Bringing up father. Liverpudlians shouted, 'Kill the bas- tards,' as two ten-year-old boys left court where they had been accused of murdering a two-year-old boy abducted from...

A cruel blow of fate further narrows an already unprepossessing field SIMON HEFFER S ince 1979 the death of a Tory MP has usually provoked the feeling that the party will...

DEBORAH DEVONSHIRE M ore on our attempts at Chatsworth to merge town and country. As well as our educational farmyard we have a schools day run jointly between Derbyshire...

Whither the newly empowered American female? AUBERON WAUGH R ecently on this page I complained that it is no longer possible to tell an Amer- ican's sex by its name, but I...

Matthew Parris examines the character of his old colleague, John Major, and argues that the man's talent for friendship can prove costly THE COURTSHIP ritual being danced on...

John Simpson observes the state of decay in Cuba: even middle- class women are on the game Havana `QUE UNDO est el, how beautiful he is,' sighed a stately woman beside me in...

I WAS called out to a local housing estate last week because a lady was reported to be disturbing her neighbours there at night. As I approached her house, I felt the rhythmic...

Daisy Waugh wanders through 'New Mogadishu' - a vast camp for Somali refugees Utange HE GRABBED my hand from behind so I spun around a little nervously. He called me madam, I...

Michael Heath

As crisis deepens at Lloyd's, Martin Vander Weyer meets the insurance market's most notorious outcast `THE MOST money we ever made in Lloyd's was out of war risks. We made...

Frederick Lawton argues that corporal punishment might be the only answer to violent young criminals IT IS ironic that the Home Secretary should, at last, have reacted to the...

THE Sherlock Holmes stories have an abiding fascination, despite the cliché and artificiality of their language and plots; perhaps because of them. Colonel Openshaw, upon...

Plenty of Continental palms waiting to be greased PAUL JOHNSON H ave you ever been obliged to offer a bribe? It has happened to me on a number of occasions. One I particularly...

Bumping along the bottom of the first division, Barclays eyes the transfer list CHRISTOPHER FILDES B ad figures take longer to add up than good ones (Lord Lawson's Law) so we...

from Mr P.F. Loder Dyer (Let- ters, 20 February) neatly based on Pierre- Joseph Proudhon's maxim that property is theft (`La propriete c 'est le vol') with its Jacobin echoes....

Sir: Brian Masters (`Strange death of the English euphemism', 13 February) would have revelled in the contribution to this subject made by Sir Noel Goldie QC, for many years...

Sir: How sad that The Spectator, home of free thought, should have swallowed so uncritically the propaganda issuing from freeholder interests (`Lands of inheritance', 13...

Sir: Stephen Robinson (`The phoney in the White House', 20 February) tells us that the sanctioning .of the execution of the con- victed black cop-killer Rickey Ray Rector by...

Sir: Veronica Lodge (`Unforgivably well- connected', 20 February) writes that cham- pagne, allegedly seen in Darius Guppy's hotel room in New York, 'was actually a quite...

Sir: After working in the clock and antique restoration trade for nearly half a century, I read Bruce Boucher's excellent article (Arts, 9 January) on conservation with fas-...

Sir: The notion of a Nick Serota-Charles Saatchi-Goldsmiths' College plot to take control of modern art is absurd. Some debunking is in order. Of course some over-promoted...

Sir: I apologise for the typing bloomer in my review last week (Books, 20 February) in which I wrote 'Grew' instead of `Craigie'. Craigie was the British Ambassador in Tokyo and...

Lurking in the shadows still James Buchan TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH: THE HUNT FOR THE JACKAL by David Yallop Cape, f17.99, pp. 580 C arlos, who started life as the Venezuelan...

Piers Paul Read THE CHATTO BOOK OF THE DEVIL edited by Francis Spufford Chatto & Windus, £15.99, pp. 396 I t is a pity that Francis Spufford's intro- duction to his...

J. Enoch Powell A DEEPER SILENCE: THE HIDDEN ORIGINS OF THE UNITED IRISHMEN by A.T.Q. Stewart Faber, £25, pp. 256 T he assertion of Parliament's control over the executive,...

