A little boy was killed by an IRA bomb in a shopping street in Warrington; a 12- year-old boy was wounded badly in the head and several others horribly injured. The Irish...

VICKI WOODS A nybody who writes for a living, as I do off and on, enjoys seeing his or her own name in print. Writers must love it, as the editors of low-paying magazines like...

Is Emma being tiresome or is it something much worse? AUBERON WAUGH h e editor of the Gloucestershire Echo has all my sympathy. In a recent issue he railed against this...

Charles Clover argues that John Major; Brixton boy, does not care about the environment, and is putting short-term employment ahead of our children's future THIS QUARTER'S gas...

Anne Applebaum meets the man who brought down Italy's entire ruling class Milan 'LUCA WHO?' My acquaintance looked up, puzzled. The name rang a bell, but he couldn't quite...

Michael Heath

John Simpson on how Britain's woes became the ammunition of the French political classes during the elections Paris 'They order,' said I, 'this matter better in France.' IT'S...

DO DUCKS have butts? That question sounds like the one Alice asked herself as she was falling down the deep shaft to Wonderland: 'Do cats eat bats? Do bats eat cats?' I only...

persist. . . ONCE UPON a time, long, long ago, I very nearly became a vegetarian. I had read a book describing the conditions in our factory farms, and was appalled; it seemed...

Andrew Kenny says that his fellow South Africans view with numb detachment their country's slide into murderous chaos Natal THE END OF empire is coming to South Africa, and so...

THE EVIDENCE that a German tailor, named Dowe, has invented a bullet- proof cloth, weighing about 61b per suit more than ordinary cloth, seems to be irresistible. The German...

Simon Heifer talks to Kenneth Clarke, the Home Secretary, about his plans to reform the police, and other ambitions AN IMMUTABLE law of politics is that Cabinet ministers, in...

Isabel Wolff investigates the uncontrolled expansion of author's acknowledgments FIRST OF ALL, may I say how deeply indebted I am to my editor, Dominic Law- son, for his...

Faded splendours and current miseries of the media Left PAUL JOHNSON 0 ne reason why the Labour Party is so chopfallen and failing to exploit the floun- derings of John...

On the rails, up in the air dear Lord Mayor, don't change the price, change the package CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he City of London built railways all over the world — from...

— is he getting better, by the way? — about the part played by Andreas Whittam Smith, the editor of the daily Independent, in the John Birt affair. Two points. One, Andreas is...

astrological career, writing 'telephone horoscopes'. The work load was daunting — seven days and 12 star signs meant 84 scripts a week. How- ever, modern technology came to the...

Sir: Stress is indeed a good old English word, with a more precise meaning than Ms Wordsworth (Mind your language, 6 March) ascribes to it. It is the force acting on a material...

my own work as an astrologer or my column at the Sunday Times more often than not reveal a complete lack of familiarity with the subject. This was the case with Petronella...

Sir: Petronella Wyatt is perfectly right in drawing attention to the lack of any positive evidence for astrological phenomena, and to deprecate the profusion of media exposi-...

1939, 'There will be no war', as told by Petronella Wyatt in her interesting article. I also remember that we could hardly wait for the People on the fol- lowing Sunday to see...

Sir: Paul Johnson has combined his defence of John Birt with an attack on the income tax system (And another thing, 20 March). But in writing, 'Birt voluntarily filed his tax...

Sir: Anne McElvoy's article on the mating habits of the German male ('We might as well make love', 13 March) confirm all our worst suspicions and prejudices about Ger- many...

Sir: Though reluctant to contribute to The Spectator's transformation into a chess jour- nal, could I take issue with Paul Johnson's chess column of 6 March (And another...

Sir: Paul Johnson might have called to mind (And another thing, 13 March) the long wilderness years endured by the Con- servatives after dissidents had split their Party in 1846...

Sir: Although a modern clergyman is prob- ably capable of almost any verbal solecism, I am sure that the Edwardian-looking cleric in Castro's cartoon (13 March) would never have...

Sir: I read in your diary of 6 March that you would have no complaint if the landowner of the house the leasehold of which you had bought refused to sell to you. This will not...

Sir: There are only two Paps of Jura (Let- ters, 30 January, 6, 20 February). I have walked laboriously all round them and in between them, discussing the character of your...

Sir: The excellent articles by Simon Heifer and Christopher Fildes on Mr Lamont's lat- est Budget do a fine demolition job on the Chancellor's work ('Getting out of it', 20...

A foreign country is the past James Buchan A SUITABLE BOY by Vikram Seth Phoenix House, £20, pp. 1349 n the present fallen condition of litera- ture, we are still haunted by...

