`OK so I do heroin — I can handle it.' O ne person was killed and 17 were seriously injured when two trains collided in Staffordshire. Princess Anne made a ferocious attack on...

MORE DIPLOMATIC KREMLIN I t has been a good week for East-West relations. The deal reached after more than two years of hard bargaining at the Conference on European Security...

THE Centre for Policy Studies, founded by Sir Keith Joseph and Mrs Margaret Thatcher shortly after the fall of the Heath government, has just published a pamphlet called The...

Going nearly naked into the conference chamber FERDINAND MOUNT owards dusk, outside my window, a Salvation Army band strikes up 'Abide with Me', slow and draggy. A pleasurable...

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER O n Monday there were quickly stifled reports that Prince Charles himself was horrified by the first of the two ITV films about his public and private life —...

The hideous dangers awaiting those who stir abroad AUBERON WAUGH I first went to Corfu 26 year ago, when it was most easily approached by the ferry from Dubrovnik in Croatia...

More and more people are arming themselves in readiness for a breakdown in civil order. William Shawcross investigates Survivalism LAST year's riots at Broadwater Farm marked...

John Ralston Saul explains why it is so hard to catch the perpetrators of the current bombings Paris ONE of the cinemas showing Eric Rohmer's new film, Le Rayon Vert, is only...

Christopher Hitchens looks behind American worries about test-ban verification Washington IN the long, exhausting run-up to a possi- ble superpower summit, the Reagan admi-...

Dhiren Bhagat explains why the front-line states will not impose sanctions against South Africa Harare–Lusaka LAST week I called on the general mana- ger of Barclays Bank of...

THE Times' correspondent in Paris publishes and vouches for an account of the means by which M. de Freycinet compelled the Pope to give up his project of sending a Legate, and...

Sam Hird on the arrest of seven blameless Czechoslovaks THE Prague arrests reported in last week's Spectator are the culmination of a five-year struggle of the Czechoslovak...

THE NATIONHOOD OF NOTTING HILL assumption that peoples should be granted self-determination IN G. K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill King Auberon of England splits...

Ronald Payne leafs through the byways of newspaper style books IT IS a brave newspaper that exposes its own style book to the public gaze. The Economist has just gone in for...

The press: Paul Johnson discusses the value of serialised newspaper memoirs MEMOIRS or official biographies of famous men have long produced staple fodder for national...

Sir: The letters of Kingsley Amis and James Michie (6 and 13 September) re- mind me that I once tried in vain to defend `a les' to my French master on the grounds that `les' was...

Sir: As a serving police officer, may I comment on your editorial `Tickety Boo' (13 September)? The new fixed penalty procedure is hardly an 'increased power' in the sense in...

Sir: My old ship-mate Mr Byng is wrong to dispute with me (Letters, 20 September). First, the Bishop of Durham more than once, on our voyage together, attributed Lewis Carroll's...

Sir: May we be allowed, through the courtesy of your columns, to express our personal sentiments — smuggled out from our cell in the British Museum — concern- ing our ultimate...

Sir: In Roy Foster's review of Trevor West's biography of Horace Plunkett (23 August) it is stated that John Betjeman was one of his aides at 'the bizarre house he built at...

World Bank meetings in Washington.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - At 20% off the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for f (Equivalent $US & Eurocheques accepted) RATES: 12 Months 6...

John Grigg ROAD TO VICTORY: WINSTON CHURCHILL 1941-1945 by Martin Gilbert Heinemann, f20.00 T he seventh volume in the official life of Winston Churchill, and the fifth to be...

Robert Blake ANOTHER VOICE: AN ALTERNATIVE ANATOMY OF BRITAIN by A uberon Waugh Fireihorn Press, f9.95 I must utter a word of warning to Mr Waugh. I hope he will take it in...

Peter Levi THE ASSAULT HEROIC (1895-1926) R. P. Graves Weideitfeld & Nicolson, f14.95 T he Graves family are one of the more spirited freak offshoots of the late Victo- rian...

Philip Ziegler END OF AN ERA: LE 1 1ERS AND JOURNALS OF SIR ALAN LASCELLES FROM 1887 TO 1920 edited by Duff Hart-Davis. Hamish Hamilton, f15.00 T he Tommy Lascelles most...

