A recent portrait of Slobodan Milosevic M r Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said that the Labour party sought the votes of 'a middle class that will include millions of people...

The The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 0171-405 1706; Fax 0171-242 0603 GIVE UP ON GLADSTONE I t is fitting that the latest trial of Mr Cook's...

Mr Blair was welcoming the middle classes and hitting at the toffs BRUCE ANDERSON An y politician who talks about class can be sure of an attentive audience. It is a subject...

DIGBY ANDERSON T he house is suddenly looking quite bare. I have finally taken down the notices. Just before Christmas I was at a small con- ference held in a stately home. That...

Mr Blair swoops to mercy, but just the once MATTHEW PARRIS t Thomas's hospital, just over the bridge from Westminster, is highly conve- nient for Downing Street. News last...

Sion Simon explains the real significance of Mr Blair's lecture on class, but doesn't approve of all of it WHILE my children were having breakfast this morning, I found myself...

`ONE for you here,' my husband said, tossing a copy of The Spectator to my side of the kitchen table in a conversa- tional non-verbal marker that is becom- ing annoyingly...

Peter °borne on Robert Fellowes, now retiring after eight years as the most public of royal private secretaries SIR ROBERT Fellowes retires next month as Private Secretary to...

Mark Steyn watches Mr Clinton, both on trial and on the State of the Union Washington DC THIS is what the Hundred Years War must have felt like. 'Wish me luck as you wave me...

Michael Cole complains that nearly everything publicly said about him, or anyone else, is wrong JUST before Christmas, I was ski-ing in Austria when I met two British...

Michael Heath

Mary Wakefield visits Holy Trinity Brompton, and has to flee the children of a nicer God I WAS embarrassed to tell my taxi driver that I wanted to go to the happy-clappy...

Joe Haines does not dismiss this week's claim that Lord Goodman was a thief AT FIRST, I didn't believe it. Not of Arnold. Not Lord Goodman, Companion of Honour, adviser to the...

Moral snobbery and higher education make uncomfortable bedfellows PAUL JOHNSON T here is social snobbery, intellectual snobbery and moral snobbery. The last is the worst, and...

WHAT do you do with central bank gover- nors when they descend on you for the weekend? Invite them to discuss the euro? Their hosts at the Hong Konotary Authori- ty had a far...

Hong Kong offers oblations to Mammon blood sacrifices, but money preferred CHRISTOPHER FILDES Hong Kong The great Temple of Mammon is encased in bamboo scaffolding. Bits of...

A SNORT of disrespect for the reverend visitors — disbelief, even — comes from the gravel-voiced, pony-tailed, motor- cycling Marc Faber, alias Doctor Doom. The markets, he...

NOW that it has gone, I miss Hong Kong's city - centre airport. That 47 degree turn on the final approach — up a bit, George, mind the block of flats, right hand down, no,...

SOME of Mammon's most eminent ser- vants have been called in to placate him. Hong Kong is (naturally) run by a chief executive, who has set up a non-executive board of business...

EVEN as they spoke, Hong Kong's bankers were wondering what they might be able to salvage from the wreck of Gitic, the Guang- dong International Trust & Investment Corporation,...

Sir: That very brave man, Oleg Gordievsky, certainly enjoyed one of the 'sizeable expense accounts' at the disposal of KGB officers which he describes CA globe-trot- ting dirty...

Sir: There is a maddening tendency among columnists to show the breadth of their read- ing by bringing in allusions to subjects other than those about which they are writing. I...

Sir: Please, no more of this Lord Oxford nonsense (Letters, 16 January). There is absolutely nothing in Shakespeare's plays which displays any kind of exceptional learn- ing;...

Sir: There was a common theme running through those pieces by your two corre- spondents, Messrs Dunkley and Steyn; namely the contempt in which BBC man- agement mandarins hold...

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The Indie has improved, but the Sindie has the better thinkers STEPHEN GLOVER S o — the Independent. Nine months have passed since Tony O'Reilly's Irish group gained complete...

unclubb able minister Alan Watkins CROSLAND AND NEW LABOUR edited by Dick Leonard Macmillan and the Fabian Society, £14.99, pp. 207 I n Scoop, Pappenhacker of the Twopence...

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John Vincent MANDY by Paul Routledge Simon & Schuster, £17.99, pp. 302 T he author of this very thorough study has not found things easy. From the start Peter Mandelson...

Philip French EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS by Peter Biskind Bloomsbury, £20, pp. 506 I n 1919 when Hollywood's four biggest stars, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas...

Sara Maitland ON THE MOVE: FEMINISM FOR A NEW GENERATION edited by Natasha Walter Virago, £9.99, pp. 186 H ere is a comfort for my declining years: feminism still matters to...

M. R. D. Foot BRITISH SECURITY CO- ORDINATION edited by Nigel West St Ermin's Press, £30, pp. 540 N igel West' is well known as the pen- name under which Rupert Allason has...

