D issent amongst backbench MPs cut the Government's majority to 36 in a Commons vote on the revenue support grant to be paid to local authorities charged with the collection of...

Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 NO MAN IS A CONTINENT e West used not to applaud when the T h tanks of the Soviet Army were sent in to crush revolt in some...

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For now we see through an SSA darkly NOEL MALCOLM 0 n April Fools' Day last year I re- ceived a letter from Mrs Margaret Hodge, the leader of Islington Council. It is always a...

FERDINAND MOUNT T he Round Table talks which are dis- cussing the future of East Germany are held in a nondescript, school-like building set in a park of spindly birches...

The American authorities have declared that this is at best a phony war Washington WHO said: 'Drugs threaten our stability. Drugs threaten our safety and drugs threaten the...

Stephen Handelman reports from yet another nation which is loosening the Soviet grip Kishinev TWO DAYS before Soviet troops opened fire on the citizens of Baku, I witnessed a...

This is the full text of the first speech by Vaclav Havel as President of Czechoslovakia MY dear fellow citizens, For 40 years you heard from my prede- cessors on this day...

Stephen Robinson finds that the careers of political activists depend on the South African cricket tour Johannesburgh THREE hours before Mike Gatting and his team touched down...

Richard West finds similarities between the divisions of the Mediterranean island and those of Ireland North Nicosia THE harrier which divides the city of Nicosia and extends...

Sousa Jamba is constantly reminded of his dead father every time he types MY SISTER Natalia, whom I had not seen for 13 years, came to visit me in London last year. Top on her...

WE apologise to any subscribers or donors of subscriptions who have suffered delays in renewal of their subscriptions or delivery of their gifts. The Spectator changed its...

It is a short walk from Edinburgh's Court of Session to the Laughing Duck. Rory Knight Bruce reports IF YOU sit down to dinner at the best window table in the Pompadour...

What's bad for you? FROM time to time the word goes round that regular doses of aspirin are bad for you. Now comes the British Medical Journal with the publication of a paper...

an outbreak of privacy-intrusion in a monthly glossy INTRUSION into privacy, the worst single failing of the British press, is not alas confined to the tabloids. As I have com-...

I HAVE a new candidate for my Golden Mile Award for businesses conducted with- out the customer in mind. The Award takes its name from Blackpool, where hungry attenders at a...

MY FROG under the table at Chevening was right. Budget Day is booked for 20 March, so as not to interfere with the Cheltenham races, which are run in the previous week. Our new...

Cash is king, the squeeze is on and John Major is a Norland Nanny CHRISTOPHER FILDES T his is it. The squeeze is on. Companies are caught in the vice, and it is tightening on...

THE first step in handling a Missouri mule, You may recall, is to attract your mule's attention, which you do by hitting it over the head as often as necessary with a length of...

Sir: When I told Peregrine Worsthorne in his office last 19 September that I was stepping aside as Chief Executive to make room for Conrad Black, he said: 'I am very, very sad....

January) is in- complete. Knight's most damaging act against the Sunday Telegraph was to take –or allow to be taken — the colour magazine from it when it was fighting neck and...

exalted as my friend Peregrine Worsthorne to Comment on vulgar tittle-tattle. But it would reassure those of us who wish to a Yinpathise with him in his outrage over Andrew...

Sir: Noel Malcolm criticises Dr Mervyn Stockwood, the former Bishop of South- wark (`Another Rumania', 20 January) for awarding Nicolae Ceausescu the ultimate accolade in...

Charles Moore writes: We have had a breakthrough. A Mr Geoffrey Carr has shown extraordinary generosity and taken up our invitation to contribute 100 subscriptions. In return,...

suggestion put forward by a Mr Steven Rawson, that one Craig Brown should replace the columnist who writes Wallace Arnold. You would lose my subscription! Not because I am a fan...

Sir: Veronica Gillespie, in her moving article on the Kindertransport (`Blooms- bury House days', 6 January), refers to the chairman of 'The Care of Children from Germany' as...

Sir: Steven Rawson (Letters, 13 January) has got it absolutely right: Wallace Arnold is really boring and unfunny. I would love to have Craig Brown writing there — his stuff in...

Sir: I was perplexed by Simon Blow's schoolmistressy review of my book To Noto (13 January) in which he is at great pains to explain how silly I am for not doing it his way....

Sir: In Ferdinand Mount's column CA decade and its books', 23 December, 1989) I find myself cited as an example of 'the grimmest development of the 1980's. . . . the...

John Diamond IN NEGRIL, when you're thirsty you reach up from your beach lounger, pull a coconut from the palm which shades you from the 90° heat, slice its top off with an old...

IT WOULD be difficult to conceive a better illustration of the depths of race- hatred which still exist in Europe than the "settlement" just arrived at in Bohemia. In that...

PORTUGUESE TRAVEL QUIZ SET BY ROSS CLARK A TRIO of ports from Taylors is on offer to the 12 winners of this Portuguese Travel Quiz. In addition, the first correct entry opened...

