25 JANUARY 2003

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P olice raided the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park,

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long suspected to have terrorist links. Seven people were arrested and a stun gun and a CS gas canister were seized. The government dispatched 30,000 troops and 120 Challenger...

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SPECIATOR

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The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC] N Telephone: 020-7405 1706; Fax 020-7242 0603 LIBERATE THE LORDS I t is probably some time since even the keenest student of...

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I spent Tuesday evening watching Ashley, a 15-year-old blonde girl from

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Oklahoma, flirt with a British boy called PJ. `Wanna see some photos of me?' asked Ashley. PJ grinned. 'I think you'll like them, they're hot,' said Ashley, and winked. A boy...

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Why Labour has signed a non-aggression pact with the Tories over sleaze

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PETER °BORNE T he announcement that Michael Trend, Tory MP for Windsor and formerly chief leader-writer of the Daily Telegraph, is to step down was slipped out late on Tuesday...

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I am not in principle against killing people, but talk of the 'right to die' is humbug

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MATTHEW PARRIS S ometimes one's creed points logically where one is intuitively reluctant to go. The flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. Item: we should not give money to...

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HOW THE GOVERNMENT ENDANGERS BRITISH LIVES

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By promoting mass immigration from the Third World, New Labour has been importing killer diseases, says Anthony Browne. And it is bying to hide what is happening from the...

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Banned wagon: global

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A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade THE world of environmental science begins to resemble the Catholic Church before the Reformation. Anyone who...

LUNATIC ASYLUM POLICY

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Rod Liddle on why there is nothing we can do to stop Algerians — or anybody else — remaining in the country I DON'T know what Mrs Sadako Ogata is doing these days, or where...

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LOVE HEARTS

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'I would have liked to have given her the Taj Mahal but it would have cost too much to transport,' remarked Richard Burton on the occasion of Elizabeth Taylor's 40th birthday....

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SET UNIVERSITIES FREE

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Only market forces — backed by government endowments — can save higher education, says Martin Jacomb THE government has got itself into a serious mess in its approach to...

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THE NAKED TRUTH

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Andrew Gimson talks to a former antiques dealer whose exhibition of nude portraits — 'art as therapy' opens next week WOULD you like 'a framed 16 x 20 inch nude portrait' of...

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Mind your language

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I HAVE, I discover, had a letter on the kitchen table for many weeks. Its vintage is indicated by the plum juice which somehow found its way on to the lower part. It is from Mrs...

MIXED BLESSING

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Thousands of disabled babies are living longer than ever before, says Sarah Barclay. Why don't we pay for them? WHEN Emmy Myerson was born in June 1991, everyone celebrated....

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Ancient & modern

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EVERY week professionals such as teachers and doctors express their desire to get out of their jobs. Why? Because they have lost their independence. Greeks and Romans would have...

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THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO WOBBLE

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Mark Steyn says Donald Rumsfeld's talk of a deal with Saddam is dispiriting, but believes the phoney war is coming to an end New Hampshire LAST weekend was going pretty...

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Listening to the tales that the clouds tell the trees

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PAUL JOHNSON O ne of my greatest pleasures is to sit outside my house in the Quantocks, 500 feet above sea level, and watch the clouds arriving from the west. In they conic,...

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Starvation as a weapon

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From Mr Horace Buxton Sir: Peter Oborne (`Living in a state of fear', 11 January) has not grasped the importance of white farmers, and the catastrophe that their eviction is....

Brains are classless

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From The Revd Canon Geoffrey Ravalde Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 18 January) scores so many valid direct hits that it is a shame he spoils it by implying that Oxford...

Your move, Bishop

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From Miss Susan Clarke Sir: I read with surprise the letter of the Bishop of London (18 January). As a journalist, I reported the trial of R v. Burrell and heard all of the...

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Drug treatment for prisoners

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From Emma Soames Sir: The research that RAPt has conducted over the last ten years bears out the findings of lain Murray (Let them eat porridge', 18 January). Treating...

Mob-handed mosque raid

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From Mrs Richard de Graaff-Hunter Sir: I realise that there is a serious crisis in the UK over the possible use of ricin by terrorists, but surely a more diplomatic method could...

