Bedlam M idsummer was celebrated with the now traditional confrontation between the Wiltshire Constabulary and convoys of 'hippies' in the area surrounding Stonehenge. Six...

`MUCH is speciously made of Ridley's roots in the north of England. `He is 59 and the son of a Jewish family, variously described as: an old border clan employed to keep out the...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 POINTING THE MORALS foreign policy that is utterly moral, wholly consistent...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £45.00 0 £23.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £55.00 0 £28.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $90 0 USS45 Rest of...

The survival of the fitters, the engineers and the electricians NOEL MALCOLM T he blood rises when they start on me,' Mr Eric Hammond once confided to an interviewer; 'I do...

journalist, is not to be on terms of intimacy with a single Cabinet minister. They fail, I think, to appreciate that I am prepared to offer life-long loyalty in return for...

On Reading Drabble's Case for Equality in a health farm AUBERON WAUGH 0 Champney's Health Resort, Tring n this visit to my favourite health farm, where the efficiency,...

In reconciling Church and state, Russia is rediscovering itself. J. Enoch Powell reports on his recent visit. IN JUNE 1977 I wrote after a visit to Russia that 'I have seen a...

Con Coughlin reveals how life imitates art in New York politics New York THE scene is the modern glass and con- crete Ebenezer Baptist Church in the unremarkable New York...

'The [House of Commons select] com- mittee [on education] asked the Depart- ment of Education and Science for an explanation in a report . . . showing unease about . . ....

Tony Samstag views the horrors of a film on child pornography Oslo THE European ministers of justice attend- ing their biennial meeting in Lisbon this week have been subjected...

Rupert Scott reports on the latest rebellion of the traditionalist Archbishop Lefebvre Rome IT HAS been some years since the Italian anti-clerical press has enjoyed itself so...

Charles Moore remembers T. E. Utley, the journalist, who died this week ON THE first day that I ever visited Fleet Street, in October 1979, I sat in the offices of the editor...

Richard West argues that keeping pubs open decreases violence `THERE'S too much shackling of the police these days,' said Sergeant Voules, in P.G. Wodehouse's Thank You,...

Alexandra Artley predicts the decline of aggressive synthetic perfumes In the effluent Eighties, the Pong family is increasingly led by the nose. In the morn- ing Mr Pong...

THE National Society for the Educa- tion of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church held its annual meeting on Tuesday, the Archbishop of Canterbury presiding, and...

The press: Paul Johnson looks at an intruder in the art world CONSIDERING the huge number of peo- ple who attend art exhibitions, and the prodigious sums of money now spent at...

THE party is over, and in the City nursery this week the children could scarcely wait for Nanny to get back from abroad and start ladling her medicine. The money market, which a...

THE recurrent nature of trains on the Circle Line is among the London Under- ground's longer-lasting difficulties, as its management explained last week to Domi- nic Lawson. Not...

IAIN Valiance, British Telecom's chair- man, confronting his most tenacious critic this week, was offered a large bunch of flowers. There was, as he might have expected, a catch...

High noon in the Abraham Lincoln Room for the Bishop of the Savoy CHRISTOPHER FILDES I t is almost worth buying a Savoy share to go to next week's meeting. A 'B' share will...

W. Deedes. As a young diplomat at the Belgian foreign minister's office it was also 'my Munich'. But if I share Mr Deedes's persisting emotion, I do not feel about the events as...

Sir: As a member of the working class, I turned to your summer food and wine section (11 June) to see what was to be said about chips. After all, most people like chips and they...

Sir: Mr William Deedes (`My Munich', 4 June) points out that the deficiencies of civil defence influenced ministers against war over Czechoslovakia in 1938. But, although he...

Sir: Your Portrait of the Week in the issue of 28 May says, 'Oxford University announced that the Regius Professorship of Greek would be left unfilled for at least two years'....

Sir: You and your correspondents continue to miss out the most important reason why cannabis should be sold, regulated and taxed like alcohol, and narcotics prescribed to...

The figure for Palestinian Arabs killed between 1936 and 1939, in the letter from Charles Glass (9 April), should have been 5,032, as originally given in his article `When clubs...

Sir: Let Murray Sayle (`My friend Kim', 21 May) take heart: Philby, who lied to all the world, inCluding Claire Hollingworth, told him the truth for once. The Record of Old...

Sir: Your leading article (`Carry on Nurse', 4 June) contains so many inaccuracies it is difficult in a short letter to correct them all but I will attempt to put the record...

Sir: Roy Kerridge's article ('Blacks and blues in Mississippi',. 7 May) in which he discovered a 'new kind of prejudice' in the American South, should be in your '. . and...

Sir: Sir Michael Levey's appreciative re- view of Sir Lawrence Gowing's Paintings in the Louvre (9 April) regretted the museum's 'meagre representations of the 18th-century...

Sir: With reference to the article, 'Bring back Botany Bay' (14 May), could I suggest to Mr Barker that England finds her own space for penal settlements? While I appreciate...

the establishment of . huMane penal colonies. This is a splendid idea whose complete dismissal by prison reformers and the Government is inexplicable. I raised the suggestion in...

Sir: Was Goethe (Books, 16 April) a coward to be afraid of the pox? In his day syphilis, common in Rome and Naples, was a killer. Circumspection, as with Aids now, was common...

Gavin Stamp THE streets of London may never have been paved with gold but at least they were properly paved. Granite kerb stones di- vided road surfaces of wood blocks or...

Innocents at home William Deedes A DAY'S work in Tudor Street (off Fleet Street) done, and an evening's drinking with companions accomplished, we might very well move to the...

