'Once upon a time there was a social worker.' T he IRA shot and wounded Air Vice- Marshal Sir Peter Terry, formerly Gov- ernor of Gibraltar, and his wife, at their home in...

A n unpleasant atmosphere of false excitement, hysteria, self-righteousness and dogmatism arising from the incredible tales of children about witchcraft — the ingredients of...

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hall — and he was the editor of the Conference Gazette, who was presumably doing it as a provocation. Beards are less hard to spot; but they are attached to the faces of...

L istening to the radio in my car at three minutes to twelve on Saturday while look- ing for a parking space I heard something that made me dump it where it was and rush into...

So it is the punishment freaks who are leading us by the nose AUBERON WAUGH I had thought to devote this entire article to studying the prospects of the South African wine...

Murray Sayle marks the bicentenary of Burke's most famous book by applying his thought to present-day upheavals Tokyo EDMUND Burke's Reflections on the Re- volution in France...

Andrew Kenny argues that South Africa's future depends on the sovereignty of individual tribes THE statistics of death after the latest round of slaughter in the Transvaal...

Michael Heath

difficulties of reporting from the Gulf Baghdad My hand baggage was opened roughly and the private letters inside were pulled out one by one. The uniformed official read them...

Anne McElvoy asks why one East German author is singled out for denunciation Berlin GERMANY is divided once again, more bitterly on the eve of unification than in four decades...

John Mortimer talks to Kalim Siddiqui, who supports Salman Rushdie's death sentence and Muslim separatism 'ONE of my children died. A boy. And after his funeral I bought a...

Vicki Woods on the way 'respectable' papers get sex into stories HOW many times a night one likes to have sexual intercourse is not a permissible topic at dinner; nor is it a...

Ian Buruma meets a Pole who is not too keen on Jews Krakow WE MET on the train from Warsaw to Krakow, Vladimir and I. Actually Vladi- mir is not his real name, but I shall...

Brian Inglis argues that neither the Republic nor Britain wants the North A CENTURY ago Punch, I think it was, offered a solution to the problem of Ireland: tow her out into...

persist . . . TO HAVE any kind of self-respect these days, one has to be a member of an oppressed minority: there's so much suf- fering in the world that not to partake of it...

THE cobblers' children go barefoot, and the accountants can't control their costs. Their firms get bigger and so do their fees. As the Big Eight merge, where are the economies...

I SHOULD like to see the game of football charged with bringing Robert Maxwell into disrepute. Instead the Football League has the nerve to threaten to charge him, because he...

Unplug Frank the CBI can show us how to do better CHRISTOPHER F I LD ES 0 h dear, oh Frank. Another lumber- ing, patronising, fabulously expensive promotion to get another...

A vacancy on the Court of the Bank of England. The economics director, John Flemming, is off down the road to join Jacques Attali at the new European Bank for Reconstruction and...

I am tickled pink to see the Financial Times in court, trying to stop the Evening Stan- dard printing its City pages 'on FT Peach or any other shade of pink.' There were pink...

Sir: The Christian Aid advertisement on Third World debt carried in The Spectator ('Should 500,000 children every year have to die because of a bank loan?' . . . 15 September),...

Sir: I was amused by Nicholas Soames writing that A. N. Wilson had 'broken every convention of civilised society' (Let- ters, 7 July) by reporting a conversation he had with the...

Sir: Ursula Buchan is quite right to remark how many garden plants are poisonous, though they have, hitherto, done little harm (Gardens, 15 September). Nonethe- less cyanides,...

Sir: I was just a bit fed up with the tone of Hilary Mantel's review of 'Wild At Heart' (Cinema, 1 September). The headline 'Don't take the vicar' and the phrase in the body of...

the Bank, 18 August) deserves some comment. Of course the Bank — like any other large bureaucracy — is imperfect. But to imply, as Dr Irwin does, that it is one vast gravy...

Or the greatest liar? Conn Welch STALIN'S APOLOGIST: WALTER DURANTY, THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MAN IN MOSCOW by S. J. Taylor Oxford, £15, pp.404 B efore reading this painstaking...

The taste of blood's medicinal teaspoonfuls, Slow trickling down your throat, was sweet and warm, And it meant three quarters of an hour off school, Flat on the floor of an...

Dead Nicholas smiles out of the photograph on the stairs of the borrowed house and I recall that when he was a boy, put to bed, he'd smiling stealthily reappear His steps and...

