The Rumanians really seem to be putting on the pressure.' T he Government confirmed that it would give no assistance to a joint public and private sector venture to establish a...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 SWORDS INTO TRUNCHEONS W e were once taught that the best thing to do...

Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £66.00 0 £33.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £77.00 0 £38.50 USA Airspeed El US $99 0 $49.50 Rest of Airmail 0 £93.00 0 £46.50 World Airspeed 0...

The man who would be Player King NOEL MALCOLM T hicky; `lightweight'; 'windbag': peo- ple just will not stop saying unkind things about Neil Kinnock. Reports are now...

JO GRIMOND T he extension of Parkinson's Law is that business expands to suit any govern- ment organisation. Mrs Thatcher proposes new work for Nato. The appetite for...

The Russian Federation could be a world power independently of the Soviet Union. Stephen Hendelman reports on a surprising nationalist revival Upper Uymon THE Siberian village...

THE Bishop of Peterborough has car- ried through the second reading in the Lords of a Bill to amend the law relating to insurances on the lives of children. The objects of the...

Anne McElvoy finds that East Berlin's queues have shifted from the shops to the banks Berlin THE denim-clad bodies press closer together in the early morning light and 300...

Michael Fumento on the suppression of his book after campaigning by homosexual activists THIS week San Francisco is the venue for the Sixth International Conference on Aids....

Vicki Woods on the diverging fortunes of Ivana and Donald HOW rich is rich? How broke is broke? Have I more money in the bank than Donald Trump? I once wrote a piece for...

Noel Malcolm on the motives of Rumania's miner thugs and their xenophobic President WHEN 10,000 coal-miners began their pogrom in the streets of Bucharest last week,...

Tim Congdon on the unacknowledged threat to national independence of a single European currency 'BUY the rumour, sell the fact', is an old adage of financial speculators. It...

Sandra Barwick on why the Bishop of Oxford is taking the Church to court THE Right Revd Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, is a 'mischievous man'. This is a surprise,...

persist . . . LAST week the police arrested one of my patients when they found a kilo of heroine under his pillow. Of course, this put me in mind of the Tooth Fairy, which in...

on the debate that journalists largely ignore The media: Paul Johnson WHAT is the outstanding under-covered news story in Britain today? I can give it to you in one word:...

NOW that the takeover merchants have reached the football clubs, with Heart of Midlothian bidding for Hibernian, the national sides must follow. World Cup form suggests that a...

BRITISH Rail's high-speed link is now in action, stretching for some 15 miles across rich countryside, carrying trains at 125 mph and engineered for higher speed. This is the...

I AM uneasy to find Robin Leigh- Pemberton, Governor of the Bank of England, lecturing the nation on its social attitudes. Thrift has gone out of fashion, so he told a dinner of...

FIMBRA: a state of terminal obscurity (Latin finis, an end, and umbra, a sha- dow?). A modest species of aquatic life? A ligament at the base of the spine, subject to painful...

Foolish virgins get their come-uppance as Trump goes misere CHRISTOPHER FILDES I t had not until now occurred to me to classify Donald Trump as a foolish virgin. He has run...

Intolerant Islam Sir: Richard Webster's attempt to defend the Muslim position on The Satanic Verses affair is no doubt well meant ('On not burning your enemy's flag', 16 June)....

Sir: Your leading article (16 June) com- pletely ignores the ground on which the case for government assistance to our film production industry is based: the mainte- nance of...

June), that the British film industry should eschew subsidy and concentrate on 'themes of heroism' and 'the triumph of idealism over cynicism', raises two interesting questions....

Sir: I object to having been used as a faggot on the pyre which Mr Simon Heifer so lovingly built for Mr Michael Heseltine (Politics, 19 May) (which I have only now seen). I am...

(Leading article, 2 June) where it (per Willes J. in Phillips v Eyre 1870 LR6 QB1 at 23) 'changes the character of past transactions carried out upon the faith of the then...

Sir: Ned Halley (Letters, 9 June) takes me and other contributors to task for using `infelicitous French idiom'. Although generally agreeing with George Orwell that one should...

Sir: The concept that a high clerical collar indicates that its wearer is a Low Church- man is widely held even by Brother Gary's fellow clergy (Letters, 9 June). Hereabouts a...

Justice and war crimes Sir: On 31 March (The media) you pub- lished what was obviously a painfully reasoned discussion by Paul Johnson of the merits of the War Crimes Bill...

Sir: While the French accuse us of export- ing 'mad cow' disease, they appear to have overlooked its origins in their own country. Your readers are surely familiar with the...

Sir: I read with interest Allan Massie's article in the issue of 12 May (`Stands Scotland where it did?'), in which he mentioned the prevalence of Scots planters in Malaya. As...

