Serb-human. T he Director of Public Prosecutions announced that an inquiry into allegations of perjury and malpractice had failed to produce sufficient evidence to prosecute...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 FULL OF CANTUAR While insincerity is always a vice, sinceri- ty is not...

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Fat heads, thin skins, and an every day story of repression SIMON HEFFER O ne of the effects of the Tory election victory was supposed to be a surge in the Government's...

L ess than a fortnight ago the Sunday Times Magazine published an engrossing little table headed 'The 10 richest people in the world.' In fourth place were 'The Reichmann...

What has the Earth done to deserve a Summit? CHARLES MOORE T he earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is, and so it ought to be good news that the leaders of the world...

Mark Urban questions the wisdom and propriety of the SAS campaign in Northern Ireland TO MANY — perhaps most — people in Britain it is unsurprising and quite accept- able that...

Martin Bell reports on the slaughter in Bosnia that Europe cannot ignore THERE WAS a time — it seems an age ago but was only the beginning of March — when we thought we were...

persist.. . WHILE the desire for freedom is so nearly universal in mankind that it is considered almost instinctual, the accep- tance of the consequences of one's own actions...

Rory Knight Bruce visits sleazy Genoa as it prepares for the launch of its Columbus festivities Genoa OUTSIDE CHRISTOPHER Columbus's house in Genoa's Piazza de Ferrari, a...

Michael Heath

A reader saw this advertisement in the Independent Magazine: It's a fact that we speak seven times faster than we write. In the time it took Dickens to write A Tale Of Two...

Michael Lewis says farewell to the Old Country without regrets New York WHILE PREPARING for my departure after eight years' residence in England, I chanced upon a scene...

Martin Weyer explains why British bankers have made so many mistakes over the past 20 years THE HIGH STREET banks are inextrica- bly part of Britain's social fabric. We expect...

John Stokes recalls the people and events of a vanished age EVEN AS a schoolboy, I loved history and politics and religion. I took a close interest in the 1931 general...

THE DERVISHES of the Soudan are recovering from their torpor, and recently effected a daring raid on Serra, a village fifty miles within the Egyptian frontier. More than a...

Who's in charge of the clattering train? PAUL JOHNSON Y u would have to go back a long way — to the shameful days of the late 1930s, perhaps — to find a parallel to the...

dropped a danger in a book review, 'particularly as the point of the review was mocking' the author's own howlers and solecisms. In the course of my review of Mr Stannard's life...

Sir: Nigel Nicolson (Long life, 9 May) pro- vides a lucid critique of Macmillan's role in the handover of Cossacks, non-Soviet émi- grés and Yugoslav citizens to be slaugh-...

Sir: I have just seen Terence Keeley's review of David Edgerton's book England and the Aeroplane (Books, 11 April), and its dismissive but ignorant comments about my own book...

Malcolm's criti- cism of the Maastricht Treaty, as signed, because it has been replaced by a fresh text which the FO has helped to manufacture. If a solicitor did likewise to a...

Sir: It was very perceptive of Tristan Garel- Jones (Letters, 16 May) to conclude that my article about the Maastricht accord referred to an out-of-date text of the treaty. The...

Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft, writing about Martin Stannard's book on Evelyn Waugh, (Books, 25 April) says, 'Oh, for Christ's sake, Stannard, put a sock in it!' I was sorry to see...

Sir: Mr Waterfield's quotation (Letters, 2 May) of the episode of the woman taken in adultery is incomplete. The woman's accusers indeed retired ashamed. Jesus then said,...

Sir: Readers of your cover story by Gleb Shestakov (`The Bear bites the Jews again', 2 May) will note that the title promised more than the article itself delivers. Far from...

Sir: As Auberon Waugh observes (Another voice, 16 May) the Casey affair was a laugh. All over Dublin students are arrayed in T- shirts inscribed with the legend: `Wear a Condom...

Sir: Bone-headed policing of the kind recounted by Janine di Giovanni (`The unserious crime squad', 9 May) does not only betray a strange grasp of priorities. It is also very...

Sir: My attention has been drawn to an item in Portrait of the Week (9 May). It is stated that 'Recommendations published by the Scottish Law Commission will out- law the...

h God, not more books on Spain! Reviewers rejoice as their incomes soar but euphoria is replaced by exhaustion, as, stunned in mind, they grapple with topics as diverse as the...

Do you remember the blunt old heads and how, before they went, their melting necks were neatly caught and held in plastic sheet? Those heads had often nodded reassurance. In...

Clive Sinclair STRINDBERG'S LETTERS: Volume I, 1862-1892 Volume II, 1892-1912 edited and translated by Michael Robinson The Athlone Press, £80, pp. 952 I should declare at the...

Noel Malcolm THE RISE AND FALL OF NICO- LAE AND ELENA CEAUSESCU by Mark Almond Chapmans, f18, pp. 320 A , happy families are alike, Tolstoy tells us, but an unhappy family is...