J. L. Carr WILLIAM GOLDING THE MAN AND HIS BOOKS: a tribute on his 75th Birthday edited by John Carey Faber & Faber, £12.50 T his is a set of variations by a woman and 16...

John Steer MANTEGNA: WITH A COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF THE PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS AND PRINTS by Ronald Lightbown Phaidon-Christie's £60 H ow difficult it is to write popular art...

Alastair Forbes SUNDRY TIMES by Frank Giles John Murray, f13.95 A fter 40 years of journalism, begun, so he engagingly admits, as a hopelessly incompetent probationary...

Come my love Open wide your wallet . . . Your tiny white assets are frozen You must be standing in an overdraft Let me give you a credit squeeze Parting with money is such...

Laurence Lerner VOLTAIRE by A. J. Ayer Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f14.95 V oltaire occupies a similar position in French literature to Dr Johnson in English. Everyone has heard...

Frances Partridge ENID BAGNOLD: The AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY by Anne Sebba Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £15.95 0 n a cold autumn day two old ladies are visiting a jeweller's shop in...

James Fergusson T he arrangement of Heywood Hill's bookshop is distinctly arbitrary. To the outsider, directed to the shop for the first time (`Curzon Street, next door to...

When Florence woke and put her teeth in she had a lovely thought: It's Coronation Street tonight isn't it? she asked Mrs G. in the next bed. That's right love, said Mrs G.,...

You were always so slow to take your leave, Crumbs and tobacco dripping from your clothes As you wheezed up from the depths of an armchair Like the sea-spilling, barnacled Mary...

Victoria Glendinning H.G. WELLS: DESPERATELY MORTAL by David C. Smith Yale University Press, £18.50 T his is, sadly, a bad book. H.G. Wells, old rascal and great man, a...

Someone left the mirror running I pulled the plug out it emptied my face and drowned my reflection I tried mouth to mouth the glass broke my reflection died now there's only one...

Beryl Bainbridge COASTING by Jonathan Raban Collinsl Harville, i70.95 W hat most authors want from a re- viewer, apart from praise, is an intelligent guess at how close he or...

Dance Intimations of brilliance Julie Kavanagh M ichael Clark has become more than just a star; he's now being apotheosised into some kind of messiah. Only last week a young...

Julian Schnabel (Whitechapel till 26 October) AnseIm Kiefer and Richard Serra (Saatchi Collection till June '87) Smashed china, cabbage soup Giles Auty 0 ne of the less...

Mudd larks Peter Phillips I t was in the summer of 1982 that I, reeling with the excitement of having discovered the bass part of Robert Mudd's Mass for Two Voices, rented the...

Hearing is believing Noel Malcolm G lobe Theatre, the drama series which goes out simultaneously on Radio 4 and the World Service (Sundays, 2.30 p.m.) is a good thing if only...

The Bay at Nice Wrecked Eggs (National, Cottesloe) Moral Imperatives Christopher Edwards T hese two, new, short plays written and directed by David Hare make a com-...

Paradise isle Taki The sea off Mykonos is probably, in fact definitely, the clearest and cleanest in the Mediterranean, and the beaches — to use a Miami Beach Jewish-American...

Questionable morality Wendy Cope I don't know who it was defined puritan- ism as the fear that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time. If I did know, I would raise my...

Pleas and peas Jeffrey Bernard T here is something rather disconcerting about appearing before an attractive woman magistrate although, heaven knows, there shouldn't be for a...

Some progress Alice Thomas Ellis Chicken a la King — twice.' the attempt to forget about my stomach where alien cultures — in, I dare say, several senses — were battling it...

advice from a complete stranger has re- sulted in a column: I have a fellow-diner at Le Muscadet to thank for putting me on to Chez Max (399 2365) in Surbiton. Not only had I...

Tick-tock Raymond Keene S Leningrad ince my last report from Neva-Neva- Land events have moved dramatically. When I wrote before, Kasparov had bril- liantly won game 16 and...

After Lovelace Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1439, given a slightly changed version of the first line of Love- lace's famous lyric, you were asked to take it in a different,...

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You are invited to write a complaint as it might be spoken by a Dickens character (please name) aggrieved at the way the author presented him or her. Maximum 150 words. Entries...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £12.95 — ring the words `Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...