'Virginia Bottomley says that if the Bosnians can operate without water, light and anaesthetics so can we.' T he Government proposed turning over the running of secure units...

fibuirv Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 . . • AR *•If p e TAXING RECOVERY T he shifting of the Budget from March to November means the lobbying season...

VICKI WOODS L ke my neighbour the Princess Royal, I have the use of a flat in Dolphin Square during the week. I don't enjoy staying there because I like to wake up where I keep...

Anne Applebaum says that pretending to care is worse than doing nothing at all ONCE, serious books about diplomacy and politics were liable to contain sentences like this:...

William Cash explains why a remarkably high proportion of Hollywood's prostitutes are British Hollywood GO WEST, young girl, go west. Pack your Doleis shoes, Miss Selfridge...

MR. HENRY HOBHOUSE con- tributes to last Saturday's Times a useful letter. He points out that though Parlia- ment has been sitting for six months, and since the end of March has...

John Simpson argues with an historian of the Holocaust about appeasement in Bosnia Sarajevo WE USED to identify the name of Saraje- vo with the spark that caused an unparal-...

Christina Lamb explains how to survive in a country where prices have risen 200 billion-fold in a generation Rio de Janeiro I WAS instructed by The Latin American Handbook to...

Tony Scotland, an announcer with Radio Three for 20 years, argues that a great cultural asset is being wrecked by misplaced populism IT USED to be assumed by those who made...

WE ALL make mistakes, but some of the more revealing are those tb do with proper names and with acronyms — I mean pronounceable words made up from initials. On Classic FM, a...

Roderick Smart argues that the Oxbridge admissions' system is prejudiced against public schoolboys WHO WANTS to go to 'Oxbridge'? The teaching is either dreadful or...

APPEARANCES can be deceptive, as I am sure everyone knows. Unfortunately, appearances are all we have to go on, which is why (in part) we are deceived over and over again....

Sir: Fears of overpopulation, to which you refer in your editorial (The facts of life', 14 August), now loom so large in some peo- ple's minds that they lead to extraordinary...

Sir: Many people in the Church of England will share your reporter Damian Thomp- son's dismay at the losses incurred by the Church Commissioners. (`Many mortgaged mansions', 7...

Sherman for using infor- mation about Bosnia which is nearly 50 years out of date. But although wrongs done 50 years ago cannot excuse wrongs being done today, they do explain...

Sir: Taking history lessons from Sir Alfred Sherman (Letters, 7 August) is like receiv- ing instruction in morality from Beelzebub. Noel Malcolm would do well to pay no...

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However, help is at hand. Like-minded Christians in any area can organise themselves as fox-hunts do; i.e., a chairman, committee and subscribers who produce a guarantee. A...

Sir: The last word on Buck's Fizz from Cap- tain Munson, secretary of Buck's Club (Letters, 24 July), refers to the club's 'pre- sent head barperson'. Perhaps as another sop to...

Sir: Paul Johnson's hysteria about the European Community (a welcome but no doubt brief respite from his hysteria about the BBC) might command more respect if he could spell the...

Sir: Mark Amory, tutor to Ronnie Mutebi (`My pupil, King Ronnie', 31 July), must have instructed him well. The new Kabaka, then Ssabataka and Crown Prince, telephoned me on the...

Sir: The Revd Jonathan Edwards says that Taki cannot claim to be 'the greatest Greek cricketer ever' (Letters, 10 July) and sug- gests that this honour should go to Xenophon...

Sir: The Spectator making it across the Channel to Brittany rather slower than once Isolde on her way to Tristan's deathbed, I have only just seen the refer- ence, in a...

Sir: Nigel Spivey's review (Books, 31 July) was — as he himself would put it —unadul- terated horse piss. The secret of Coca-Cola is not its advertising but its taste —as any-...

William Oddie. He argued in support of the opinion that opponents of the ordination of women were entitled, on leaving the Church of England, to a portion of the Church's...

Sir: The Ealing films of the Forties had more in common with life today than Simon Heifer may think (`Back to the bad old days', 7 August). Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne —...

An isle full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight PAUL JOHNSON I f I were asked to name the most delectable house in Britain, I would pick Eilean Aigas, a pink...

Europe's rude markets relish the collapse of its governments' policies CHRISTOPHER FILDES 0 h, dear, oh dear, look at the stock markets. They are quite disrespectfully...

HOLIDAY task for the Treasury and City, set by Kenneth Clarke: read Gerald Kauf- man's How to be a Minister. When Brian Sedgmore and Diane Abbott, in a spirit of impartial...

'SADNESS and misery' (Mr Roche writes) 'are the lot of the currency speculator, who is reviled by all, and even governments don't seem to be enjoying their post-ERM freedom...

MY RACING correspondent, Captain Threadneedle, writes: The Ebor meeting at York is buzzing with reports of a blonde in foal to Lester Piggott. Students of blood- stock note that...

MY FRIEND Peter Hambro, president of Europe's largest gold mine (in good eating country near Toulouse) and prospector by appointment to the government of Kaza- khstan, rebukes...

Not to be born is best Hugh Lloyd-Jones SHAME AND NECESSITY by Bernard Williams University of California Press £18.50 pp.254 M uch as the literature and art of Greece before...

