'I see our policies are be g innin g to work.' h e Prime Minister appealed for an international effort to stop the flow of money and arms to the IRA. A woman with an Irish...

S uddenly, with one bound, the headline writers are free. After seven weeks in the chains of Saddam Hussein, they have escaped to another madman hell-bent on destruction: John...

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She is too misty-eyed to live up to her Maggismo NOEL MALCOLM T o say that Mrs Thatcher lacks ruthless- ness would be an exaggeration. But to say that she is not quite...

JOHN WELLS ‘I wunnasee a mediaeval city like it wuzz — null like this!' The small, wizened and intensely angry old American tourist in the yellow short-sleeved shirt and the...

Anne McElvoy explains why East Germany's spymasters feel so safe THE PR LADY in East Berlin's Grand Hotel was cross. 'Why didn't you say you were interviewing Herr Wolf? We...

Russia's spiritual needs are as neglected as its economic ones, argues Stephen Handelman Moscow 'WHAT frightens me most is the fact that the Revolution has brought about no...

AMERICAN feeling has proved too strong for polygamy, even when de- fended on the ground of religious liber- ty. The Mormons are tired of suffering prosecutions for their...

James Bowman lists seven unmentionable problems for America in the Gulf Washington JAW JAW may be better than war war, but both can be pretty nasty. Last week began with the...

John Keegan draws lessons from the Gulf crisis and proposes a new Middle East policeman MORE than 50 days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the first — yes, the first —...

Michael Heath

Anton La Guardia visits an Israeli village which is preparing to receive the Messiah Jerusalem THE bearded, black-hatted gentlemen of the Israeli village of Kfar Chabad have...

Samantha Weinberg meets the man who wants to set up his own tribal homeland Johannesburg AFTER almost six months on the run — South Africa's most wanted man, the deputy leader...

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...

Ian Hargreaves takes to task right-wing critics of BBC impartiality IT WAS nice of Mr Julian Critchley to put the matter so plainly in the Guardian the other day. 'It is...

persist . . . IN THE labour ward of our hospital, young women don't give birth to little boys or little girls: they give birth to social problems. Male social problems are des-...

Shiva Naipaul was one of the most gifted and accomplished writers of our time. After his death in August 1985 at the age of 40, The Spectator set up a fund to establish an...

Ross Clark finds that the Saddam Hussein Mosque has a security problem Birmingham THE sign at the entrance to the red- bricked, golden-domed house of prayer appeared a little...

A reader recently received the follow- ing letter from Times Newspapers Li- mited: Thank you for your letter dated 18th June and your interest in Times Newspapers Limited....

The media: Paul Johnson on the strains imposed by a multitude of crises THIS has been one of the best years for news since 1945 (1956 was another good one) and shows no sign...

FOR John Major, attending his first IMF, the experience has not been much fun. He came by way of Trinidad, where he un- veiled to the Commonwealth finance ministers his new plan...

WHAT is the cure for a contraction of credit? Bagehot's prescription has stood the test of time: dear money, but plenty of it. What mattered, he said, was not that credit should...

Racked with guilt and fear, the world's bankers turn to prayer CHRISTOPHER FILDES he world's bankers gathering here for their annual reunion at the meetings of the...

AS IMF meetings go, this one is almost sober. Popular parties have vanished from the calendar. No circus from Citicorp, no garden-party from the Midland, and an important policy...

Sir: I must take to task the theme of Brian Inglis's article (`No one wants Ulster,' 22 September) in which he claims that Dublin does not want a united Ireland and that the...

Sir: Kalim Siddiqui ('Blasphemers must die,' 22 September) was being economical with the truth in suggesting to John Mor- timer that the fatwa against Salman Rush- die was...

G. Mitchell's opin- ions on Edmund Burke as a political observer (Books, 1 September) reinforces the experience of a number of teachers of Political Studies at A Level. Burke's...

Sir: I think that Murray Sayle misses the point in the way he attempts to view the present events in the Soviet Union through Burke's eyes ('After the revolution', 22...

Sir: I write with reference to Don Cupitt's review of Freedom in Exile: The Auto- biography of His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet (15 September). 'He claims to be a...

Sir: It is a great day for academic prestige when the publicity manager of the Yale University Press (Letters, 8 September) considers herself incapable of writing twad- dle...

Sir: In East Timor today depleted national- ist forces continue to fight a guerrilla war against the Indonesian army. Portugal, Britain's Nato ally, continues to claim...

Sir: Ruth Willers writes (Letters, 15 September), 'If Arab roots in the soil [of the West Bank] are old and deep, Jewish roots are some 3,000 years older and therefore that much...

