`Or was it just a horrible dream?' S ir Hal Miller, a former Tory MP, accused Sir Patrick Mayhew, when Attor- ney General, of having tried to prevent evi- dence coming to court...

The press may be squared, but the middle classes are quite unprepared SIMON HEFFER Welfare reform is urgent not because it is morally right, but because it is economical- ly...

I t has always surprised me how few Trot- skyists read the Tatler. Pick up any maga- zine of the far Left and you will find page after page of impenetrable articles about the...

The people are angry with the Cleethorpes sextuplets. An official policy of eugenics looms CHARLES MOORE Few of us know the truth about Jan and Jean and Susan and Sid....

James Buchan argues that the Queen is under the attack which should properly be directed at her ministers: if Britain is decadent it's the politicians' fault FORTY YEARS ago...

Charles Glass on how America's new plan for Bosnia will protect every nationality save the one under greatest threat Sarajevo THE WINTER snows of Bosnia have melted, and the...

Japan is celebrating the imminent marriage of Crown Prince Naruhito. But the Japanese monarchy is nothing to celebrate, says Ian Buruma UNTIL HER retirement a few years ago, an...

Michael Heath

Stephen Glover reports with fondness on the twists and turns of Lord Deedes' first 80 years WHEN THE Falklands were invaded one Friday in April 1982, Bill Deedes, editor of...

Theodore Dalrymple confesses that he and his fellow NHS doctors are principally responsible for creating a nation of bogus invalids NOT LONG AGO, I was consulted by a patient...

CONSERVATIVE Prime Ministers seem to attract linguistic peculiarities. Mr Major says wunt for want, an idiolect unknown in Brixton, or in Worcester Park. Sir Edward Heath's...

Ross Clark attends a very special meeting of Britain's least glamorous motoring club IN THE ANNALS of recent history no year has quite so unfortunate a reputation as 1973....

It is cold comfort for English agricultur- ists to hear that agriculture in America is almost equally depressed. In the East- ern States, the farmers complain that they are...

A stampede of water buffaloes on the American campus PAUL JOHNSON I n New York I find people plunged in angry gloom about the Clinton presidency: `Even worse than we'd...

Kutz a star part for Portillo, round the bend in ever-decreasing circles CHRISTOPHER FILDES A one of its measures of economy, the Government is spending £75 million to attract...

Sir: I am very sad and disappointed to see that Three Pointless Things To Do This Week has obviously been dropped. I liked to read and do the Pointless Things. Catherine von...

Sir: Judith Cook is so miffed at my review of her Marlowe novel that she bothers your readers with a list of her publications as a theatre historian to demonstrate how wrong I...

Sir: Lois Blythe writes about a certain John Major whom she evidently holds in high regard (Letters, 22 May). Whoever he is, he must be quite a persuasive person, not least in...

Sir: Would your readers care to join me to complaining to the Office of Fair Trading about the iniquitously high price of Rolls- Royce cars? I have long fancied a Rolls but...

Sir: I feel rather like a batsman who has faced a ferocious over while lolling about at the non-striker's end. Frank Keating bowled some fast balls at me (Sport, 22 May) but it...

Sir: William Shawcross's article (Wore bul- lets than ballots', 22 May) predictably mir- rors British and US policy on Cambodia. It contains familiar disinformation. Shawcross...

Culture has gone to the Cats Hilary Mantel WHAT HENRY JAMES KNEW AND OTHER ESSAYS ON WRITERS by Cynthia Ozick Cape, £7 2.99, pp. 322 H ere is a spectacle — sad, but extremely...

Andro Linklater ABLAZE: THE STORY OF CHERNOBYL by Piers Paul Read Seeker & Warburg, f16.99, pp. 478 I n his classic study of witchcraft in the Sudan, Professor Evans Pritchard...

Anne Chisholm A SPANISH LOVER by Joanna Trollope Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 314 W ith her six previous novels of con- temporary middle-class English manners and morals, Joanna...

Mary Warnock LIFE'S DOMINION: AN ARGUMENT ABOUT ABORTION AND EUTHANASIA by Ronald Dworkin HarperCollins, £17.50, pp. 272 R onald Dworkin is supremely well- qualified to pick...