Anti-Tory hysteria

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From Mr Ciaran Walsh Sir: I would like to thank James Delingpole (Why I daren't admit to being a Tory', 4 January) for reassuring me that I am not alone. As a 23-year-old...

The crime of curiosity

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From Mr B.H. Highton Sir: Does it not occur to anyone that the motive of at least some of the 7,000 British men who have accessed child pornography on the Internet was simple,...

A bribe to licence

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From Mr Alex Siddell Sir: Aidan Hartley's view of corruption (Wild life, 18 January) in Kenya is slightly misguided — it was not only the African population that was involved in...

Decongestion programme

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From Mr Claus von Bulow Sir: Steven Norris (I blame Ken', 28 December 2002) comments on the alleged plot behind the rephasing of traffic lights in favour of pedestrians. But...

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British hacks may be disgusting but we keep the politicians on their toes

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STEPHEN GLOVER A very high-minded European recently complained to me about British newspapers. Why are they all so awful, he asked? Even the so-called serious ones look like...

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Gain work experience as a non-executive director and watch the engine seize up

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CHRISTOPHER FILDES L ord Carrington — it was the kind of thing that happened to him — was asked to become a director of Rio Tinto-Zinc, one of the world's two biggest mining...

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Pride and preservation

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Bruce Anderson joins the Masai on an eco-friendly safari A PAIR of lionesses were ambling through the grass; three cubs were scampering around them. A delightful spectacle, but...

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Fonda memories

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Anthony Torrance As with all tourism, there is a precarious balance. How do you enable people to look at something unspoilt without spoiling it? So far, A&K have succeeded. As...

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Onanist heaven

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Nicholas Farrell Predappio NO ONE back home has ever heard of the Romagna where I live. 'It's between Bologna and Florence,' I say. 'It's like Tuscany without the British.'...

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Nancy to the rescue

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Peter Tatchell TRYING to arrest tyrants like Robert Mugabe is a tiring, stressful business. Even I need a break. So I headed for Palm Springs, California. to indulge my passion...

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Tatar source

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Julian Holloway IN THE 14th century, Timur the Lame led a nomad army against the whole settled world. He plundered from the Ganges to the Dardanelles, but the heartland of his...

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Morton in the marshes

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Michael McMahon IN 1924, feverish, depressed and in Palestine, far from his native land, the travel writer H.V. Morton found himself overwhelmed by a sudden wave of...

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Shame about the kids

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Clare De Burca THE video finally flickers to life and a shot of my father-in-law's nose is followed by a tiled terrace, steps down to a turquoise swimming pool and green fields...

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Lost, stolen or strayed

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Philip Hensher MISSING MASTERPIECES by Gert-Rudolf Flick Merrell, £40, pp. 344, ISBN 1858941970 his is a strange, tantalising book of unintentional poetry; it is rather like a...

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Tunes of vanishing glory

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Julius Purcell THE RADETZKY MARCH by Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann Granta, £14.99, pp. 363, ISBN 1862075131 J ust as Gustav Mahler wove a bugle fanfare into his...

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The lure of the jungle

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John Casey THE PIANO TUNER by Daniel Mason Picador, £14.99, pp. 356, ISBN 0330492675 T his is a curious story. In 1886, a year after the final British conquest of Upper...

In America we trust

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G. S. Rousseau 20:21 VISION: TWENTIETHCENTURY LESSONS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by Bin Emmott Allen Lane/ Penguin, £20, pp. 327, ISBN 071399519X B ill Emmott. the editor of...

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The usual Soho suspects

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William Feaver RESTLESS LIVES: THE BOHEMIAN WORLD OF RODRIGO AND ELINOR MOYNIHAN by John Moynihan Sansorn & Co., £24.99, pp. 280, ISBN 1900178443 W hen John Moynihan was three...

Learning the hard way

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Ian Thomson I'LL TAKE YOU THERE by Joyce Carol Oates Fourth Estate, £10.99, pp. 290, ISBN 0007146442 J oyce Carol Oates is a prolific, even prolix writer, with more than 50...

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Classics in the classroom

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David Nokes TEACHING LITERATURE by Elaine Showalter Blackwell, 145, pp. 176, ISBN 1631226230 T here comes a time when all professors of literature think of writing a book like...

