Rose blight T he annual rate of inflation rose to 8.3 per cent, its highest level for seven years. The Chancellor, when asked where the rate would stand by the end of the year,...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 PRACTICALITIES T hose who have argued that Britain should grant the right of...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK ❑ £55.00 0 £27.50 Europe (airmail) 0 £66.00 0 £33.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $99 0 US$511 Rest of...

Reading the entrails: what Labour needs to win NOEL MALCOLM as it just coincidence that on Sun- day night, while the Euro-election results came in, Britain underwent one of...

I have applied for a renewal of my provisional driving licence having been seized yet again by a resolution to learn to drive. With my 69th birthday approaching this does,...

the Book of Common Prayer, page 31

Trying not to laugh off the obligations of charity and pity AUBERON WAUGH W ell, yes, I suppose I could easily accommodate 30 or 40 of them in attics, cellars and out-houses....

The brewers have made Lord Young drink how they did it MY LOCAL pub used to be called the Alma. There were two rooms with a fire in the snug and a juke-box in the public bar....

METRICATION. The most common argument for it is that it is desirable because it is inevitable, like Europeanisation. My old philosophy tutor would have called this a 'non...

Michael Heath

James Taylor looks at the growing threat to Benazir Bhutto: the son of Zia-ul-Haq Dubai IJAZ ul-Haq, the urbane, dark-suited Gulf regional manager of the Bank of America,...

Richard Davy finds that East Germany is far from ready for unification THE EAST German regime has not been happy about Mr Gorbachev's triumphal progress through West Germany....

US trade nationalism is a Washington THE Great Depression and the Smoot- Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 have been woven together in the political folklore of America for two...

ON THE first anniversary of the death of T. E. Utley, the great political writer whose writing illuminated the Daily Telegraph and the Times — and many other journals — over a...

David Spanier talks to the biggest money-winners in Las Vegas — the casino-owners Las Vegas 'IT'S what God woulda done . . . if He had the money.' One guy who's got the money...

Alexandra Artley shares some old family recipes for the English table dog FASHIONS in food come and go, but as a nation of hunters and carvers we English still produce some of...

Roy Kerridge visits Bradford in the wake of the Rushdie affair 'I THINK Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses is a wonderful book!' a literary young lady told me, her eyes shining....

The media: Paul Johnson raises awkward questions about coverage of political unrest TELEVISION is a 'hot' medium, which raises the emotional temperature, particu- larly when...

SO WHAT does the Abbey do for an encore? It is something to have found a way out of the regulatory maze planted by Michael Bridgman at the Building Societies Commission — even...

Abbey: a good thing for the annual outing and for share-owning too CHRISTOPHER FILDES T his is the week of the City's annual works outing. The office boys are left to man the...

THE knighthood for the Government Broker is as fitting as his refulgent top hat, but may, alas, be the signal that he will soon hang that hat up. Sir Nigel Aithaus's full job...

THE safest bet of all is that more building societies will follow the Abbey (you have remembered, I trust, that money in the front-runners, the National & Provincial or the...

THE Prime Minister fell out with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the electorate fell out with both of them. Behind the scenes the Prime Minister's personal economic...

Sir: Congratulations. But as a civil servant, I must remain Anonymous Hong Kong

Sir: In The Spectator of 17 June ('Honour- able gentlemen') you quote me as writing: It would have been better for China, as well as the students themselves, if they had...

Sir: I should like to applaud Donald Michie's article (`Jasper Lupo's Spaghetti Code', 3 June) which tackles, quite success- fully I think, the task of alerting the lay reader...

Sir: Pace Michael Trend (`From Tyler to Thatcher', 10 June), there has never been any doubt that the community charge could be successfully, if expensively, implemen- ted. This...

Salman Rushdie Sir: Paul Johnson's article on the Salman Rushdie case ('When the cursing had to stop', 17 June) is based on several factual and logical errors. He says that...

Sir: In your admirable and encouraging article (Worth holding the Fort', 10 June) you bestow upon Barbara Harris, the controversial American bishopess, the title 'Dr'. Is this...

Sir: Having been, believe it or not, com- plimented on my review of Antony Lamb- ton's polemical blast at the Battenbergs (Books, 10 June), I was vain enough to re-read it and...

Sir: In his article about the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Jim Wright (`The wrong stuff, 27 May), Ambrose 'Honestly, Mildred, flying is as safe as cross- ing...

Sir: Anthony Blond is not entirely correct in stating (Books, 13 May) that the Danes were 'the only people in Europe who cared so much for their Jews that, led by their King,...

Sir: I am very grateful to you for sending me The Spectator. I work as a journalist in the Polish press. The knowledge of various political and ideological trends in the West,...

Sir: Would Sir Martin Jacomb ask his board to take a far-reaching decision, having just glossed over matters central to its discussion? This is his approach to your readers (The...

Sir: I was sad to see that in Mr Auberon Waugh's otherwise excellent article ('Another voice', 10 June), he referred to one of the most famous of outdoor chil- dren's...

