W hen Mr Callaghan won the Labour leadership in 1976, he beat as good a collection of rivals as any such competition has offered this century. They were Denis Healey, Roy...

From the soup kitchen Charles Moore I is a pitiful sight. Men in pin-stripe 'suits shuffle in the queue to the soup kit- chen which, with a touching remembrance of past...

T he other day, when I was visiting one of the slums of Calcutta, my guide pointed to a group of particularly wretched women and said: 'Those are Anglo-Indian.' I looked at them...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £I5.50 IK17.75 £18.50 £24.50 One year: 01.00 112/33.30 £37.00 £49.00 Cheques to be made payable to the Spectator and sent to...

Nothing to say Auberon Waugh T he silly season would appear to have arrived with a vengeance when Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien devotes his column in the Observer to what must...

Patrick Marnham San Salvador T he commander of the United States military mission to El Salvador is called Colonel Homer Q. Finkelbaum. (Actually he is called something else,...

Christopher Hitchins T he Constitution of the United States forbids authority to inflict 'cruel or unusual punishment' and there was a time when the Supreme Court interpreted...

is looking for a new member of staff. Someone to assist in the general running of the office. The successful candidate must be intelligent, capable and able to take the...

Janos Nyiri I left Hungary after the 1956 uprising and have lived since in France and in Britain. I had not been back for ten years until early this summer. Today, Hungary...

Andrew Brown 'The Incest craze really got started last 1. year, with the report of a Swedish Government Commission on sexual of- fences. The Commission's objective was...

The Rev John Henry Timins, Vicar of West Mailing, the clergyman who was found to have poisoned Sarah Ann Wright, by administering to her a teas- poonful of bitter almonds by...

Richard West Penrith C'timbria(sio T wenty years ago to the month, if my memory serves me well, the pop singer `Screaming Lord' Sutch stood as a can- didate at the...

Roy Kerridge T he River Wear, looping around a hill, created a natural moated fortress that was to become the city of Durham. With its castle and cathedral, its twisting...

r11 NI IIM11111•1 MIMEO NI IN III = MEIN NI MI NI SO RI I INTRODUCTORY OFFER This offer closes 31 July 1983. I I I I I I open to non-subscribers Take out a subscription to...

A. N. Wilson E merging from the cool of the cathedral, a flurry of black-habited nuns waddled sweatily into the scorching sunlight of the cloister courtyard, keeping custody of...

Sir: Rising-young-columnist watchers among Spectator readers who savoured as I did the first-rate 'Political commentary' of 2 July might find it interesting to be told that, in...

The Falklands Sir: Of all the statements made about the Belgrano incident in recent issues the most puzzling conies from Simon Jenkins when he writes (11 June) that the British...

Sir: In her review of Violet Powell's The Constant Novelist: A Study of Margaret Kennedy (2 July), Joanna Richardson complains of overemphasis on the subject's defects. 'One...

profundity in your 'Notebook' jottings, but your assertion (2 July) that a new Falklands airport will lead to depopulation of the islands strikes me as exceptionally silly....

Sir: Hymn-banners and hymn-mourners alike put all their emphasis on the words (A.N. Wilson, 25 June). They ought also to celebrate the tunes. Some are dull as ditch- water of...

Sir: I am rather startled by Mr Chancellor's brisk dismissal (4 June) of the late Miss Betty Trask's endowment, an annual award to the youngish author of 'a romantic novel or...

Reassuring sordidity Richard Cobb The Secret Paris of the 30's Brassai (Thames & Hudson £7.95) rassai, the Hibou Nocturne of the velvet blue-black and brilliant, liquid white...

Francis King The World Is Made of Glass Morris West (Hodder & Stoughton £8.95) T he best way to describe this novel in a sentence is to say that it stands in the same...

Christopher Hawtree Brilliant Creatures Clive James (Jonathan Cape £7.95) O ne can picture the scene when the type- script of this book arrived on the desk of Cape's reader....

Bryan Appleyard M. R. James: An Informal Portrait Michael Cox (Oxford £14.50) H e died, according to Cox, just as the Nunc Dimittis was being sung in the Chapel it Eton. If...

Alan Watkins Barefaced Cheek: the Apotheosis of Rupert Murdoch Michael Leapman (Hodder and Stoughton £9.95) O n the whole, Mr Leapman's account of Mr Murdoch's career has been...

Peter Quennell The Great Marlborough and his Duchess Virginia Cowles (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £15) 0 ne of the happiest marriages in English history was that of John and...

Terence de Vere White "Virago Press have added Edith Wharton V to their Modern Classics list, and pro- pose to publish novels of hers long out of print after this pair of...

James Hughes-Onslow Potpourri from the Thirties Bryan Guinness (Cygnet Press £9.95) I t is a credit to Bryan Guinness that he never became a central character in Brideshead...

Patrick Skene Carling The Guadalupe Madonna Jody Brant Smith (Souvenir Press £8.95) S ome people want to believe in miracles; some people want to disbelieve in them; and there...

Small wonders John McEwen Artists of the Tudor Court: the portrait miniature rediscovered 1520-1620 (V&A till 6 November) Painter as Photographer and Richard Cadine,...

Poor law Maureen Owen F rom the way it is confidently assumed that any half decent character currently being interviewed or otherwise examined on the airwaves must...

In the bush Peter Ackroyd Smash Palace (' 18' , selected cinemas) N ew Zealand is a place, if I heard the opening song correctly, where men 'sip cold beer behind closed doors...

Bedazzled Giles Gordon The Fawn (National: Cottesloe) Little Lies (Wyndham's) S nosy Wilson's Loving Reno is the most literate, sophisticated new play by a British writer to...

HOME THIS AFTERNOON (selections from), probably BBC publications, 1960/5. F. Gomm, Quarry High St, Oxford OX3 8JP. BETTER THAN ONE by William Watson (Chatto & Windus). A...

Party spirit Taki w ell, I guess Cyril Connolly's wasn't the only ambition to be jostled by idleness, love of luxury, and the pursuit of pleasure. Mine took such a battering...

Propaganda Richard Ingrams B y what was apparently an extraordinary coincidence two very similar program- mes about war reporting went out in quick succession on BBC and ITV...

Holy relics P. J. Kavanagh F or the first time I have been reading a novel by Barbara Pym. It is called Quartet in Autumn and is about four elder- ly people who work in an...

Privileged Jeffrey Bernard T he idea of becoming a writer first came to mind in 1937 when my nanny was Pushing me in a superbly upholstered pram across St James's Park on our...

No. 1279: Obfuscation Set by Jaspistos: A dialogue, please, bet- ween one person trying to ask a simple question in plain language (e.g. 'Will you marry me?', 'Could you tell...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for useless advice to recently reformed alcholics from a magazine 'psychiatrist' about how to fill with harmless activity a rainy...

lannialire mail 1, Der D adi 111.E1 R a . LI OE UWE II II 13 alfingni al On ij N I . n V CI Ins 0D al 0 ri iii EIC , n A nen pia EM 0 A IIIMICIIINI Oa mama once...

Short circuit Raymond Keene A further Fide conference has been tak- ing place in London over the past week — continuing the series from Linares and Portorozh designed to...

0 by Doc A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the opened on 8 August. Entries to: Crossword 56 Doughty Street, London WCIN 211. - 191 all 15 6 ,. .. _ 13 y ----...

S eventeen bodies were found in the Seventeen of a British Airways helicopter bound for St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly which crashed into the sea a mile-and-a half from its...