Alastair Forbes PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE by Nigel Nicolson Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.95, pp.216 W hen reviewing in these pages a dozen or so years ago Susan Mary Alsop's...

John Casey INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE by Stuart Hampshire Allen Lane, £16.95, pp.195 L iberalism is an intellectually more vital creed in the United States than it is here....

Richard Adams ANIMAL LIBERATION by Peter Singer Cape, £15.95, pp.320 I n one respect the Animal Rights move- ment resembles Oxford University. 'But where is the University...

Elizabeth Longford MRS HUMPHRY WARD: EMINENT VICTORIAN, PRE-EMINENT EDWARDIAN by John Sutherland Clarendon Press, £16.95, pp.432 T he author of this important book assumes...

Tim Congdon THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF NATIONS by Michael E. Porter Macmillan, £25, pp.848 T he publication of Michael E. Porter's The Competitive Advantage of Nations a...

. . . Now is the time to contrive A good mind to add to your looks: that alone will endure To the pyre at the end. Make sure You cultivate the liberal arts, and learn to speak...

Francis King SYMPOSIUM by Muriel Spark Constable, 111.95, pp.192 T he 'Symposium' which provides the title of Muriel Spark's new short novel is a dinner-party given by a...

David Spanier BIG DEAL by Anthony Holden Bantam Press, £14.99, pp.272 F or openers, I must declare my interest in beating the royalties out of the author. I have played...

Harriet Waugh DEATH'S DARKEST FACE by Julian Symonds Macmillan, 02.95, pp.272 BONES AND SILENCE by Reginald Hill Collins, £12.95, pp.366 CURSE AND DARKNESS by Leslie Grant...

Angela Thirlwell A nthony Trollope had travelled to the most exotic outposts of the British Empire in the course of his Post Office duties, but in the autumn of 1865 he was on...

John Bayley E veryone has seen the film of The Go-Between; a lot of people have read the book. But do they connect it with Hartley's other books, or with the survival of his...

Architecture Competition for a Pavilion at Dulwich Picture Gallery Discretion was the better part John Martin Robinson D ulwich Picture Gallery is disting- uished both for...

Jean Hellion (Tate Gallery, Liverpool, till 21 October) Braque: Still-Liles and Interiors (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, till 21 October) Hen of the North Giles Auty W hen I...

Beyond ethnicity Deirdre McMahon I t t was gratifying to see such a large and appreciative audience at the opening night of the Indian dance festival at The Place but this is...

Rott stopped Robin Holloway A nother youthfully ambitious first orchestral work is still more unlikely to be heard live than Dvorak's Bells of Zlonice. The single completed...

Once in a While the Odd Thing Happens (Cottesloe) Sir Thomas More (Shaw) A passionate friendship Christopher Edwards P aul Godfrey's new play is about Ben- jamin Britten. Set...

Paper Mask ('15', selected cinemas) Playing hospitals Hilary Mantel I suppose we have all fancied our chances of impersonating a doctor: of grunting, remarking on the...

In love with Atalanta Taki hat a fool I am. After 30 years of sailing around the Greek islands, I've finally discovered the place I should have been going to all along — the...

Not all the best tunes Wendy Cope S ome people may have blamed the Devil for the technical problems that caused the live broadcast of Songs of Praise (BBC 1, 6 p.m., Sunday)...

Greene and pleasant land Jeffrey Bernard T his year's break was definitely beta minus and I have just come home after only five days on the Cote d'Azur. I was shoved from...

And so ad infinitum . . Zenga Longmore M y sister Boko and I had a lot of catching up on gossip to do, for we had not seen one another since a chance meeting at the Notting...

A LOT of thought went into my holiday, and the drive to it, from here to olive- greenest Tuscany. It wasn't so much a question of planning, but of wallowing in greedy...

Hyper-inflation Jaspistos 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY I n Competition No. 1643 you were in- vited to expand, pompously and periphras - tically, a well-known short poem or an...

Lloyds List Raymond Keene T he premier open tournament in the United Kingdom is, without a doubt, the annual Lloyds Bank Masters. It is run by the organisational duo of...

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A poem by Morris Bishop begins: 'What is funny?' you ask, my child, Crinkling your bright-blue eye. `Ah, that is a curious question indeed,' Musing, I make reply. You are...

A first prize of 120 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...

Presidential drive WITH his armada now gathered at the Gulf, President Bush mercifully seems to have been talked out of any more aping of Francis Drake on the golf course. The...