THOMAS Cranmer was born 500 years ago, on 2 July 1489. As the first great Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, as the supervisor and chief architect of the Book of Common Prayer...

in conjunction with the Prayer Book Society, is proud, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Cranmer, to announce THE THOMAS CRANMER SCHOOLS PRIZE...

was a success. It is dis- appointing to have to report that the second is not. Home invites mockery by writing on page 595, 'His Boswell, who had the good fortune also to be...

David Sexton WARHOL by Victor Bockris Muller, £18.95. pp. 528 FAMOUS FOR 15 MINUTES: MY YEARS WITH ANDY WARHOL by Ultra Violet Methuen, £12.99, pp. 274 WARHOL: A PERSONAL...

Jasper Griffin THE PHOENICIANS edited by Sabatino Moscati BompianilJohn Murray, f60, pp. 766 P osterity has no mercy for the defeated. The Phoenicians, an energetic seafaring...

Antonia Douro THE GODWINS AND THE SHELLEYS by William St Clair Faber, f20, pp.572 W illiam St Clair's look at the philo- sopher and the poet inspects the links in the chain...

Francis King SHOWING THE FLAG by Jane Gardam Hamish Hamilton, £11 .95, pp. 162 M any years ago, in Finland, Malcolm Sargent remarked to me that there were performances of an...

Andrei Navrozov GORBACHEV'S STRUGGLE FOR ECONOMIC REFORM by Anders Aslund Pinter, f35, 12.95, pp. 225 CAN THE SOVIET SYSTEM SURVIVE REFORM? edited by G. R. Urban Pinter,...

You write prolific verse daily logorrhoea of two hundred stanzas at least. You show none of them, recite none of them. You have no talent,

D. J. Taylor A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10 1 /2 CHAPTERS by Julian Barnes Cape, £11.95, pp.309 Y ou can already picture the judges of this year's Sunday Express fiction prize,...

T wo immense naval guns point at your chest as you go through the gates of the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth Road, SE1. Surrounding these weapons is a grass circle encircled by...

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (Comedy) Twelfth Night (Regent's Park) Sickly success Christopher Edwards T his two-hander by Terrence McNally was an enormous hit in...

A question of revival Robin Holloway I s it fair, when a composer decides his own body of work, to dilute or clog it up with things he has deliberately omitted? The question...

Prairie rooster Martin Gayford J azz has been notably capricious about the instruments it has favoured. Novelties and oddities such as the saxophone and the vibraharp were...

Stephen Conroy (Marlborough Fine Art, till 29 July) Conroy was here Giles Auty E ver since a display of his work in Edinburgh first attracted the attention of London dealers...

Dead end in Russia Hilary Mantel I n the town where Little Vera lives, the people are stacked up in apartment blocks, unrelenting cubes that brutalise the eye; behind them,...

Allotment rules OK Ursula Buchan I am in danger of becoming an allotment bore. How can I avoid it? For one thing, I live in a part of the country where allot- ments are...

Off the map Wendy Cope W hat do you know about Sunder- land?' asked Kate Adie. 'Do you know where it is?' Somebody said it was in Yorkshire. 'In the North somewhere, I think',...

The blonde got it right Taki n common with other expatriate Greeks, I sat up all Sunday night waiting for the election results from the Olive Republic. Mind you, I was in good...

Goring story Alice Thomas Ellis then I started humming a song about the snow-clad Sierra Nevada until Janet told me to stop it. When I got home a friehd rang and suggested...

Move over, Harry Jeffrey Bernard A nother one has left the company. Harry died last week. It was not a surprise and he had long been heading for a fatal accident staggering...

heat, so you might think summer is not the best time to open a new restaurant. Still, in some cases it does give a place time to find its feet before those cooler months, much...

Y elena Akhmilovskaya, the Russian defector, came, saw and departed. She had been invited to the Park Hall Grandmaster tournament in Preston, and, indeed, it was her presence...

Bardograms Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1579 you were asked for anagrams of single lines from Shakespeare's plays (modern spelling), ex- tra points to be awarded for...

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(evenings) I Homewood Avenue, Apt 4, Toronto, Ont MO/ 2,18, SITUATIONS VACANT SPECTATOR is looking for: 1. A receptionist/office administrator. Applicants should have...

Piero Camporesi (trans. David Gentilcore), 27 May 32(R) Breaking Eastern promise, 13 May 5(LA) Breaking of the icons, The, 4 Mar 9(A) Breaking the magic circle, 4 Feb 15(A)...

r Yelena Akhmilovskaya, the Russian defector, 24 Jun 2(A) Childhood: An Anthology, (ed.) Penelope Hughes-Hallett, 28 Jun 28(R) a mother's revenge on a child-raper, 28 Jan...

Major and Stevie Smith's cat, 28 Jan 25(CS); lain Macleod on the party leadership struggle in 1963, 4 Feb 15(A); the Tory 'magic circle, 4 Feb 15(A); a self- consciously...

Donne, I1 Feb 41(P) Digestive difficulties of gobbling up estate agents, The, 11 Mar 32(A) Disarmament? . . . No tanks, 3 Jun II(A) Disasters: the Hillsborough football ground...