Sir: In a recent issue (Low life, 19 May) Jeffrey Bernard gave it as his opinion that once you have seen two or three tits you have seen them all. Has he forgotten that the...

Freud's Jungle Book Colin Welch READING FREUD by Peter Gay W hat eminent man shared what eccentric view with Lord Palmerston, Hen- ry James, Mark Twain and Bismarck — a group...

Peter Paterson A SLIGHT CASE OF LIBEL: MEACHER v TRELFORD AND OTHERS by Alan Watkins Duckworth, f14.95, pp. 241 orensically, Alan Watkins and I go back a long way. I remember...

Richard Shone THE LAST MODERN: A LIFE OF HERBERT READ by James King Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25, pp.364 S o dull an impression of Herbert Read does this biography give that it...

A. N. Wilson ENOCH POWELL: COLLECTED POEMS Bellew Publishing, f9.95, pp. 198 W alter Hamilton, my old headmas- ter, always used to say that by far the cleverest man he ever...

torments the heart that bore it? Just think of rust and iron; rust's born from iron - What does it do but gnaw it . . . gnaw it? Bu'lfaraj (11th century) Translated from the...

Francis King HOPEFUL MONSTER by Nicholas Mosley Secker & Warburg, £14.95, pp. 551 T his novel, although self-contained, is apparently the last of a herd of jumbos corralled...

Anthony Howard PROVED INNOCENT by Gerry Conlon Hamish Hamilton, £12.99, pp. 234 STOLEN YEARS by Paul Hill with Ronan Bennett Doubleday, £12.99, pp. 287 T he Prevention of...

John Mortimer WRITERS IN HOLLYWOOD, 1915-1951 by Ian Hamilton Heinemann, £14.95, pp. 326 T he Taming of the Shrew,' ran the titles on one of the earliest talkies to come out...

At five the train left Hendaye and trundled inland, across the foothills of the Pyrenees, bound for Marseilles. At dusk it drew up somewhere, earth dark, horizon high, a...

Andro Linklater SOLOMON GURSKY WAS HERE by Mordecai Richler Chatto & Windus, f13.95, pp. 413 I f it is true, as Lord Rothschild asserted, that a country gets the Jews it...

Exhibitions 1 Tiziano (Doge's Palace, Venice, till 7 October) From the Alps, with chutzpah Roderick Conway Morris T his magnificent exhibition of Titian's work is somewhat...

Festival for all the senses Robin Holloway A ldeburgh remains unique and special among music festivals. The little town is humdrum, with no seductive richness of cathedral...

Heaven at last Deirdre McMahon L ondon is so starved of good classical dancing and the seat prices for the Kirov's current London season are so steep that I can understand why...

Hidden Laughter (Vaudeville) Anna Christie (Young Vic) Disenchanted garden Christopher Edwards S imon Gray's latest play is set in Harry and Louise's weekend cottage in...

On Classic Ground: Picasso, Leger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-1930 (Tate Gallery, till 2 September) Forbidden fruits Giles Auty F rom among 150 or so exhibitors...

A man's world Wendy Cope 0 n Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble.' On screen leaves and branches shook violently in the wind. You got the message: this wood was in very bad...

The fun of faking Alistair McAlpine C hristie's last year produced a pile of catalogues 21 feet high, Sotheby's, one 20 feet high; Phillips and Bonhams, a formid- able stack;...

Down Memory Lane Taki K en Lane, the man who is escorting Ivana Trump around London this week, is a nice Jewish boy from the wrong side of the Detroit tracks, and as confirmed...

On with the show Jeffrey Bernard I might as well be a football. I am being kicked and passed to and fro by landlords and landladies, and when I moved into this flat in Maida...

Praise the Lord Zenga Longmore T o surprise Olumba, last Saturday afternoon Omalara and I donned our gladdest rags and visited his church. Olum- ba's place of worship, tucked...

Green's Westminster DESPITE all the fond chatter about the British culinary renaissance of the last ten years, good plain English cooking sans coulis still remains...

Wounded bear Raymond Keene T he Russian Grandmaster Artur Yusu- pov made a fine impression in his world championship semi-final match against Karpov in London last year. The...

Faint praise Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1630 you were in- vited to write a poem damning a member of the opposite sex with faint praise. Unless I have been bamboozled for...

964: Voices from the valleys 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')...

This is National Bat Week. Please provide verse (maximum 16 lines), as if from a bat, to mark National Humans Week. Entries to 'Competition No. 1633 by 6 July.

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The great strike Frank Keating T wenty years ago to the month I was wasting days of my life sitting in the back of a chauffered car from Mexico City to Toluca or Puebla with...