T he three main political parties launched their manifestos for the forthcom- ing European parliament elections. The Prime Minister, Mr John Major, appealed to his supporters...

Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 MOST FAVOURED TYRANTS F . ive years ago this week, events in Tiananmen Square in the centre of Peking were moving...

Labour's European policies: not in front of the voters, thank you SIMON HEFFER U nder no illusions about the appeal of her party's policies, Mrs Beckett, Labour's acting...

DOMINIC LAWSON P erhaps the oddest aspect of the Prince of Wales's attack, earlier this month, on the legions of the politically correct was his placing of the BBC on the side...

Two things the Tories might do before they say goodbye AUBERON WAUGH Mr Smith somehow managed to reassure the rich and the better paid that there would be no element of...

Alasdair Palmer investigates the extraordinary profits to be made out of a pile of corpses in Gloucester A COUPLE of weeks ago, Inspector David Morgan, a Gloucester policeman...

Mark Almond is one Oxford lecturer who resents his university's decision to give President Clinton an honorary degree Oxford CILLA BLACK was recently rejected by the student...

`THEY'VE done it again,' I shouted to my husband, who was digging a double trench for the leeks. It only had the effect of making him clump into the kitchen in his muddy boots....

Americans are keen on the death penalty but incompetent at carrying it out, argues William Cash, who's seen two botched jobs Los Angeles IT IS SAFE to say that Mitchell Rupe,...

`WHY ARE you so angry?' I asked. `It was prison, doctor,' interposed his girlfriend, 'what made him like this. Before that, he was soft. Prison made him hard.' `Why were you...

THE ELUSIVE ALE AT LAST IN VIEW (And thought of the heady pleasures that await spurs them on.)

Noreen Taylor recalls the time Jacqueline Onassis rescued her from the attentions of Ted Kennedy, and then began to speak . . PERHAPS IT was fitting that I should have met...

Miles Kington attempts to unravel the logic which divides Britain from France To celebrate the opening of the Channel Tunnel, the Foreign Office is publishing a glossy...

Ross Clark is bemused by the amateurish ingenuity of a gathering of 400 British inventors I ARRIVED late at last weekend's Great British Innovations and Inventions Fair at the...

Searching for the Michelangelos and the Beethovens of the capitalist system PAUL JOHNSON Now that is what I call real power. Few possess it, certainly not writers. I suppose I...

Sir: It is heartening to see how jumpy and ratty members of our illiberal, modernist visual arts establishment (for example, Richard Shone, Arts, 21 May, Anthony Everitt,...

know as little of him as he of me. Had his biographical notes in The art of criti- cism' suggested that I have reached the sad end of a once promising career, none could...

the current state of art criticism in Britain needs placing in a wider context. Mr Shone was one of the sig- natories to a recent letter to the editor of the Evening Standard...

Sir: Why will people go on saying that 'D' Day, 6 June 1944, was the day the Allies invaded Europe? Eleven months earlier, 9 July 1943, we invaded Sicily (surely part of Europe)...

12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £80.00 0 £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £91.00 0 £46.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$130 0 US$66.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175 0 US$88 Rest of ..“ Airmail II 1111.00 0...

Virginia Bottomley's letter in your 14 May issue? Sean Grainger 32 Glenloch Road, London NW3

Sir: I was surprised to see my name, cou- pled with Professor Lewis Wolpert, in brackets in Norman Stone's review of a book by Pavel Sudoplatov (Books, 14 May). We were both...

Sir: I know that Paul Johnson thinks I'm a dog-eared old dachshund, responsible for most of the moral rot in British society, because he says so roughly once every 15 months...

Sir: Pray permit me to apologise to your readers for having inadvertently by a slip of the pen written, in my review (Books, 21 May) of Sir Nicholas Henderson's admirable book...

Sir: It is encouraging to have Mrs Bottom- ley confirm, in her response (Letters, 14 May) to Alasdair Palmer's excellent article on care in the community that 'our task is to...

writer'. Why? Because I pub- lished an 'untrue story' about him in the Guardian. He does not say what the story was; nor does he attempt to refute it. Perhaps Mr Johnson has...

Sir: I may have been a second-hand book- seller for too long, but The Road Names of Thatcham and Teach Yourself Practical Concreting don't sound all that boring to me (Letters,...

There is no greater fool in Christendom than somebody being flattered by the press SIMON JENKINS J ackie Kennedy Onassis never gave interviews. Period. From the moment of her...

The Welsh Tolstoy Victoria Glendinning RICHARD HUGHES by Richard , Perceval Graves Deutsch, £20, pp. 491 citing, said Richard Hughes, is a 'life sentence'. He wrote two...

Christopher Bray T he first time I read A High Wind in Jamaica was a bit of a cheat. I had worked my way through The Mayor of Casterbridge in less than the 20 weeks my English...

Anthony Howard WATERGATE: THE CORRUPTION AND FALL OF RICHARD NIXON by Fred Emery Cape, £20, pp. 542 el ust as there will always be Kennedy assassination 'buffs', so the...

