First controller: 'Right, Tony, good! Ignore the newpaper creep! Go ahead, look sincere, pick up the baby and kiss it. . now, move on . . . keep smilling . M r John Major, the...

Telephone: 0171-405 1706; Fax 0171-242 0603 BBC OXFORD ACCENT hat is, or who are, 'Oxford Econom- ic Forecasting'? Why was its latest forecast — that the British economy was...

To return to the subject of Italians, they don't really like opera — or even women (the men, that is) PETRONELLA WYATT ome of the hate letters one receives in this job are as...

I nvitations to election-night parties are arriving. This time I shall be free to accept. For the past three elections I have been caught up in the election result pro- grammes...

• is that he never existed. Bruce Anderson exposes the great hoax of the Thatcher years The Sunday Telegraph came to the rescue. It provided these shadowy figures with cans of...

Michael Heath

Anne McElvoy on a Tory attempt at book-banning JOHN Redwood should have been intro- ducing his Eurosceptic bromide, Our Cur- rency, Our Country, this week with all the fanfare...

Nicholas Farrell has it on the highest Christian authority that theft is not always as un-Christian as some people think CHRISTIAN Middle England is bound to Spend time this...

Easter brings thoughts to Charles Moore about a good woman he knew well, and the reasons for her goodness MOST people would like to be good. Iago is a rare character. Most of...

It has the wrong aircraft at El Alamein, a double bed in a monastay, and a feeble story: Frederick Forsyth on the film of the moment I KNOW it is my fault, and I have no...

WHAT struck me as oddest about the effort by Oxford University Press to market its new World's Classics edition of the Bible (in a paperback that won't fit in your pocket,...

Ruth Dudley Edwards toured the United States with the reformed IRA killer —pursued by idiots OLLIE NORTH, of Contra, Iranian- hostage-deal and beautiful-blonde-secre-...

'HOW often have I said to you that When you have eliminated the impossi- ble, whatever remains, however improba- ble, must be the truth?' I quoted the great Holmes to a prison...

Neil Hamilton denies the latest claim that he took banknotes in brown envelopes from Mohamed Al Fayed LAST Sunday, Middle England met the Middle East. The Mail on Sunday pub-...

Easter thoughts after one of nature's miracles in Madrid PAUL JOHNSON T his is Holy Week, so I refuse to write about the election. All those topics on Which I am bursting to...

In Lloyd's secret garden of earthly delights, the odds are on the Nubian CHRISTOPHER FILDES T o join Lloyd's of London, it has long seemed to me, is to be the traveller in the...

FOR an ingenious football investment I am indebted to Soccer Analyst, whose first issue draws my attention to the Fondo Cerrado Boca Juniors. This new Argentine fund will,...

SIGNS and portents in Cornhill. At num- ber 39, the poor old Union Discount Com- pany is boarded up. The surviving directors must be taking my advice and turning it into the...

BEING the Member of Parliament for Stockport had its downside, as my grandfa- ther learned when he had to buy shares in Stockport County Football Club. We must still have these...

STUDENTS of the Conservative party know that an ousting is normally a two-man job. You need a kingmaker and a king. Ousting the board of a life office seems to work that way...

INTEREST rates can go up as well as down, but the tactful time to put them up is after an election, not before it. At the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan has now acted on...

Sir: Christopher Bellamy in his article 'Struggle for the heartland' (15 March) explains Russian preoccupation with Nato's expansion into Eastern Europe in the con- text of the...

does Mr Johnson rage against Mohamed Al Fayed, Brian Mawhinney, the Guardian, Peter Preston, me, Stephen Glover and The Spectator? Does he really believe that Mr Al Fayed, who...

Sir: Mr Paul Johnson (And another thing, 22 March) calls me a 'wog', repeats it, says it again adding 'oleaginous', appears to set- tle for 'old fakir' (wrong country) before...

Sir: I am not sure that 'High life'(22 March) is even meant to be accurate, but in case it is, this particular soi-disant Tory' was not 'crying over his beer' on election night...