The bomb parties Mary So ames I was nearly 17 when war was declared; here are snapshots from my memory's scrap book for the Forties. The heavens were hourly expected to fall —...

Causing a nuisance Frank Johnson W hat the sociologists and the roman- ticisers said about the old boroughs where native Londoners tended to be born and bred remained broadly...

Flared trousers and satire Nicholas Garland I N 1960 I was 25 years old and working as a stage manager at the Royal Court Theatre. By the end of the decade, I was married for...

The spirit of Vauxhall Alan Powers ineteenth-century urban growth and the spread of middle-class morality irrevoc- ably changed the character of the London- er's recreations....

The other side of the street Jerome Burn A terrible thing has happened to Jermyn Street. That bastion of elite shop- ping for the English gentleman, specialis- ing in bespoke...

Infirm of purpose John Bayley ARMADA by Duff Hart-Davis Bantam Press, £16.95, pp. 224 ARMADA by Peter Padfield Gollancz, f14.95, pp. 208 THE SPANISH ARMADA by Colin Martin...

Edna Healey THE SIXTH GREAT POWER: BARINGS 1762-1929 by Philip Ziegler Collins, .f17.50, pp. 430 I n the second week of October 1890, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Viscount...

Anita Brookner THE SCHOOL OF GENIUS by Anthony Storr Deutsch, £12.95, pp.216 T his book brings excellent news for those who, whatever their reasons for so doing, live alone,...

Paul Taylor A LIFE by Elia Kazan Deutsch, £17.95, pp.848 M umps in adolescence deprived Elia Kazan of one of his testicles, but balls, oddly enough, are the last thing you...

I.m. W.H. Chaloner ob. 25.v.1987 Professor Chaloner linked the history Of fish and chips to the cotton industry, My native town of Oldham especially. — This in the legendary...

Anne Chisholm RIVALS by Jilly Cooper Bantam, £11.95, pp. 542 T he trouble with Jilly Cooper's new novel Rivals, a sequel to her immensely successful romantic saga Riders, is...

I read of `sharon fruit', and find it on The supermarket shelves at umpteen p Per rather dubious tomato shape. The 'rose of Sharon' — what is that? I have To turn the pages of...

At night, as regularly as the foxes, The ants emerge. In our suburban boxes We're not safe from this other scavenger, Call into play the chemicals we'd bar Against the larger,...

The blackbirds sound alarm. I penetrate The evening garden, scare off thieving magpies. Then hear from deep indoors not apposite Rossini but unearthly notes of Bach. O cello...

John Jolliffe CHALIAPIN by Victor Borovsky Hamish Hamilton, f25, pp.540 CHALIAPIN: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS TOLD TO MAXIM GORKY edited by Nina Froud and James Hanley Columbus Books,...

Holland Festival Mao a la mode Adrian Dannatt Nixon in China (Muziektheater, Amsterdam) T o understand the flavour of the Hol- land Festival it is necessary to remember that...

Mystery Plays (York) How the Other Half Loves (Duke of York's) In the beginning Christopher Edwards T he ruined arches of St Mary's Abbey make a very attractive setting for...

Russian Painting (Century Gallery, till 16 July) French Paintings from the USSR: Watteau to Matisse (National Gallery, till 18 September) Isolating the problem Giles Auty W...

They cannot be serious Ferdinand Mount I n the celebrated case of Meacher v. Trelford and Others, it will be recalled that counsel for the plaintiff assured the jury that...

A Handful of Dust ('PG', Cannon Shaftesbury Avenue) Not quite by the book Hilary Mantel I f you saw this film without knowledge, even at second hand, of the book on which it...

Right-hand man Jeffrey Bernard L ast Saturday afternoon I went with a friend into the Mecca betting shop in Greek Street to listen to a race commen- tary. I had a financial...

Splendour on the grass Taki I hadn't thought of it until I walked around SW19 on opening day last Monday. It's been 20 years since Wimbledon opened its doors to the pros, thus...

Table talk Alice Thomas Ellis He and I and Beryl and Janet climbed into the car and took off, leaving Gladys Mary and Graham neck-deep in Welsh lore at the dining-room table....

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

Leg up Raymond Keene T he second leg of the Grandmaster Association World Cup is currently in progress in Belfort, France. As in Brussels there is an enormous prize fund at...

In a lather Tom Castro The subject was suggested by Mr Kings- ley Amis in a review of a volume celebrat- ing Larkin's life, in which a contributor revealed this practice. As...

Imperative cooking: the faggot divide e0 t IT'S the combination of Jolt Cola and a weekend in Cheltenham that explains the current English culinary problem and spells out the...

Boswell records for 1 April 1775 that Johnson scraped and dried orange skins, but refused to say what he did with them then. A solution, please (maximum 150 words) in the style...

joial s I ijaP ala . 1. a D IMO T I C N ECJIME I II Oak T '6 UIRT UE ELLOW I S' 7 1 TiiUS! TIEN OT ItN S Olin R9 OU A AN la L Nil T 1 Y M P. G S EL 3 010 id A 2...

4aeltioaxoEctx0X3coMNEXIMItAXODEcti t t ink t Trviiana University O CR 1 1988 Library t: 11011LIMIEWUMME316; Published by The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL

Arrangement of entries Entries are arranged in letter-by-letter alphabetical order, i.e. spaces between words are ignored. Thus the entry 'Athletics' precedes 'At night'....

A) t ARTICLE AA RTS VOICE CO COMPETITION CS) CITY AND SUBURBAN ) DIARY ) THE Ecottostv I) ILLUSTRATION LA) LEADING ARTICLE LETTER ) LIFE AND LETTERS Nom P) POEM PC) Pot.mcs...