'The principal object of a newspaper is to convey intell igence.' Those were the first words published in the Sp . ectator, 150 years ago. In 1828 the English Press was Still...

Where the vultures fly Ferdinand Mount Noises off. Voices. Knock, knock, knock, like at the start of a French play. A small man scurries on to the platform, whispers s...

By the time you read this, the Spectator will have celebrated its 150th anniversary by giving a ball at the Lyceum Theatre in London. I am not sure that 'ball' is exactly the...

To be a Liberal candidate Auberon Waugh Unlike Mr Thorpe, 1 decided not to attend the Liberal Conference this year, reckoning it unkind to go and gloat. But I rejoiced in...

Edward Mortimer The Middle East has thoughtfully provided an event seemingly of suitable historic stature for the Spectator's hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary. They kept us on...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington 'Man Knocked To Knees By Unidentified Bird — Kansas City, Missouri, (via the Associated Press) — Richard Less, thirtynine, was attacked by an...

Mr Sclater, the Secretary to the London Zoological Society, in a letter written to the Times, makes a suggestion which, if successfully acted upon, will greatly reduce the...

Henry Fairlie Washington Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. is a significant writer who ought to engage our interest. He will certainly engage the attention of future historians: if...

Peter Nichols Rome Who will be staring at you this morning, grimly, happily, inanely, sweetly, over your first cup of coffee from the front pages of the newspapers? There was a...

George Gale Considering that we are governed by men who regard it as a triumph to keep inflation below ten per cent and who do not mind debasing our currency to that extent;...

My anniversary Patrick Marnham This month marks my fifteenth anniversary in journalism and broadcasting, and during that time I must have worked either as a freelance or as an...

Richard West A few weeks ago I became one of the 8,000 tourists who, it is estimated, will visit Northern Ireland this year; choosing the Antrim coast, perhaps the most...

Robert Blake The Spectator was founded in 1828. It was not of course the first journal to bear the name, and no doubt there was a deliberate allusion to the famous organ of...

Christopher Booker What has the Spectator in common with Bertrand Russell, Ernest HemingwaY and Robert Graves? The answer is that they all had the dubious pleasure of seeing in...

Alan Brien In 1952, I wrote my first article for the Spectator. And had it turned down. It was something of a shock, though it barely registered at the time, following as it...

Benny Green On 20 November 1909, there appeared in the Spectator an unsigned review headed 'A Poisonous Book', which, as is customary in these cases, meant a book of which the...

James Fenton The Taller, the Guardian and the Spectator all bear the names of periodicals written by Addison and Steele. Not one of them has any connection with its...

Twenty five years Nicholas Davenport While no one has accused me of being as old as the Spectator I have been observed as celebrating a jubilee. Astonishing to find that I...

Sir: Since racism in general and antisemitism in particular are still common in this country, it is good that at least one serious paper still publishes racist and anti-semitic...

Sir: Professor John Erickson asks (9 September) if 'the United States' and its allies 'will actually conspire to turn (Communist) China into a modernised military power'. Quite...

Sir: Colin Brewer writes (Letters, 9 September:) 'Unless Mrs Scarisbrick and those like her can overcome this massive public indifference, to which the lack of correspondence...

Sir: Piers Paul Read in his Notebook (9 September) has a strange misconception of Protestant doctrine. Justification by Faith was not 'Calvin's notion', but the Scriptural...

Sir: Reform of the monetary system is indeed an urgent necessity, as Mr Thomas (Letters 9 September) suggests; but it should be recalled that if money is ailing this is due not...

The new Machiavelli Michael Foot When Ignazio Silone died a few weeks ago (at the age of seventy-eight, in a Geneva hospital), he was given respectful English tributes in a...

Peregrine Worsthorne The Great Fear David Caute (Seeker £9.95) No author would think of using the title 'Holocaust' for a book about the measures taken in the United States...

Anthony Quinton Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays Isaiah Berlin (Hogarth Press £8.50) Before Sir Isaiah Berlin settled down to being the most imaginative,...

John Biggs-Davison Peace-Keeping in a Democratic Society: The Lessons of Northern Ireland Robin Evelegh (Hurst £7.50) Throughout a decade of troubles in Northern Ireland it has...

Alastair Forbes Insider, Outsider Gaia Servadio (Weidenfeld £6.50) `Like all those reaching old age' idiosyncratically, but surely rather idiotically, declares the just...

Christine Verity Sex, Violence and the Media H. J. Eysenck and D. K. B. Nias (Maurice Temple Smith £5.95) After watching the recent tasteless excesses of Holocaust on...

Brian Inglis Jesus the Magician Morton Smith (Gollancz £6.95) Miracles Geoffrey Ashe (Routledge £4.75) The idea that Jesus was a magician, in the sceptical sense of that term,...

Jan Morris Bligh Gavin Kennedy (Duckworth £8.50) I don't suppose there is anybody in the whole world quite so interested in William Bligh as is Gavin Kennedy, Senior Lecturer...

Alan Watkins In the Lion's _Den Auberon Waugh (Michael Joseph £4.95) As the MPs do —or, more frequently, omit to do — I had better begin by declaring an interest. I have known...

Samuel Brittan The Way the World Works: Jude Wanniski (Basic Books New York, $12.95) What would it cost to do away with the penal 83 per cent tax levied on the top slices of...

Thomas Szasz The Language of Madness David Cooper (Allen Lane £4.95) Conversations with Children R. D. Laing (Allen Lane £3.95, Penguin 70p) In 1964, Cooper and Laing, the...

Ian Gilmour The Common Welfare Jo Grimond (Maurice Temple Smith £7.50) At present the most absorbing political question about the Liberal Party seems to be where its vote is...

Alex de Jonge The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile 1925-1945 John J. Stephan (Hamish Hamilton £7.50) Every emigration has its own particular blend of irony,...

Richard Ingrams Longford: A Biographical Portrait Mary Craig (Hodder £5.95) One of the achievements in my life of which I am proudest is having thoroughly and successfully...

George Hutchinson A Victorian Flower Album Henry Terry (Allen Lane £6.75) The wild flowers with which the British Isles are so generously adorned provide one of the delights of...

Emma Fisher All Pam's Poems Pam-Ayres (Hutchinson £2.95 hard) The Selected James Simmons Edited by Edna Longly (Blackstatt Press £2.50 paper) A Change of Affairs Michael...

Francis King Jake's Thing Kingsley Amis (Hutchinson £4.95) The pun of Kingsley Amis's title, Jake's Thing, and some of his chapter-headings — 'The Farting Ploughboy', Wankerr,...

Sculpture in the air Bryan Robertson It is a curious if heartening sign of the unpredictability of the relation between art and the times, conditioned by recession and general...

Abstraction John McEwen 'Portuguese Art since 1910' (Royal Academy till 1 October) may not be worthy to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Spectator, but it is...

Snorters Taki Life is better with coke says the familiar motto and millions of drippy-nosed owners tend to agree. Starting with Hollywood, where being without it is...

Losers Jeffrey Bernard There's a pub called 'The Shears' a few miles east of Salisbury that we stop at on our way to and from the race course and, like Salisbury race course,...

Quite prepared Geoffrey Wheatcroft 'The higher and the lower classes there's some good in, but the middle classes are all affectation and conceit and pretence and...

Stormy petrel Raymond Keene Baguio I was sitting in the Pines Hotel in Baguio having coffee with that stormy petrel of the chess world Ms Petra Leeuwerik when a waiter came up...