Sir: On 1 February you published a bluster- ing attack on pop music criticism (Arts) by one Michael Henderson, who, it was stated, 'writes on sport for the Times'. In this piece...

Sir: About that very great man (Letters, 22 March), surely the last word was said by James Lees : Milne in Ancestral Voices pub - lished in 1975. On page 224 of this wonder -...

Sir: I am surprised that James Michie (Books, 22 March), as an old friend of Kingsley Amis, is perplexed by the title of Amis's new book, The King's English. 'The King' was a...

Sir: Both Colonel Mallinson and Mr R.C. Taylor completely missed the point (Let- ters, 8 and 15 March). My great-grandfather's plan failed in 1914 because it had been fatally...

Sir: While I much admire Hugh Lloyd" Jones's erudition, what happened to the review of The Odyssey (Books, 22 March)? Having struggled through three quarters of his piece to...

12 Months 6 Months UK (3£88.00 Cl £45.00 Europe (airmail) CI £99.00 CI £51.00 USA Airspeed Cl US$141 10 US$71 Rest of Airmail 0 £115.00 CI £58.00 World Airspeed 0 £99.00 CI...

Actually, there's less to the latest Guardian revelations than meets the page STEPHEN GLOVER T he Guardian has been criticised for jumping the gun last week and publishing...

Once, only the ruling class was. But we are all insiders now. For the ruling class is now all of us PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE A i effective democracy does not only require that the...

Poetry for pleasure P. J. Kavanagh THE SCHOOL BAG edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes Faber, £20, ,E12.99, pp. 590 I n 1982 Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes launched their...

Mark Bevir THE PERFECT CRIME by Jean Baudrillard Versa, £35, £12, pp. 156 T . he perfect crime would be without vic- tim, weapon, motive, or perpetrator. Jean Baudrillard, a...

£18,000.00 prize money to be won The International Library of Poetry, an affiliate of the widely respected US National Library of Poetry, is sponsoring an International Open...

Robert Cooper N owadays everyone buys recorded music on CD. Vinyl and cassettes have long since been driven out of town. Strange, then, that with very few exceptions audio...

Raymond Carr THE SOLITARY SELF: JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU IN EXILE AND ADVERSITY by Maurice Cranston Allen Lane, VS, pp. 247 1 . 11 .111••••- - I t can be argued that the two...

Michael Scott JUSSI by Anna-Lise Bjoerling and Andrew Farkas Amadeus, £29.99, pp. 520 C lassie FM recently ran a poll among listeners to determine who are Britain's Top Ten...

William Fiennes THE PARTNER by John Grisham Century, £16.99, pp. 367 I had never read John Grisham before, but I'd walked through bookstores where his novels were stacked and...

Liliana Brisby BEYOND THE FRONTIER by E. P. Thompson Merlin Press, £12.95, pp. 111 ajor Frank Thompson joined the Communist Party of Great Britain early in 1939 while an...

Nigel Spivey WALTER BENJAMIN: A BIOGRAPHY by Momme Bmderson Verso, £25, pp. 334 h e heroes of the Left make a small and dwindling band. But Walter Benjamin's place in that...

Bruce Anderson ENDGAMES: QUESTIONS IN LATE MODERN POLITICAL THOUGHT by John Gray Polity, £45, £12.95, pp. 212 J ohn Gray is a political philosopher whose masters are Berlin and...

The tragedy and the triumph Michael Marshall on how the message of Easter has inspired artists, musicians and writers T he Easter theme of death and resur- rection has inspired...

Lady in the Dark (National Lyttleton) Cloud Nine (Old Vic) All about sex James Treadwell T his week, the Peter Hall Company delivers what will surely turn out to be the...

The overlong 20th century Robin Holloway A the 20th century nears its end the futility of trying to present its music as a coherent entity becomes plain. The 100- year unit...

