N inety-five people, more than half of them under the age of 20, were crushed to death during a football match at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield. Fixed steel fences,...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 THE NEXT STAGE M r Terry Hands has announced that he is to retire as...

draw properly if you want to?' was based on a lecture he delivered at the Royal Society of Arts, the full text of which is to be published in the society's journal.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY — Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £55.00 0 £27.50 Europe (airmail) 0 £66.00 0 £33.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $99 CI US$50 Rest of Airmail...

Being entertained by Mr Fowler unawares NOEL MALCOLM orman Fowler, the Secretary of State of Employment, made a shrewd point during Monday's second reading of the Bill to...

ALLAN MASSIE othing worries us more than the Prospect of becoming a branch-line eco- nomy, though it would seem that despite Peter Walker's boasts the dangers of this happening...

`...And I, my Lords, embody the law' AUBERON WAUGH L ast Wednesday found me lurching in Chancery Lane tete a tete with a disting- uished and successful QC, whom I had not met...

On the 100th anniversary of what makes a fascist A SCHILLING life will give you as much as you need of the facts: how he was born on 20 April in Braunau, Austria, 100 years...

Charles Glass sees a new twist in an old saga 'Why does the morning die? Why do the candles immolate themselves?' • Abdullah Ouasaimi IT WAS with this dedication that the...

Serbia is on the brink of civil war. Richard West reports IN EARLY October 1912, the journalist Leon Trotsky came to Belgrade to report Oil the impending Balkan War, in which...

Taki Theodoracopulos explores the labyrinth of corruption in which Greece is lost Athens THE only word to describe the present political climate in Greece is 'surreal'. This is...

ARCHDEACON Farrar writes an en- thusiastic letter to the Christian World which he says is not meant to be 'polemical;' but unless it is meant to prepossess public opinion...

Michael Heath

WHAT'S WRONG? The French Right faces its Paris THE right-wing political melodrama which has been gripping France since the begin- ning of the month reached its height on the...

Steve Way went to Hillsborough to support Forest, and saw death instead EVEN with half an hour to kick off, from the Forest end of the ground it was clear that the central area...

The media: Paul Johnson on how the judges dashed their wigs IT IS hard to recall an occasion when a powerful group in society got such a generally bad press as the legal...

NEXT, the Delors Eurodoggle. It has come to meet a demand identified last summer by Anthony Loehnis of the Bank of England: 'The current scramble to find something for a...

Setting off on the Grand Tour with a Eurodoggle for all seasons CHRISTOPHER FILDES I am looking for an award to offer for the Eurodoggle of the year. What should it be? A...

GATEWAY is the supermarket group whose owners have offered to buy each other out, at a premium to the previous share price, as a means of changing the direction of their...

TOO much money is spent on footballers, said my versatile predecessor Nicholas Davenport, and not enough on football grounds — and the financial structure of the game guarantees...

Sir: Your perceptive article on fraud in the European Community ('Conquering the fraud mountain', 8 April) made informa- tive reading even for those closely follow- ing this...

Sir: As Paul Johnson says (8 April), the Sunday Telegraph is — by a very long way — the best Sunday newspaper in the market. It is also, and always has been, commer- cially and...

Prophecy Sir: Reading Off the Record by the Coun- tess of Oxford and Asquith (London, 1943), I encountered the following observation in Chapter XVIII: No amount of education...

Sir: Alexandra Artley reported me as saying (`Bookman, spare that tree', 18 March) that I was trying to persuade a major paperback printer to stock recycled paper. Your readers...

A sense of loss Ferdinand Mount A TURN IN THE SOUTH by V.S. Naipaul Viking, £14.95, pp.307 E arly on in the journey, the day he arrives in North Carolina in fact, the author...

Rylands, a collection of essays by George Rylands with an introduction by Lord Rothschild. Only available through The Spectator, this limited edition of 170 numbered copies...

Philip Glazebrook FIRST LIGHT by Peter Ackroyd Hamish Hamilton, £12.95, pp.328 D own in Pilgrin Valley, a tract of Dorsetshire which is at the heart of this deliberately...