No, wait a minute, I can't be old already, I'm just about to — Connie Bensley

H. K. Prescott WALTER HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT edited by Donald Wright James & James, 174.95, pp. 240 I f Walter could have read this book, how delighted he would have been by its...

David Montrose B ooks about the maltreatment of indigenous Americans — North, South and Central — must cope with evidential over- load: there has been so much, for so long,...

Frank McLynn DANZIGER'S ADVENTURES by Nick Danziger HarperCollins, £17.99, pp. 290 N ick Danziger is a 34-year-old 'danger man', veteran of a hundred photo- journalistic...

David Wright ARTISTS AND BOHEMIANS: ONE HUNDRED YEARS WITH THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB by Tom Cross Quiller Press, £20, pp. 192 T wenty years after its foundation in 1891 a new lease...

Francis King OUTERBRIDGE REACH by Robert Stone Deutsch, £14.99, pp. 409 I n these days of radio communications, satellite tracking and helicopter rescue, to sail single-handed...

Hermann Helmholtz said the problem facing the scientist is this: reduce a creek, a kiss, a flaming coal from this random tracing to some irreducible final text dancing to the...

John Grigg SIMON: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF SIR JOHN SIMON by David Dutton Aurum Press, £25, pp. 364 J ohn Simon had the rare but frustrating distinction of holding the three...

Tom Shone W hen a star nears the end of its life, Albert Einstein suggested, it collapses, its radius becoming smaller and smaller until it reaches the state of a dimensionless...

T he disappearance of India's heritage and the preservation of what remains of it is currently exercising the country's intelli- gentsia. India's monuments are poorly con-...

Treasures of a Polish King: Stanislaus Augustus as Patron and Collector (Dulwich Picture Gallery, till 26 July) Vaut le detour David Ekserdjian L oan exhibitions of old...

Madly contextual Giles Auty hat would your reaction be if a fel- low passenger on a train confided to you that he was really Napoleon Bonaparte? Most would conclude that the...

Gordon Russell Centenary Exhibition (Gordon Russell Ltd, till 12 June; Broad- way, Worcestershire, 22 June-3 July) Gordon Russell (Design Council, till 14 June) Hearts of oak...

Well chewed Alistair McAlpine O n 28 May, Christie's have a sale of Spanish art, 'Treasure from the Maravillas and other Works of Art'. Forget the other works of art: it is...

The greening of the valley Ebbw Vale Garden Festival Does the land wait the sleeping lord or is the wasted land that very lord who sleeps? S o runs the last of the many...

Living Wood: Sculptural Traditions of Southern India (Whitechapel Art gallery, till 31 May) Lessons in living tradition John Henshall I have commented before, most recently...

Come buy their wares Robin Holloway W hile the record industry as a whole flourishes as never before, its first sacrifice in bad financial times is of course contem- porary...

Coriolanus (Chichester) A Slip of the Tongue (Shaftesbury) Proud bloke Christopher Edwards P ride is the essence of Coriolanus. Shakespeare presents it as both a vice and a...

West Heath Stu- dios, 174 Mill Lane, London NW6 1TB; tele- phone 071 431 3752.

Europa Europa (15', Odeon Kensington, Screen on the Hill) Van Gogh (`12', Chelsea Cinema, Renoir) True stories Vanessa Letts A though I was duly astonished that the events...

Veteran of Palermo Taki Athens h athat a pleasant surprise Beaulieu turned out to be. Especially the tennis. I cannot remember how long it's been since I played a match...

Overlapping worlds Martyn Harris A nglo-Saxon Attitudes (ITV, 8.30 p.m., Tuesday) is about secrets, handily symbol- ised by a pagan fertility doll, the `Melpham Idol', found...

A flawed Odysseus Nigel Nicolson I t couldn't be the girl over there, could it?' `No, no. He would never have sent a girl.' But he did; and she was. The time was early...

Rock bottom Jeffrey Bernard And now, living in the heart of Soho, my legs can barely take me to the pub just four blocks away. It was in there yesterday morning that a woman...

NOTHING MUCH doing on the feast scene today but some corkers coming up: St Philip, founder of the Oratory, on 26 May, with the Mozart Mass in C (Spatzenmesse) being sung in the...

N igel Short's secret weapon against Anatoly Karpov in Linares was the Worrall Attack in the Ruy Lopez. Checking my copy of The Oxford Companion to Chess, I discovered that the...

COMPETITION .1111KY Dear Mary . Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1728 you were in- vited to compose a question and answer, of a grotesque or eccentric nature, for inclu- sion...

1060: Hornblower (3) by Mass 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...

'If only I should die . . .' goes Rupert Brooke's famous sonnet. You are invited to write a poem, in any metre or mood, beginning with these words. Maximum 16 lines. Entries to...

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THE PAKISTANI tourists have it in them to be the most dazzling and diamond-sharp side we have seen here for many a summer. With, for good measure, a leg-spin bowler from the top...

Q. My husband and I have been invited to a dance following a wedding and, with his agreement, I accepted the invitation. Now my husband says he does not want to come as he will...