat after the fact; but may I point out, just in case no one else did, that Alastair Forbes, in his review of...

Sir: I've just seen your editorial dated 27 February (`Look and Learn') and, at rest in the staffroom between classes, don't know whether to laugh or cry into my cup of tea:...

Sir: Following Simon Courtauld's article on the White Mischief affair (`Mischief, mur- der and multiple adultery', 13 February), I can confirm that Juanita Carberry was beaten...

Sir: Many of your readers, having digested two columns of my undiluted praise (Books, 13 March) of the Honourable Lady Maclean's starred and famously 'vaut le detour' cuisine,...

Sir: I am prompted to write to you by Sir Frederick Lawton's article in your issue of 27 February (Prison is not enough'). Between the spring of 1953 and June 1960 I was the...

Sir: You have not demonstrated impartiali- ty in the number of letters and articles you have published opposing leasehold enfran- chisement (`Lands of inheritance', 13 February...

Sir: In his response to my account of National Gallery restoration practices (Arts, 30 January), the director, Neil Mac- Gregor (Letters, 20 February), implicitly supports the...

Sir: Auberon Waugh's absurd and endless ruminations about me and the Sunday Times are too inconsequential to bother refuting (Another voice, 13 March). But there is one factual...

Bad times just around the corner Raymond Carr PREPARING FOR THE TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY by Paul Kennedy HarperCollins, £25, pp. 384 T he pop jingle which guides President...

Francis King UNREAL CITY by Robert Liddell Peter Owen, £15.50, pp. 258 T he art-historian Roger Hinks — who, like Maurice Bowra, would never sacrifice a friend for a personal...

Isabel Colegate SKETCHES FROM A LIFE by Anne Scott-James Michael Joseph, £14.99, pp. 198 B e succinct, to the point, and entertain- ing. Such is Anne Scott-James' advice to the...

Nigel Spivey A HISTORY OF GOD by Karen Armstrong Heinemann, £16.99, pp. 511 T his is not an entirely futile book. Though God does not indulge what mortals term as 'wisdom' (as...

Michael McCrum DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR by John Rae HarperCollins, £16.99, pp. 224 N o more honest and revealing a self- portrait of a non-fictional headmaster has ever been...

Penelope Fitzgerald SONGS OF ENCHANTMENT by Ben Okri Cape, £14.99, pp. 297 B en Okri is a Midnight's Child, having been born in 1960, the year of Nigeria's independence. He...

Anita Brookner DAPHNE DU MAURIER by Margaret Forster Chatto, f17.99, pp. 476 I suspect that if Daphne du Maurier had been born on a council estate, the third child of a plumber...

John Grigg IMPERIAL WARRIOR: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FIELD-MARSHAL VISCOUNT ALLENBY, 1861-1936 by Lawrence James Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20, pp. 279 I n June 1917 Edmund Allenby...

Patrick Skene Catling SONG FROM THE FOREST: MY LIFE AMONG THE BA-BENJELLE PYGMIES by Louis Sarno Bantam, £14.99, pp. 288 O ne of the beneficial functions of books about the...

The tongue on him from drinking out the days, and the house crying, he leaves for the docks to board his ship the cattleboat from Cork that tips and arks its way to Libya the...

Harriet Waugh S imon Shaw continues with the adven - tures of his murderous, amoral actor Philip Fletcher in Dead for a Ducat (Gollancz, £14.95), whose character has begun to...

Architecture Paris, a City in the Making (Institut Francais, till 2 April) The new buildings of Paris Alan Powers T he Paris you once knew is probably no longer there, but...

Georges Roualt: the Early Years 1903-1920 (Royal Academy, till 6 June) Taking a dark view Giles Auty R ouault is an artist who has lingered at the edge of my consciousness...

Slap happy Martin Gayford C onventional wisdom holds that the bass is not a glamorous instrument. People turn up to see saxophonists and trum- peters, a promoter once...

The Importance of Being Earnest (Aldwych) Squirrels (King's Head) Invade My Privacy (Riverside Studios) The importance of being Maggie Sheridan Morley I n a time of...

Spring Loaded (The Place) Humdrum journey Sophie Constanti C ross-London rail travel doesn't come much more humdrum or uneventful than a journey from New Malden to Upminster...

A Song for Beko (ICA) Orlando (PG', selected cinemas) Plain tale from the hills Vanessa Letts A Song for Beko is a remarkable, plain and moving film about the dispossession...

The secret of Annie's gun Alistair McAlpine n 1887 Buffalo Bill's Wild West show came to London. The cast appeared along with their herd of buffalo as part of the American...

A dip in the swill bucket Martyn Harris I t was only when I watched the British Television Advertising Awards this week (ITV, Monday, 10.40 p.m.) that I realised the Harry...

Hot tomato Taki V ivian Clore is a very rich woman who — like most rich women — inherited her vast fortune from her father, in this case Charles Clore, a shoe salesman. Vivian...

Pelvic moan Jeffrey Bernard I didn't in fact break my hip again. I slipped up and fell on it, agony enough, and I cracked my pelvic bone. One of these days somebody is going...

Vita and Orlando Nigel Nicolson I was watching Orlando last week, the filmed version of Virginia Woolf s romantic `biography' of my mother Vita, and just as it came to the...

People will kick themselves Auberon Waugh A l these wines are from Pierre Andre except the Chateauneuf'`', and all keep up the good name. The first may come as the greatest...

FEW OF US like to own up to, or are even aware of, the extent to which fashion influ- ences our judgment. And it does, to an extraordinary degree. The eye accustoms itself...

OAP opera Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1770 you were in- vited to supply a yawn-worthy, unsolicited and sure to be rejected submission to a magazine by an ancient. In my day...

Prisoner of Jezda Raymond Keene T he chess community, as indeed the world at large, was alarmed last week to hear of the flight from Belgrade to Israel of Jezda Vasilievic,...

Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 5 April, with two runners-up prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring...

Be your own men Frank Keating THIS weekend represents a final chance for a player to push for a place on the British Lions' rugby union tour to New Zealand this summer. Like...

Dear Mary.. . Q. I hope you will give priority to my prob- lem which requires an urgent answer for it to be of any use at all. Three days ago, while my wife was away, I took...