Francis King WHISTLEJACKET by John Hawkes Secker & Warburg, £11.95, pp.I94 O ne of the finest pictures at Went- worth Woodhouse, seat of the Fitzwilliam family, used to be a...

Raymond Carr FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES by A. L. Rowse Methuen, £14.99, pp.297 h is is vintage Rowse. The passion and the prejudices lie naked on the page. Here IS an...

Anne Chisholm PAUL ROBESON by Martin Bauml Duberman Bodley Head, £20, pp. 804 F or once, the overkill school of Amer- ican scholarly biography is justified. Paul Robeson, the...

Michael Trend S cotland in Europe' is the battle-cry for the Scottish National Party in the forthcomin g European elections. Throu g h the policy of 'Independence within...

The road to the Isles Roy Kerridge O ne of the most glorious days of my life began one July morning when I took the 'scenic special' from Glasgow to Mal- laig. Scotland,...

Willy Mohammed of Stornoway Rebecca Nicolson 'I FLEW straight to Stornoway from Pakis- tan in 1948 with just a suitcase full of wares,' says Willy Mohammed with a slight...

Standing by to repel boarders Robert Peston I n the face of foreign invaders, the Scots have traditionally displayed an unusual propensity to weaken their defences by warring...

The best place to eat in town Nigella Lawson Y ou get the feeling in Edinburgh that no one really goes out to eat, that is, those who want to eat well. This is partly...

Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow (Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, till 7 July) In search of old Glasgow James McGeachie A haunting introduction to the prehis- tory of Europe's...

La Tragedie de Carmen (Tramway, Glasgow) Icecream (Royal Court) The thrill of simplicity Christopher Edwards P eter Brook's 90-minute version of Bizet's opera has arrived on...

Longest ever Robin Holloway , icholas Maw's Odyssey, given its first complete performance last week at the Royal Festival Hall, is at c. 103 minutes the longest unbrOken span...

Working Girl ('15', selected cinemas) Old-fashioned girls Hilary Mantel P eople who make films set in New York are apt to give us vignettes of street life to break up the...

Repelling the space invaders Ursula Buchan I t is a disturbing thought — which gardeners may prefer not to think — that we may well have planted trouble with the new plants we...

Take your pick Peter Phillips The event, seen as a try-out for England hopefuls, was more eye-catching than usual because Botham and Hick (along With Radford, Newport, Dilley,...

What Chaplin taught me Taki hen Nico Sistovaris, a Greek friend of mine, got engaged to Josie Chaplin, Charlie's second daughter, he asked John Zographos to be best man....

In front of our eyes Wendy Cope L ast weekend television turned us all into experts on the question of safety at football grounds, too late to help the people we saw, in...

Teeth on edge Jeffrey Bernard L unch with Francis Bacon this week for the first time in quite a while. It used to be a weekly event but he has better things to do nowadays. I...

Locked out Alice Thomas Ellis I t could only happen to us,' said Janet. We were standing outside the back door of a convent, the locked back door. We were still within the...

Treble limerick Jaspistos I . n Competition No. 1570 you were in- vited to tell a story in three consecutive limericks, which need be conventional only in the matter of...

Gary galvanised Raymond Keene K asparov is acquiring the reputation of a slow starter in tournaments, and in the Barcelona World Cup he began with all the alacrity of a snail...

1 K 1 N E 36 1 NJ P ErrEAL A N 3 1. I 3 P E .. % IL L E T 11 kr> E DR 0 CEBLU E1 rp ° 1 E'T IR 0 ACCTOR° "a R 4 r i ;iV 1 AC T . _ SIO M A Ni , K T AR I STE A11 . 14711 R...

905: Changing places by Doc 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...

Recently Wallace Arnold sighed for a humorous essay entitled 'A Sideways Look at the Fairer Sex'. He would have been well qualified to write it himself. Assume he has, and...

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...

PEOPLE have already started talking ab- out the 1988 vintage in , Bordeaux -- another great year. The people in question have a new vintage to sell. The drinker, Presumably, is...