Not so long ago. Your grandmother's mother could tell what crossed the young girls' eyes into their escape routes, what came nibbling from the attic where the oats for the...

Jane Gardam IMAGINATION OF THE HEART: THE LIFE OF WALTER DE LA MARE by Theresa Whistler Duckworth, f25, pp. 490 COLLECTED RHYMES AND VERSES and COLLECLED POEMS by Walter de la...

John Spurling CROSSING THE RIVER by Caryl Phillips Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 237 C rossing the River begins with the remorse of a West African farmer who has sold his three...

Anita Brookner SECOND SPRING by Max Egremont Hamish Hamilton, £14.99, pp. 275 M ax Egremont is a misleadingly urbane writer who deals with various forms of betrayal, usually in...

Harriet Waugh THE DYING OF THE LIGHT by Michael Dibdin Faber, £9.99, pp. 151 M ichael Dibdin writes comedies, whether they be detective novels, starring his...

I worked through all your tricks. I slit the sleeves, I tugged fine strings which joined the handkerchiefs. The disappearing girl was always there Crammed in compartments false...

Molly Keane MAUNA by Penny Perrick Sinclair-Stevenson, f14.99, pp. 275 he garbage of Irish history, well fiction- alised, makes a colourful background to this story of the...

Simon Heiler FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME by David Lemmon Pelham, £16.99, pp. 320 BETRAYAL : THE STRUGGLE FOR CRICKET'S SOUL br G ra e m e Wright H. F. & G. Witherby, £16.99, pp....

Anthony Howard TINY ROWLAND: A REBEL TYCOON by Tom Bower Heinemann, £16.99, pp. 659 T he only previous biography of Tiny Rowland was castigated in these pages (The Spectator 2...

Art Never the twain shall meet ... But Giles Auty feels both sides of the art divide are entitled to fairness in funding A mong the texts about art I have read or re-read in...

Local hero Bruce Boucher welcomes the opening of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds L ast year the Henry Moore Foundation was engaged in an disagreeable squabble with the late...

Deserted Bastions: Historic Naval and Military Architecture (RIBA Heinz Gallery, till 5 June) Recharging our batteries Alan Powers T ristram Shandy's Uncle Toby is a char-...

Juno and the Paycock (Albery) The Showman (Almeida) Glorious Juno Sheridan Morley T he surprising thing about Juno and the Paycock, now in a savage and masterly pro- duction...

regular critics EXHIBITIONS Tony Bevan, Whitechapel Art Gallery, El. Described inevitably as `one of the leading British painters of his generation' in gallery blurb. See if...

Passenger 57 (`15', selected cinemas) Nowhere to Run (`15', selected cinemas) Disaster movies Vanessa Letts assenger 57 promotes itself as an action adventure/disaster...

Tiny problem Martyn Harris here is a passage in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop about a doyen of foreign correspon - dents who is on the scene for every war , famine and uprising,...

Heartbreak hotel Taki T o paraphrase Grouch() Marx, I never enjoy hearing someone's got a financial problem, but in the case of the Aga Khan I think I will make an exception....

Over the odds Jeffrey Bernard S ometimes weather forecasters end their summary by saying, 'There is a risk of thunder.' Why risk? Thunder is music to my ears. In Andalucia...

The ghosts of Ebury Street Nigel Nicolson T wo weeks ago I visited my birthplace , 182 Ebury Street, to unveil a plaque by pulling aside a little pinafore of a curtain...

WHILE we understand that the Spectator's is a church so broad as to make the general synod seem positively sect-like by compari- son, there are some activities which we guess to...

Raymond Keene JUDITH POLGAR has turned in an excel- lent performance in the 'Dos Hermanas' tournament in Seville. Her style is a dynamic, attacking one, heavily reliant on the...

Imperial lines Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1780 you were given this opening quatrain and invited to carry on in the same strain: What is the meaning of Empire Day? Why do...

A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 14 June, with two runners-up prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers,...

Border of steel Frank Keating IT IS GOOD to have a genuine all-time hall-of-famer among us for the last time. It was touching to be near Allan Border's glowing and satisfied...

Dear Mary.. . Q. While I always enjoy reading your solu- tions to problems, and quite liked the one you produced for someone's 'generally marvellous daily who enjoys her gin'...