Philip Glazebrook THE BALTIC REVOLUTION by Anatol Lieven Yale, £22.50, pp. 454 E veryone acknowledges publicly the awful importance to our world of the break-up of the Soviet...

John Jolliffe h is book of memoirs is as remarkable for the initiative, the powers of leadership and the sheer physical endurance of its author as it is for the eccentricity of...

Richard Terrell A VERY INGENIOUS MAN: CLAUDE MARTIN IN EARLY COLONIAL INDIA by Rosie Llewellyn Jones OUP, New Delhi, Rs 325, £15.95, pp.24I h e career of Major General Claude...

William Scammell THE PILGRIM EDITION OF THE LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS, VOLUME VII, 1853-1855 edited by Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson and Angus Easson OUP, £85, pp. 975...

Archie Powell THE FAVOURITE by Meredith Daneman Faber, £14.99, pp. 163 I n her first novel for ten years, Meredith Daneman tackles a weighty subject. The Favourite deals with...

Above all, a certain meanness of spirit, an inability to forgive and forget even minor transgres- sions. I'll get him for that. I seem to have inherited the wrong things from my...

Amit Chaudhuri THESE ENCHANTED WOODS by Allan Massie Hutchinson, £14.99, pp. 207 W hen one thinks of modern Scottish fiction, one recalls George Mackay Brown's stories,...

In one of the pews towards the front of the church the arms of a child appear at each side of her father who is holding her. Disproportionately small arms waving like wings....

Robert Blake RHODESIANS NEVER DIE: THE IMPACT OF WAR AND POLITICAL CHANGE ON WHITE RHODESIA, 1970-1980 by Peter Goodwin and Ian Hancock OUP, £45, pp. 416 F rom 1968 to 1973...

by Virginia Woolf H ow did To the Lighthouse ever get its reputation as one of the classics of mod- ernism? Good salesmanship. Not on Virginia Woolfs part. She was on the right...

Jonathan Clark EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DECORATION: DESIGN AND THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR IN ENGLAND by Charles Saumarez Smith Weidenfeld, £50, pp. 407 T his book modestly claims to be a...

Radical error David Mellor on Bayreuth's flawed new production of Tristan und Isolde T ristan und Isolde is perhaps the ulti- mate musical statement of the power of sensual...

Blushing bores Robin Holloway M onotony', said Satie (and he should know), is mysterious and pro- found.' Examples spring to mind: the echo- ing spaces of plainsong and...

Grease (Dominion) Godspell (Barbican Concert Hall) God- Sheridan Morley J oseph and that bloody Technicolor Dreamcoat, followed hotly as it was by Jesus Christ Superstar,...

Apres l'Amour ('15', Curzon Mayfair) Made in America ('12', selected cinemas) French and forgettable Mark Amory A pres l'Amour is, as it sounds, all very very French. As the...

Stomach- Alistair McAlpine 0 n 19 August Christie's sold a selec- tion of medical instruments, spectacles and related instruments from the last three cen- turies — the 'first...

Nailed into a navy suit Martyn Harris N eil Kinnock: The Inside Story (ITV, Sunday, 10.50 p.m.) was not as bad as expected in spite of having been produced by Ted Morgan, a...

See no weevil Ursula Buchan To be fair to my daughter, she had no intention of being anything of the kind, having been bred in a robust school where these matters are...

Above the fray Taki I Gstaad find it outrageous that the very people who looted Greece during the eight-year socialist rule of 1981-89 should now be demanding that ex-king...

Abroad alone Nigel Nicolson tied Two Roads to Dodge City. This is not an advertisement, as it has long since been out of print. It would never have worked if we had travelled...

Mexi- can restaurant. Wait: I can explain. For some reason I've just been reading too much, and very minor, contemporary American fiction recently. On the whole, this has been a...

An unusual selection from Oz Auberon Waugh B efore being submitted to the tradi- tional Combe Florey panel, these wines were' shown to an ad hoc committee of wine experts who...

c/o Alexr Findlater & Co. Ltd. Vauxhall Cellars, 86 Goding Street, London, SEll SAW. Tel: 071-587 1644 Fax: 071-587 0982 Price No. Value White 1. Skilly Gap Semillon 1992, S....

IN COMPETITION NO. 1792 you were invited to incorporate into a musical lyric the words written by Cardinal Newman: 'He's so positive, so knock-me-down.' The words were, of...

SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA THE BRITISH CHAMPIONSHIP, which was scheduled to finish last week in Dun- dee, is, paradoxically, still in progress. Two players, Michael Hennigan and Dhar-...

GRAHAM'S PORT W. & J. CROSSWORD GRAHAM'S PORT A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 6...

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You are invited to write a surrealist sonnet or a sonnet about Surrealism. Entries to 'Competition No. 1795' by 2 September.

Daft happenings Frank Keating POSSIBLY, history will log that the most bizarre of all the daft happenings for English Test cricket in the summer of 1993 was the one-off...

Q. My son ran away from Marlborough with two other boys. They left on cycles at 3.00 a.m. and were not discovered missing for 15 hours. One gave himself up, the other two stayed...