Divorced royals' reunion dinner B uckingham Palace confirmed that the Duke and Duchess of York are to separate after only five years of marriage. The Queen's press secretary,...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 A HEROIC LIFE M any men have been credited with having the idea that...

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A depressing rush for membership of the something-for-nothing society SIMON HEFFER I t is time to bring personalities into the campaign. The performance on British doorsteps...

so intemperate that I considered telling Dominic Lawson to stuff his diary. So, we're a party without principle? What's unprincipled about not only promising resources for...

From the Battle of Hastings to the prattle of Heseltine CHARLES MOORE We also have cuttings from the local press at the time. The texts of my ancestor's speeches are...

John Simpson finds remarkable similarities between the style of British and Iraqi political image-makers 'THERE you are, bright-eyed and bushy- tailed,' said the bouncy man in...

Noel Malcolm discovers that in post-communist Albania, freedom means freedom to steal Tirana If the Soviet Union was correctly described as 'the Upper Volta with rockets', then...

A MONSTROUS story comes from Paris. Three Anarchists have been arrested, against whom, it is said, there is evidence that they intended to carry out their principles by...

A lawyer, who practises in Windsor, Ontario, received a pamphlet (extracts below) along with a Christmas card con- taining the message 'Keep Up The Good Work'. He does not...

Michael Heath

Alasdair Palmer explains why the men really behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 will never be punished NEW YORK lawyers Lee and Jim Kreindler have reason to be cheerful....

persist. . ONE OF THE hospital managers gave us a lecture last week on the forthcoming reforms of the Health Service. We've been through reforms before, of course: they're like...

Stephen Robinson on the presidential ambitions of a gung-ho Texan multi-billionaire Washington JUST AS the November presidential elec- tion seemed to be settling down as a...

William Oddie explores the strange manoeuvres behind the scenes at a troubled Catholic charity TWO WEEKS ago, a deceptively dull little story appeared in that dullest of the...

In which Andrew Gimson gets a smack on the ear in a bar in Cheltenham The second Vox Pub report is from Chel- tenham, a Conservative seat the Liberal Democrats hope to win....

How to save yourself 51 trips to the library . . . or over 130 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it...

Francis Wheen encounters the leader of the Corrective Party, and is chastised MOST weeks, the classified section of the Paddington Mercury carries about a hun- dred...

Heading for a knocked- out Punch? PAUL JOHNSON C an it really be true that Punch is about to disappear? Its impending annihilation is depressing news in itself but even more...

TO LLOYD'S most painful problems, Rowland has only half an answer, and I can outbid him. He offers those who are trapped in 'open years' — nightmarish lia- bilities from the...

LLOYD'S is lucky to have its defence doc- ument already written. David Newton at Lime Street Management seems to have seen my bid coming. He diagnoses a crisis of confidence at...

Cometh the hour and the man — here comes my bid for Lloyd's of London CIIRISTOPHER FILDES T he bid for the Midland Bank has given me the inspiration I need. I intend to bid...

WHEN Nigel Lawson cut the top rate of income tax to 40 pei cent, Murray Lawrence, as chairman of Lloyd's, warned that times had changed. You may have thought that you joined a...

Sir: Dominic Lawson writes of his pleasure at the 'social help' his etiquette columnist was able to give an 'elegant' (and, presum- ably, well-to-do and well-educated) lun-...

Sir: May I echo the protests with which Mr Roch van der Mensbrugghe (Letters, 7 March) of Brussels has been bombarding you regarding the piece by Boris Johnson (Tear and...

Sir: In her review of our recent publication Something Out of Nothing (Tots, kettles and cauldrons' 29 February) Sandra Bar- wick asks why the Pagan Federation and witches in...

Sir: Ludovic Kennedy will certainly be in a quandary when the time comes for him to be making arrangements for his funeral or for those of his like-minded friends (Diary, 8...

Sir: Why does Paul Johnson (And another thing, 8 February) make such a fuss about England accepting the temporarily or per- manently discarded rulers of France? Surely, the...

Sir: I assume Martyn Harris (Arts, 14 March) was serious in his request for com- ments on the ethics of peeing in front of a lady in a Wagon Lit while holding the Sovereign's...

Sir: Surely Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 21 March) could not have learned his Latin at Downside otherwise he should have known that the promise to Simon Peter was:- 7u es...

Sir: Since qualification some years ago and throughout my subsequent training in surgery, I had become convinced that I was the most worn and cynical doctor in the NHS....

Sir: Unlike Sarah Webster (Letters, 14 March) I enjoyed Mr De'Ath's article about his experiences of a bail hostel. In any civilised country a gentleman like Mr De'Ath would be...

Sir: Many of us are obliged by our jobs to write occasional letters, though our exper- tise lies in quite other directions. Then to have our letters judged by the flawless stan-...

Sir: You wonder (Diary, 21 March) what would make an Albanian laugh. A friend of mine, the late Eric Lister of the Portal Gallery, visited Albania long before it was...

Sir: Further to 'Morse the pity' (Arts, 14 March) concerning the standard of writing in the new Inspector Morse series, may I say it would have been contrary to the real Morse...

Sir: Concerning both his and his wife's lack of religious faith, Neil Kintock said before the 1987 election, 'We're not even sure enough to be agnostics.' If you can't be sure...

underesti- mates the expressive power of buttocks and bosoms. He seems to think that they appear so regularly on the box merely to distract the viewer from the banality of story...

Sir: Has Margaret Melicharova had an acci- dent with her Tippex (Letters, 21 March)? I have not heard from her these last ten years, yet there is breath in me still. Martin...