Ronald Mutebi THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN by Basil Davidson James Currey, £9.95, pp. 372 I f you look at the present deeply trou- bled condition of Africa, it is easy to let gloom...

Simon Curtis TRYING TO SAVE PIGGY SNEED by John Irving Bloomsbury, 170.99, pp. 250 h ere are two short and four longer stories in this collection, set between the title-piece...

Francis King A LONELY DEVIL by Sousa Jamba Fourth Estate, £12.99, pp. 154 I t is a common fallacy that people incapable of love are unlovable. But in the case of Nando, the...

Michael Hulse NATURAL OPIUM by Diane Johnson Chatto, £10.99, pp. 234 I am not fond of travel in the best of circumstances,' the American novelist Diane Johnson tells us in the...

Some I admire assert verse fails when its theme is private hurt or love — for what, then, of public affairs? My daughter sleeps upstairs. Winter waits at the pane. I go...

Frances Partridge ON KISSING, TICKLING AND BEING BORED: PSYCHOANALYTIC ESSAYS ON THE UNEXAMINED LIFE by Adam Phillips Faber, £14.99, pp. 143 he title of this book may well...

James Teacher RONNIE WALLACE: THE AUTHORIZED VERSION by Robin Rhoderick-Jones Quitter Press, £16.95, pp. 186 OU might have thought our old dog- fox, entering his 74th season,...

The trick is, to live your days as if each one may be your last (for they go fast, and young men lose their lives in strange and unimaginable ways) but at the same time, plan...

Harriet Waugh ASTA'S BOOK by Barbara Vine Viking, £1 5.99, pp. 437 I n her last novel and here, in Asta's Book, Barbara Vine has invested a good deal of effort in research....

Janet Barron OPERATION SHYLOCK: A CONFESSION by Philip Roth Cape, £14.99, pp. 398 T he story behind this review is as bizarre and appropriate as anything in Operation Shylock....

The train is moving; Out of the window I'm waving; Sister, daughter, friend and son Wait on the platform unaware The train has gone. Behind them, relations, people At parties,...

John Bowen UTOPIA AND OTHER PLACES by Richard Eyre Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 206 h is is a book written by someone who has no time to write a book. Consequently, Richard Eyre has...

L ye and hate are fed from the same springs. When I was trying for Cambridge I told them all about my favourite modern writer. It was his sneer I loved, though I didn't put it...

Exhibitions 1 Victorian Landscape Watercolours (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, till 12 April) 'The innocence of the eye' Celina Fox I n his Academy Notes for 1857,...

The Sixties: Art Scene in London (Barbican Art Gallery, till 13 June) Lest we forget Giles Auty R ecently I was criticised by a young woman employed in one of our publicly...

No laughing matter Robin Holloway 0 ccasionally, a vocal work altogether outside opera seems to cry out for visual dramatisation, whether a song-cycle (Schu- bert's...

Hoffa ('15', selected cinemas) Candyman (`18', selected cinemas) Myopic biopic Vanessa Letts T he film Hoffa is a rough ride, full of shouting and fights and sudden switches...

PELL 5 MAI A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics OPERA La Boheme, Grand Theatre, Leeds (0532 459351), from 16 April....

Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love (Hampstead) Chatsky (Almeida) Sent mad by microwaves Sheridan Morley N ot a lot has ever been thought to hap- pen in...

Luwies for luwies Martyn Harris T he only halfway decent joke in the Bafta show (BBC1, Sunday, 8.00 p.m.) came from a desperately mugging Mel Smith, fronting the Los Angeles...

Grateful for small mercies Jeffrey Bernard W hen the radio channel Classic FM was first launched, I found it a welcome change to the attrition of Radio 3. I liked the snippets...

Place your bets Taki I t is a terrible thing to confess, but I was rather flattered to be 11 to one to marry the Princess of Wales, according to the Tatler this month. For...

A link with the future Nigel Nicolson he publication of the route to be taken by the high-speed rail-link from Lon- don to the Channel Tunnel has aroused inevitable protests...

ON 25 MARCH, we celebrated the great- est event in history, the Incarnation of Our Lord on the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when the Archangel Gabriel...

Raymond Keene T he ongoing saga of the breakaway world chess championship orchestrated by Gary Karparov and Nigel Short has, as I write, still not been resolved. With less than...

Boring is beautiful Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1771 you were in- vited to write a poem in praise of some banal, prosaic and poetically neglected activity. This competition...

A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 13 April, with two runners-up prizes of £10 (or, for UK...

King of the river Frank Keating BEFORE THEY built their swish riverside grandstand 20 years ago, we used to lean over the cinder banking high above the cor- ner flag at Craven...

Q. What can one do when the person behind the Post Office counter slides the Sheet of stamps one has just bought towards one sticky side down? There must be untold numbers of...