Rory Knight-Bruce TIME EXPOSURE: BRODRICK HALDANE IN CONVERSATION WITH RODDY MARTINE Arcadia Books, £12.99, pp. 185 T here occasionally comes along a mem- oir by someone who...

BookOffer BETWEEN SILK AND CYANIDE by Leo Marks SAVE £2 on this bestselling title from 1998. Leo Marks was the head of the code department of SOE (Special Operations...

Oleg Gordievsky DR STRANGELOVE, I PRESUME by Michael Foot Gollancz, £16.99, pp. 242 T his book concerns itself with the nuclear arms race in the modern world. It includes an...

edged comforts David Caute THE BURDEN OF MEMORY, THE MUSE OF FORGIVENESS by Wole Soyinka OUP, £16.99, pp. 208 A mong the most thriving branches to have sprouted from the...

Evelyn Joll HENRY CLAY FRICK: AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT by Martha Frick Symington Sanger Abbeville/John Murray, £35, pp. 599 enry Clay Frick was born in 1849 in Bucks County,...

Holidays & Travel Special 30 January 1999 GET it4 THE SWIM! Make sure your holiday property appears in our bumper annual Holidays & Travel Special — then sit back and wait for...

Tony Gould THE WHITE DEATH: A HISTORY OF TUBERCULOSIS by Thomas Dormandy The Hambledon Press, £25, pp. 392 a rty years ago, when I was recovering from polio in a RAF...

Filling the dramatic hole Peter Graham Scott calls for the return of the original single play on television I f in one of our major cities there stood a fine library, an art...

Vanessa (The Other Theatre Company, Lyric Studio, Hammersmith) Amazed by Rossini Michael Tanner T he Thieving Magpie is one of Rossini's most satisfying works, if only...

Monet in the 20th Century (Royal Academy, 23 January-18 April) Surprised by Monet Martin Gayford D oes it really deserve all the hoopla and teeming thousands of visitors?...

Serious comedy Andrew Lambirth F ranciszka Themerson (1907-88), the daughter of an artist, was born in Warsaw and trained as a painter at the Academy there. In 1931, she...

The Colour of Justice (Tricycle) Ace of Clubs (Wimbledon Studio) Courtroom drama Sheridan Morley I t must be almost 40 years since Lotte Lenya first brought her Brecht on...

Bulworth (18, selected cinemas) 54 (18, selected cinemas) Irresistibly naive Mark Steyn S ometime in the Eighties, I switched on the television to find the Prince of Wales...

Shijima (Sankai Juku, Sadler's Wells) Dark moments Giannandrea Poesio W hen butoh performances were first seen in the West, a blinkered reviewer claimed that because of the...

A generalist writes Ursula Buchan Mercifully, for the state of our gardens and the salvation of unusual and rare gar- den plants in particular, there are plenty of people who...

Always explain Michael Vestey T he great debate began. The question was, should Radio Three explain what the word palindrome means? My friend, the artist Robert Tilleard who...

What a waste James Delingpole I f only I'd remembered earlier that it was my turn to do the television this week, I would have gone and found something trashy to review, like,...

Keith and Kate's day Robin Oakley N ow that Tony Blair has decreed we will all be middle class I thought I had bet- ter sample some fish-and-chip racing before the government...

Kindred spirits Taki Mind you, I'm not surprised. Clinton and Flynt are kindred spirits. Both of them are perverse and degenerate, both believe that shame equals fame, both...

The wedding business Leanda de Lisle A new year calls for new ventures. It struck me that, instead of lending our house and grounds for nothing as we have done in the past, we...

Conduct becoming Petronella Wyatt I was sitting in the doctor's waiting-room nursing an ailment when I was addressed by a female .acquaintance. Her face was flushed with rude...

Disruption Andrew Robson IT IS notoriously hard to reach the correct contract after the opponents have opened with a pre-emptive bid (a three-or four-level opener showing a...

of gourmet restaurants in top London hotels. It began a few years ago when Marco-Pierre White opened in a rather soulless basement at the Hyde Park Hotel and then moved to the...

The rivals Raymond Keene GARRY KASPAROV has been notably absent from mainstream tournament play for almost a year. Now, however, he has re- entered the lists for the powerful...

THE MALT Trad ad Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 2068 I quoted something like: Tor eight generations the Sawbridge family on the Lincolnshire coast have been gathering and...

A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Six Grapes Port for the first correct solution opened on 8 February, with two runners- up prizes of £20 (or, for UK solvers, the...

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You are invited to write a piece of prose (maximum 150 words), entitled 'Caught Red-handed', which includes at least 12 names of objects to be found in a kitchen, but not using...

Brian the bold Simon Barnes FOOTBALL has become fashionable. It happened because of a good World Cup for England, a fine and problematic footballer, and a writer to give it...

Q. We have noticed among our diplomatic and trade development friends and acquaintances an irksome e-mail habit. They include us in a too-long list of other people copied on the...