I t is typical of what Norman White calls Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'shapeless' fortunes (he was unpublished for 20 years after his death in 1889) that, a hundred years on, two...

Enthusiastic? Yes, I'd qualify. I can get more than used to having things around: Can, for a good while, praise them to the sky Or drive them into the ground. Serene? I think...

The air turned heavy, and the sky grew dark, the trees in the close swayed to and fro like grieving women; Bishop John looked out at them and the bishop said, 'Even so.' He...

Peter Levi EDGAR A. POE: MOURNFUL AND NEVER- ENDING REMEMBRANCE by Kenneth Silverman Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25, pp. 564 W c have fewer than 60 poems by Edgar Allan Poe and...

Mark Archer COUTTS AND CO, 1692-1992: THE PORTRAIT OF A PRIVATE BANK by Edna Healey John Curtisl Hodder & Stoughton, £25, pp. 488 P erhaps Pascal had bankers in mind when he...

Gavin Stamp A NEW LONDON by Richard Rogers and Mark Fisher Penguin, £8.99, pp. 255 London has to change. For centuries it has been one of the world's great capitals. It is in...

Teresa Waugh FIELDS OF GLORY by Jean Rouaud, translated by Ralph Manheim Harvill, £13.99, pp. 160 R eading Fields of Glory, Jean Rouaud's Goncourt Prize-winning novel, is...

Fiona Maddocks A LIFE IN MUSIC by Daniel Barenboim Weidenfeld, £16.99, pp. 198 S uddenly finding time on his hands, having been fired from his job at the Bastille Opera two...

Leslie Mitchell THE MARQUIS DE SADE by Donald Thomas Allison & Busby, £1 5.99, pp. 326 h ere seems to have been a wild gene in the make-up of the Sade family that expressed...

Geoffrey Parker SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: COURTIER POET by Katharine Duncan-Jones Hamish Hamilton, £20, pp.320 ir Philip Sidney was evidently not a likeable man. Irascible, impatient...

Bryan Robertson A WORLD HISTORY OF ART by Hugh Honour and John Fleming Lawrence & King, £19.95, pp. 766 THE VENETIAN HOURS OF HENRY JAMES, WHISTLER AND SARGENT by Hugh Honour...

its kind to be dedicated to a single artistic movement, has lasted for three weeks, but at the Whit- worth and the City Art Galleries the exhi- bitions remain as a longer-lived...

David Tindle (Fischer Fine Art, till 24 April) Nicholas Hely Hutchinson (Montpelier Studio, till 9 April) Susan Wilson (Art Space Gallery, till 11 April) Feel-good factor...

The Royal Ballet (Covent Garden) Woman as victim Deirdre McMahon T he setting for Kenneth MacMillan's new ballet, The Judas Tree, is a bleak build- ing site in the shadow of...

La Belle Noiseuse ('15', Chelsea, Renoir, Metro) Bugsy ('18', Odeon Leicester Square) Laying it on thick Vanessa Letts I f you walk out of La Belle Noiseuse halfway through,...

regular critics OPERA Don Carlos, London Coliseum (071 836 3161), from 2 April. Conductor Mark Elder and producer David Pountney take a fresh look at this sprawling...

The Art of Laughter (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, till 24 May) Rapiers, not cudgels Kenneth Baker T he art of the political cartoon started in the middle of the 18th century,...

Welsh raspberry Martyn Harris T he Old Devils (BBC 2, 9.30 p.m., Mon- day) is the best thing on television this year: a wonderful adaptation of Kingsley Amis's novel by Andrew...

Crazy for You (Shubert Theatre) Mismatch made in heaven Douglas Colby A t the heart of Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella lies the engaging irony of the mismatch made in...

Loser takes all Taki B ack in the good old days when I gam- bled to make ends meet, losing had certain consolations. For example, girls — women, rather. Any big loser in any...

An act of unselfishness Nigel Nicolson O n every 28 March I think of Virginia Woolf, why she drowned herself in the Sus- sex Ouse on that day in 1941 and why she chose that...

Survival of the unfittest Jeffrey Bernard I don't think I would have had the opera- tion had I known beforehand just what it would entail. Before I went into hospital I was...

1 18.no• n.• ) 1114 / 1 hblei1010 .4 11...41114 4141 11.•.1 0 rirook.,„,,,Ork_ How are you faring this Lent? I am having a competition with Rupert Li5wenstein: we swap weight...

. 61VAS RIEGV V IVAS REGV 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY The new duel Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1720 you were in - vited to suppose that a duel...

T he first truly modern player was the great Frenchman Frangoise Andre Dani - can Philidor (7 Sept 1726 – 25 Aug 1795). Both over the board and in the realm of ideas Philidor...

a p l 's i . E ' B U SHT 1(09 I M A I PI E SO. ' C 0 Err. R iell!E L , LOCC lann U N i A UAN IA E H E T I A9 I E L , E N I i t T A A I. D i 0 1 0 1 0 2 4 /1 E N Ull...

You are invited to produce a 26-line rhyming alphabet on any theme. (X may be represented by a word beginning 'ex'.) Entries to 'Competition No. 1723' by 10 April.

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...

HOWEVER trivial such pursuits, Labour seems to have made a far better fist of its list of sporty fellow-travellers. A jolly sight more lively anyway than expected when a...

Q. My husband and I live in a block of mansion flats in central London. For years the landlords were ripping us off over the service charges. Eventually I formed a Res- idents'...