T he Princess of Wales, attended by the Prince, gave birth to a son and heir on the day of the summer solstice. Some sug- gested the child might be called Stanley, to...

The Railway Children Peter Paterson 1 - 1 ne sign that, unlike the Argies, we live in a democracy, and not under a fascist dictatorship, was vouchsafed by the House of...

Ciongratulations to the Princess of Wales on her son. In the most important department of our national life the dominance of the male sex is now guaranteed for at least two...

UK Eire Surfaue mail Air mail 6 months: £15.50 1R£17.75 £18.50 £24.50 One year: £31.00 1R£35.50 £37.00 £49.00 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made payable to the...

Studies in loyalty Auberon Waugh 'T he Falklands victory notwithstanding,' 1 wrote Alan Watkins at the end of his trenchant article in the Observer this week, 'loyalty is...

Patrick Desmond And now the repercussions: in Argentina, in the Falklands, at the Treasury, in the Foreign Office, among the armed forces, in the nation. What are they likely...

Max Hastings Port Stanley T awoke from a chilly doze on Monday /morning to find a thin crust of frozen snow covering my sleeping bag and equip- ment in the dawn. Around me in...

Christopher Hitchens New York T ast Friday Menachem Begin addressed 1-ithe United Nations special session on disarmament. More than two thirds of the delegates stayed away, and...

Patrick Marn ham Managua, Nicaragua T he journey to the Sandinista Peoples' Republic of Nicaragua started in Panama, and before I set out I had a con- versation with Cervantes,...

Michael Field T he members of the Saud family and the ordinary citizens of Saudi Arabia firm- ly believe that King Khaled is in heaven. On earth he has no monument. In...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft I s South Africa too democratic? It may seem a perverse question to ask of a country where fewer than one adult in five is enfranchised. Especially so when...

Richard West Paris W ords like desastre, catastrophe and bouleversement are scarcely adequate to the French these days who have witness- ed not only two devaluations but the...

Norman Down T his account of a cricket match more than a century ago between the Bheel Corps and the Malegaon Cricket Club, in the Khandeish District of the Bombay Presidency,...

The effort of the poor Jews in Russia to emigrate to America is impeded by an unexpected difficulty. It is the practice of the Emigration Committee at New York to find work for...

The electronic nursery Paul Johnson I n a much-quoted lecture given at last year's Edinburgh TV festival, Peter Jay forecast the breakdown of Britain's tightly- regulated TV...

An evil conjunction Tony Rudd W hen Mars is in conjunction with Venus and the Great Bear is simultaneously on its back astrologers mut- ter about the possibility of some...

Sir: Max Hastings's discovery of the verb `to hack' (22 May) reminds me of my first encounter with the verb. Some years ago, while travelling on a crowded commuter train to New...

Sir: Mr Anthony Gilbey writes (Letters 12 June) that he was profoundly irritated by the coincidence of the shift made by French radio from reference to 'Port Stanley' to...

Sir: To say that Tony Crosland was educated 'at a private school in Highgate', as A. N. Wilson does in the review of Susan Crosland's recent biography (12 June), sug- gests that...

Sir: Anglicans today must be all but im- munised from the almost perpetual belittle- ment of their church and its leaders, mostly by writers who betray that their criticism is...

Fishy tale Sir: May I be allowed to add a footnote to the 'Fishy tale' (Letters, 12 June) about the Surrealist Exhibition of 1936 in Burlington House, which I well remember? My...

(5 June) that there is no attempt in the Spanish press at giving the castellano of Goose Green. Were he reading El Alcazar as carefully as he pretends he would have seen Ganso...

A stretcher case John Braine Henry: An Appreciation of Henry William- son Daniel Farson (Michael Joseph £8.95) W hen I first met Henry Williamson in 1947, I was less than...

Peter Quennell rr he knowledge that he plays a double role, and occupies a somewhat am- biguous position in the landscape of his age, has often had a strong and stimulating...

Elizabeth Jenkins T he breakdown of divisions, intellectual as well as social, once clearly defined, is still recent enough to afford surprises. A book of etiquette published a...

Peter Levi w hen the Pope's poems appeared in England in 1979, in the first book of his poetry ever to appear anywhere, the ob- vious thing to say was that it was like a bear...

Gavin Stamp The Beaux-Arts and nineteenth-century French architecture Edited by Robin Mid- dleton (Thames & Hudson £18) H aving dominated French architecture for a century and...

Naomi Mitch ison The Radical Left in Britain 1931-1941 James Jupp (Cass £16) T his book is not about who might, or probably might not, have been suborn- ed into the...

Harriet Waugh The Parasite Person Celia Frernlin (Gollancz £6.95) T he first mystery in Antonia Fraser's detective novel, Cool Repentance, is why it is not set in Ireland. The...

Angus Wilson We continue our occasional series in which contributors write of a book which has been important in their lives. This week, Angus Wilson recalls The Harp and the...

Brian Masters The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadheater Gregory Tillett (Routledge & Kegan Paul £12.50) W hat should one make of a man whose powers of...

Leaps and bounds Jann Parry Nureyev Festival (Coliseum) Kirov Ballet (Palais des Congres, Paris) N ureyev, like Nijinsky, left the Russian ballet tradition in which he had...

Print, then paint John McEwen onsidering the number of column inches The Times tends to give faded actresses and test cricketers of yesteryear when they die, Adrian Stokes —...

DECENT FELLOWS by John Heygate and 'Mufti' by Sapper. A. Fort, 38 Thurloe Square, London SW7. ANY NOVEL by Auberon Waugh. John Fawcett, 66 Northcote Rd, Portswood, Southampton,...

Living doll Mark Amory A Doll's House (The Pit) Design for Living (Greenwich) Captain Brassbound 's Conversion (Hay- market) Dreyfus (Hampstead) Wild, Wild Women (Astoria)...

Growing up Peter Ackroyd The Chosen ('A', Academy Two) T he apparent smallness of this film belies the largeness of its imagination; it is set in the Jewish area of Brooklyn...

Madness Richard In grams M y columnar neighbour, Jeffrey Ber- nard, who recently celebrated his 50th birthday, should take comfort as 1 do in what another Spectator columnist,...

Happy Argies Taki Buenos Aires L iving at a Sheraton Hotel in a peaceful city a thousand miles away from the ac- tion, bears as much resemblance to being a war correspondent...

Side-swipe Jeffrey Bernard S peculation as to the choice of the England squad to bore the arse off the rest of the world ended early this morning after hours of agonising and...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for a parody of a newspaper columnist deal- ing in Nature Notes, with or without regard to accurate natural history. Thank you, the...

No. 1224: Pure prejudice Set by Jaspistos: You are invited to write a poem (maximum 16 lines) describing the obnoxious characteristics of the people of a nation you have never...

A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 12 July. Entries to: Crossword 563, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. 4 9 5...

Arms race Raymond Keene T op class chess is so fiercely competitive, and the impact of openings innovations can be so deadly, that anyone who possesses the most complete and...

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A , Y ..,' ci Published by The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL

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