An Essex marsh of excrement, An Albert Dock of pee, We're each of a process plant, Which buggers up the sea. Tim Hopkins

John Colvin GIAP: THE VICTOR IN VIETNAM by Peter Macdonald Fourth Estate, £17.99, pp. 368 G eneral Jean de Lattre de Tassigny arrived in Saigon in December 1950 as High...

The ordinary intervenes, to show that distance-shrinking summer, bringing smiles and tourists to the taverns, told us tales. We wake today astonished to see snow: it seems to...

John Gummer THE LOSS OF VIRTUE edited by Digby Anderson Social Affairs Unit, £15.95, pp. 258 I t is ironic that Stiffelio — Verdi's lost opera — should have given Covent Garden...

John Bowen EMLYN WILLIAMS by James Harding Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f20, pp. 255 citing the biography of someone still alive or only recently dead is an unsatisfac- tory...

Anita Brookner MEMORIES OF THE FORD ADMINISTRATION by John Updike Hamish Hamilton, £15.99, pp. 371 ohn Updike goes post-modern' might be, but is not, the publishers' announce-...

Brian Masters THE ASTORS by Derek Wilson Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20, pp. 439 M r Wilson has contrived to cover an old tree with fresh leaves. His is not the first book to...

Lesley Glaister PEERLESS FLATS by Esther Freud Hamish Hamilton, £14.99, pp. 192 I n Peerless Flats Esther Freud gives not just a twist to the usual adolescent tale but a...

Photography Too good to be true Tanya Harrod argues that photography is losing its power to represent the real world A moment has been caught in time and frozen. The...

Royal Ballet (Covent Garden) Given the runaround Sophie Constanti D avid Bintley's new ballet, Tombeaux, follows the recent announcement that he is, apparently by mutual...

Compulsive arguments Giles Auty proposes a way out of the present modernist morass T he Guardian recently reproduced the text of the acceptance speech of Alexander Solzhenitsyn...

A River Runs Through It (`PO', selected cinemas) Bad Lieutenant (`18', Odeon Haymarket) Gone fishing Vanessa Letts O ne of the palpable undercurrents in Robert Redford's A...

Trelawny of the Wells (Olivier) The Invisible Man (Vaudeville) All's Wells Sheridan Morley L ike its near-contemporary Peter Pan, Trelawny of the Wells is one of those...

A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics OPERA La Favorite, New Theatre, Cardiff (0222 394844), 6 March, then touring. Welsh...

Putting up with Potter Martyn Harris B umholes!' was the first line of Lip- stick on Your Collar (Channel 4, Sunday, 9 p.m.), followed more eloquently by: Sum- holes,...

The man who shot Hambro Talc' T he Tories made an astute move when they appointed Charles Hambro as their treasurer. Although I've never met him, the banker owes his life to...

Toes and roses Jeffrey Bernard M y doctor sent a chiropodist round to my flat yesterday to amputate my toenails. In case you don't know it I should tell you that diabetics...

Lovable Lutyens Nigel Nicolson T he sweetest man I have ever known was Edwin Lutyens, the architect. In his middle life he became the intimate friend of my grandmother and was...

MY, MY, how the year goes by. The purple vestments are back and Lent has com- menced with a rousing sermon from Father Ignatius at the London Oratory (he always seems to get the...

Raymond Keene T here was an excellent response to Nigel Short's superb feat in qualifying to play Kasparov for the world title later this year. Last week Kasparov visited...

A rough crew Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1767 you were in- vited to supply, for a modern opera, a chorus of sailors aboard Beachcomber's imaginary craft, HMS Horrible....

A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 15 March, with two runners-up prizes of £10 (or, for UK...

A nation of moaners Frank Keating ENGLISH sportsmen are getting it in the neck from all sides. I detect the feeling that they are somehow being deemed represen- tatives of the...

Dear Mary.. . Q. I always read your advice with interest, but may I take you up on one point, namely nose-picking (30 January)? I should explain that I am a doctor (retired)....