John Whitworth T he Waterworks is a marvellous book, gathering such momentum that I read the last 120 pages in one go at four o'clock in the morning. Doctorow has given us a...

John Bowen OLEANDER, JACARANDA by Penelope Lively Viking, £14, pp. 180 P enelope Lively was born in Cairo. When she was two, the family moved to Bulaq el Dakhrur, which was...

John Cornwell THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS: THE SCIENTIFIC SEARCH FOR THE SOUL by Francis Crick Simon & Schuster, £16.99, pp. 384 It is characteristic of ageing brain scientists...

Janet Barron THE MARRIAGE OF TIME AND CONVENIENCE by Robert Winder Harvil4 £14.99, pp. 224 t certain moments in our lives, we become all too well aware of the inexorable fact...

William Scammell POETRY REVIEW: NEW GENERATION POETS edited by Peter Forbes Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2, tel, 071 240 4810, £4,95, pp. 127 S hould poetry be...

Frances Partridge PENCIL ME IN: A MEMOIR OF STANLEY OLSON by Phyllis Hatfield Deutsch, £14.99, pp, 225 L A self-made man' is an epithet with various meanings, one of which fits...

Andro Linklater DEBATABLE LAND by Candia McWilliam Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 216 I travel for travel's sake', R. L. Steven- son wrote early in his career. 'The great affair is...

Tom Shone THE FOLD I NG STAR by Alan Hollinghurst Chatto, £15.99, pp. 422 W hich contemporary British writer would refer to the stains that one finds on the sofa the morning...

Richard Lamb THE LONELY LEADER: MONTY 1944-1945 by Alistair Horne and David Montgomery Macmillan, £17.50, pp. 381 S o many books have been published about Field Marshal...

and he makes a firm sweep to leg, clearing the mantelpiece of its clutter. Don't hunt for obscurities, he frowns. I give him my panic dream of missing the last train home, and...

Cannes Film Festival Blonde, pert lip-glossed babes h is week I have spanned the wepth and depth of human depravity. I have witnessed a Felliniesque vision of the Fall of Rome...

Short and to the point Robin Holloway N orman, Saxon and Dane are we' sang the Bard. Though the French ingredi- ent sweetened our language and enriched our architecture, not...

National Opera Studio (Queen Elizabeth Hall) Mose in Egitto (Royal Opera House) Shrill drill Rupert Christiansen alent shows, from Opportunity Knocks upwards, always leave...

Talking dirty Mark Steyn G rumpy Old Men has a great title much better, in my opinion, than Kieslowski's Three Colours White. Unfortu- nately, the director Donald Petrie never...

Jack: A Night on the Town (Criterion) Pericles (National, Olivier) Not a noble act Sheridan Morley E ven on the dates when he does bother to show up and play the whole of it,...

regular critics THEATRE Murder in the Cathedral, Barbican Pit (071 638 8891), 1 June. The Queen and I, Royal Court (071 730 1745), 11 June. Sue Townsend's bestseller about HM...

Show some respeck Martyn Harris I n his twenties a friend of mine once bought an MG sports car that he was very proud of, and parked it outside the pub for the rest of us to...

Fishing for praise Taki M ost of what has been written about her is speculation, because those who wrote about her didn't know her, and those who knew her didn't write. One...

My Oxford day Jeffrey Bernard 'spoke to the Oxford Union last Tuesday and I wasn't very pleased with myself, although the organisers and the under- graduates who questioned me...

Hostess with the mostess Nigel Nicolson I t is difficult, I find, to be a successful host if one lacks a wife. Guests seldom respond to a host's invitations with the same...

Valley of the Kings APART FROM the obvious sovereignty of northern Italian food in the fashion stakes, Thai food has ousted all others on the high street: it is the elegant...

CHESS 46). PcovoraDiau SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA Black thoughts Raymond Keene AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, playing with the black pieces is becoming increasingly...

Haughty-culture Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1831 you were invited to write a poem dealing with the U and non-U in the gardener's world. I possess a garden but I can't abide...

T 6 M 0R rt MI Mill [11A a ' . n Et a c II 0 an WWI a P 0 ea • L E 04 IIIIIMMICIriOn Iltid ri 1111 C T p d a.inepenri L 1 c e a H a 0 El i MUM N Olin inn D nuo...

GRAHAM ' S PORT CROSSWORD W. & J. GRAHAM ' S PORT 1161: Weight-watching by Columba A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first...

From January, a new code of practice for tobacco advertising will ban any humour in the promotion of cigarettes. Before this solemn day arrives, you are invited to write a...

Platform revelries Frank Keating GAMES-LOVERS set store by romantic reminiscence, so it was a joy to share the platform with Cliff Morgan and Barry John on Sunday at the...

Mary.. Q. I have an incredibly busy and enjoyable social life which is marred by only one fac- tor. I seem incapable of writing thank-you letters to people until it is almost...