Into the Andes Peru ardua ad astra James Tickell My neighbour turned out to be the chief water engineer for Lima, who explained that the plane had been sitting on the tarmac...

Entry form Fill in your answers below and send the form, or a photocopy of it, to Taylor's Port Competition, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL, by 16 February....

Candide goes to Africa Colin Welch DUST IN A DARK CONTINENT by Robin Page R obin Page first hit the headlines when, as a civil servant in the social security department, he...

Patrick Reade ONE MAN'S MEDICINE by Archibald L. Cochrane with Max Blythe The Memoir ClubIBMJ, £14.95, pp.283 M edicine is a strait-jacket devised by the profession and...

John McEwen, is published in England by the University of Pennsylvania Press, £35.95, k25.95 .

Jonathan Guinness RICHARD ALDINGTON by Charles Doyle Macmillan, £19.95, pp.400 T . S. Eliot wrote in the early Sixties, after Richard Aldington's death and not long before...

Anita Brookner THE OTHER SIDE he House of Atreus, which gets a couple of mentions in Mary Gordon's family saga, has nothing on the Macnamar- as, all world-class grumblers and...

Joseph Hone FILOSOFA'S REPUBLIC by Thursday Msigwa Pickwick Books, £11.95, £5.95, pp.123 H ere is a droll piece of Africana, a spoof, a bonne-bouche, a succession of...

`The new meat is eaten with the old forks.' Bertolt Brecht (New Ages) And they Who never knew The fat meat of freedom, The strong beer of liberty, Are filled With bright...

John Gross REINVENTING SHAKESPEARE by Gary Taylor The Hagarth Press, £18, pp, 461 G ary Taylor knows a great deal about Shakespeare — which, given that he was Joint General...

John McEwen FRENCH FLOWER PAINTERS OF THE 19TH CENTURY by Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier and Etienne Grafe S ome of the most admired of flower painters — Redoute, Fantin Latour —...

Anthony Giddens A TREATISE ON SOCIAL THEORY, VOLUME II: SUBSTANTIVE SOCIAL THEORY by W. G. Runciman CUP, £35, £12.95, pp.512 T his book is sociology on the grand scale, in...

I expect the sun will rise, and then set, Tomorrow, for it has never failed yet: But one never knows, and all may crack and go Before I realise that it is so. C. H. Sisson

Staring it in the face — failure! Staring at the hooded typewriter. At least remove its cover. Look at the words those keys spell! Some of them you've never seen before Others...

Exhibitions 1 The Orient Observed (V & A till 25 February) Travellers in antique lands Roderick Conway Morris W hen Edward Lear visited the ancient remains of Petra in 1858...

Frans HaIs (Royal Academy, till S April) Hals of fame Giles Auty T he more famed the artist, the more difficult he or she seems to me to be to write about. What more can be...

Twelfth International Mime Festival (Various London venues, till 3 February) Mixed mime Deirdre McMahon 0 ne of the more bizarre scenes from this year's Mime Festival didn't...

Right ho, aunts! Ursula Buchan I t was 'one of those medium-sized houses with a goodish bit of very tidy garden and a. . . shrubbery that looked as if it had just come back...

Bent (Lyttelton) Diversions and Delights (Playhouse, till 3 March) Striking camp Christopher Edwards en years after Martin Sherman's play opened to such reclame at the Royal...

In Country (`15' selected cinemas) Through a glass darkly Hilary Mantel A n adoptive child who wishes to know about his natural parents attracts sympathy and concern, but...

Upstairs, downstairs Wendy Cope I f Spectator readers followed my recom- mendation and tuned in their thousands to the second edition of It Doesn't Have to Hurt (BBC 1,...

Turfed out Jeffrey Bernard A fter 20 years of having a metal press-badge to take me racing I have just been told that the badge committee of the Racecourse Association has...

Most unmannerly Taki ichael Thomas writes a column in the New York Observer, fortunately the smallest (4,000) circulation weekly in the Big Bagel. I say fortunately because...

THE European wine lake, swelled by the contributions of new members states such as Bulgaria, Rumania and the Soviet (Dis) Union, has grown to unmanageable prop- ortions. When,...

THE CURRENT debate over the possible immigration of the citizens of Hong Kong has been a shameful affair. The Foreign Secretary on one side and Norman Tebbit on the other have...

War heroes Raymond Keene I t is no secret that world champion Gary Kasparov is a great admirer of the stormy chessboard style of the former champion Alexander Alekhine. Recent...

Wicked glee Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1609 you were asked for a song of wicked glee from a postman, bus driver, plumber or other such 'opera- tive', describing the things...

A L P L E L 0 07 Trtir E l E E L I D A M7 U N1 6 E WL Eft ircttrt R A 2t.r N C H. A R. N E L 1. 0 G U 2 L M T T N I A E TFLEECT 2.0.1 CIS S I c l HI I A NI I 0 E II N T R E...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word `Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

From time to time letters of unconscious and staggering banality and tedium get printed in newspapers. You are invited to invent one such. Maximum 150 words. Entries to...