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Bosoms, football and money

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Caroline Moorehead THE DARK HEART OF ITALY: TRAVELS THROUGH TIME AND SPACE ACROSS ITALY by Tobias Jones Faber, £16.99. pp. 288, ISBN 0571205828 I taly, Carlo Levi once famously...

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Spreading sweetness and light

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Rupert Christiansen LIVES OF THE MIND: THE USE AND ABUSE OF INTELLIGENCE FROM HEGEL TO WOODHOUSE by Roger Kimball Ivan R. Dee, $28.95, pp. 375, ISBN 1566634792 I read the first...

The Paraguayan way

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Miranda France AT THE TOMB OF THE INFLATABLE PIG by John Gimlette Hutchinson, .£14.99, pp. 363, ISBN 0091794331 J ohn Gimlette and I both won this magazine's Shiva Naipaul...

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THE

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SPECTATOR SPECTATORS FOR AFRICA The Spectator Appeal A t a time when so much of Africa is in the grip of near famine, sending copies of The Spectator might seem a perverse...

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The triumph of outrage

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Raymond Carr PICASSO'S WAR by Russell Martin Scribner, £18.99, pp. 274, ISBN 0525946802 I n this book Russell Martin seeks to explain to the common reader how Picasso's largest...

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A view from the squint

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P. J. Kavanagh LIGHT YEARS by Augustus Young London Magazine Editions, £25, pp. 312, ISBN 0904388913 T his is a most unusual book. It might be thought we could do without...

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Hockney's controversial experiment

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The artist is a great draughtsman but is he a great watercolourist? asks Mark Glazebrook he last David Hockney show at Annely Juda Fine Art was in the summer of 1997. It was a...

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Inflaming hearts

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Michael Tanner M onteverdi's Orfeo is an intensely moralistic work. Although La Musica launches it by telling us, and showing us, how 'now with noble anger, now with love' she...

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Ideal trio

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Giannandrea Poem() A though his work might not be everybody's favourite, Jiri Kylian remains one of the most eminent and significant figures of European modern ballet. His...

That's showbiz

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Mark Steyn C hicago opened in December, getting lost in the great Speccie void of the Christmas double-issue, but it just won a bunch of Golden Globes and there's Oscar talk in...

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Classic dilemma

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Charles Spencer T his is a column in crisis, My brief is to write about the popular music of the past half century, and during recent weeks I have hardly listened to any....

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Charmed by students

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Robin Holloway W orkshops', piously fetishised in recent decades, have never been my idea of fun. Too often there's a sense of implicit condescension; and even when in the...

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Mind out

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Toby Young L e Talking Cure, Christopher Hampton's new play about psychoanalysis, has finally opened at the National. The curtain was due to go up last December but it had to...

Self-taught great

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Michael Vestey J ulian Bream was rightly described by Humphrey Burton on Radio Three last week as one of our greatest living musicians and a clear successor to Segovia. The...

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Baffled spectator

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Simon Hoggart I suppose the reason that The Lost Prince (BBC1) works so well is that viewers identify with little Johnnie, the autistic and epileptic uncle of the present...

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Let it be

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Robin Oakley 0 n the death last year of Labour MP Frank Allaun one obituarist recalled Frank's story of the young man who returned from the first world war trenches full of...

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All is not lost

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Taki T Gstaad hese are quiet days and nights here, the noisy mobile telephone brigades having left immediately after the New Year. It is a sign of the times, the mobile...

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Shocked and shaken

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Jeremy Clarke I 'm sleeping with a 104-year-old woman. Yep, 104, going on 105. Have been for the last fortnight, too, since she fell between bed and commode in the night. The...

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Simply stupid

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Michael Henderson A BROKEN man came home last week on a slow boat from China. Paul Gascoigne still thinks there is some football left in him. Perhaps his rejection in the Far...

Q. As a newly commissioned officer in a regiment that

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considers itself both pukka and professional, I have recently encountered a problem concerning the etiquette at formal dinner nights. Once seated, one may not rise for relief...

Q. We recently spent a shooting weekend in the greatest

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comfort in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, the sporting delights of the house party were marred by the behaviour of one of the guns — Red Chris — who not only missed every bird...

Q. My husband has recently enrolled in a lip-reading course.

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This follows his refusal to wear ear-protectors over many years of shooting, which has resulted in his becoming increasingly deaf. Can you recommend any way in which he can gain...