Round up the usual suspects Roger Kimball S peaking with characteristic Bloomsbury snottiness, Clive Bell once dismissed Pre- Raphaelite painting as 'a sermon at a tea- party'....

The NatWest Group Art Collection (Lothbury Gallery, 41 Lothbury EC2, till 2 May) A bank's flutter John Spurling D uring the Sixties and Seventies, when abstraction ruled and...

Les Ballets Trockaderos de Montecarlo (Stephens Hall Theatre, Towson, Baltimore) La Bayadere (Royal Opera House) What a send-up Giannandrea Poem() L et's admit it: ballet can...

Mark Steyn on the winners and losers at the 69th Academy Awards D espite Columbia's best efforts to mis - place his invitation, the celebrated pornog- rapher Larry Flynt and...

general, Ptolemy, found- ed a ruling dynasty. A Graeco-Egyptian land-owning class was created, with the Egyptian elite adopting many Greek cul- tural traditions; some 300 years...

L'anima del filosofo ossia Orfeo ed Euridice (Queen Elizabeth Hall) Orphic glut Michael Tanner T here seems to be an Orphic mini-festi- val at the moment, Monteverdi's,...

Boring for Britain Simon Hoggart I \ To need for the gridiron; hell is other people,' said Sartre. Cutting Edge's The Dinner Party (Channel 4) this week showed what he meant....

Reassuring voice Michael Vestey S ome of the fun has gone out of Feed- back on Radio Four (Friday). It's still a good programme, yes, but BBC executives no longer sound as if...

Driven underground Gavin Stamp W hich European city built the first underground railway on the Continent? Paris? Vienna? Berlin? No. Budapest, sur- prising as it may seem. The...

Spring in my step Robin Oakley T he sky was cloudless. Sideways-leaning stable lads and lasses were hurrying back and forth to the saddling boxes with buck- ets, sponges and...

Incest chic Taki here are very few taboos left in the world — especially here in the Home of the Depraved — incest being one of them. No longer. Random House editor, Harry...

Bad habits Jeffrey Bernard V era's replacement could have been disastrous, but, as it is, she is a very good girl called Nicky, only 23 but very willing and co-operative. This...

Will anyone talk to me? Leanda de Lisle T he Conservatives have been in power since I was able to vote — and I voted for them. Now I feel as if my 18th birthday is coming...

Good timing Andrew Robson The sheer elegance of the position that this week's declarer reached is worthy of close scrutiny. See if you can time the play of the hand as...

T he absence of any red burgundy from this offer (I do not count the Chiroubles as burgundy) has meant that we can keep the average price on the mixed case to £5.43 delivered....

e/o Longford Wines Great North Barn, Hamsey, Lewes, East Sussex BN8 5TB Tel: (01273)480761 Fax: (01273) 480861 Price No. Value White Chardonnay, Yin de Pays de la Drome...

at least had beneficial effects on Italian restaurants here at home. No longer are straw-clad chi- anti bottles universally suspended from trattoria ceilings, or phallic...

COMPETITION 51..61111+1LT SCOTCH M,HISO I SI,Glf U41.15COTCH WHIM URA Mood indigo Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1975 you were invited to write a poem about one kind of...

IN-THE-STRAND CHESS SIMPSON'S f ri l 14. -, . ....',', i'• 77 rm- 4 IN•THE-STRAND 1•,..--= t .• Party line Raymond Keene DISPLAYING our customary political acumen, The...

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A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1991 Port for the first correct solution opened on 14 April, with two runners-up prizes of £20 (or, for UK...

You are invited to supply a scene from a melodramatic mid-Victorian novel ending with the words: 'Hopkins, this is not hyste- ria. This is a possession of the devil. Fetch the...

RATHER like the people who attempt the ink-blot test and find themselves thinking about nothing but sex, when I go to cover the ice-skating, I think of little but Katarina Witt....

May I pass on a tip? Engrossed, as I cur- rently am, in Frances Partridge's wonderful Memories (1981), I was pleased to see her refer to someone in the 1920s 'making water'....