Sir: Perhaps Paul Johnson (The press, 15 September) thinks, like Dr Goebbels, that if you must repeat something often enough people will believe it, which is why he reiterates...

Sir: Two years ago, when Church in Danger was launched to represent the views and fears of Traditionalists within the Church of England, we listed a number of warning signs...

Outsider not quite at home James Buchan INDIA: A MILLION MUTINIES NOW by V. S. Naipaul Heinemann, £16.95, pp.520 I n V. S. Naipaul's last book, which describes a journey...

Nigella Lawson BARBARA: THE LAUGHTER AND TEARS OF A COCKNEY SPARROW by Barbara Windsor Century, £11.99, pp.195 'B arbara isn't a sex symbol. She's a body, a bosom and a joke'....

A pewter sea. No fishing smacks or sails. A seafront palm, dishevelled by March gales. And framed by wintry skies and low-tide sand, In good thick coats, two grey-haired women...

Christopher Hawtree A DICTIONARY OF DEDICATIONS by Adrian Room Bloomsbury, £17.99, pp.354 S tand up, Julian Barnes!', remarked William Boyd when the improbably-named Adrian...

Francis King AGE OF IRON by J.M. Coetzee Secker &Warburg, £12.99, pp.181 A white South African woman, a re- tired university lecturer in Latin, learns from her doctor that...

God? Come-come, dear boy, you'll have to change your stance. Believe in something real — like History, or Chance. Richard Kell

Clear air, clear water, spires above the meadows. Four centuries away from gigs and demos, rapt music filled the chancels and the naves and flowed like thermals past the weather...

Anthony Quinton A WORLD OF PROPENSITIES by Karl R. Popper Thoemmes, £5, pp. 51, available from Thoemmes Antiquarian Books, 85 Park Street, Bristol BSI 5P.1 S ir Karl Popper...

J. Enoch Powell THE LOST CHRONICLE OF EDWARD DE VERE by Andrew Field Viking, £13.99, pp.266 T he 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), dying in obscurity and relative poverty in...

Raymond Carr AIRCRAFT OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 1936-1939 by Gerald Howson Putnam, £35, pp.310 T his book has opened up a new world to me: that of the buffs — scholars of total...

Peter Vansittart TAMGAR by Flora Fraser Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £13, pp.256 H istorical novels carry no great critical esteem, though to sneer is easier than to achieve....

Op er a Spine-tingling Rupert Christiansen Ariane and Bluebeard (Grand Theatre, Leeds) Angas as the Doctor in the new ENO production of Berg's masterpiece reason — seemed to...

Chillida (Hayward Gallery, till 4 November) Hubert Dalwood (Gimpel Fils, till 6 October) Alan Wood (Gillian Jason, till 5 October) Cold steel, warm wood Giles Auty A n aspect...

Africa dances Deirdre McMahon h is autumn Sadler's Wells Theatre has launched its first ever African dance sea- son. In October the Alvin Ailey company, one of the first...

Private Lives (Aldwych) The Rehearsal (Almeida) Static glamour Christopher Edwards Y ou could say that Noel Coward's Private Lives offers us the odi et amo of light comedy....

Longtime Companion ('15', selected cinemas) Curiously unshocking Hilary Mantel I seem to have upset a man of the cloth. A vicar of Wakefield writes (Letters, 22 September) to...

In front of the children Wendy Cope C hildren's misconceptions about tele- vision can be very charming. A friend of mine, when her son was three years old, showed him a...

ARTYDIARY A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics CINEMA Presumed Innocent (18). Harrison Ford, Greta Scacchi, Raul Julia and...

A load of nobblers Jeffrey Bernard S o they've started doping horses again. It's a pity that. It isn't even clever and requires no more skill than it does to mug an old lady....

Greek tragedy Taki T Athens he Big Olive has turned into a gar- bage dump, with two weeks of uncolleclted rubbish fouling the already polluted air and making the open-air...

Hippy shake-up Zenga Longmore l ease excuse me if I sound a little — how can I put it? — tentative this week. You see, I am writing from my friend Shaka Boom Boom's mother's...

I am paying for this space with money I borrowed. I realise that individual utterance has almost no public standing in our commercial civilisation. Indeed, private appeals of...

I WAS recently obliged to spend a week eating in Munich and a thoroughly miser- able experience it was. It was a fine point whether German food is worse than En- glish and a...

Young pretenders Raymond Keene W ith the exception of Judith Polgar and Joel Lautier this year ' s Interpolis tournament at Tilburg witnessed a line-up of the young hopefuls...

Duet Jaspistos SC OTCH YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY I n Competition No. 1644 you were in- vited to supply a duet from a musical to be sung by a famous literary couple. Sadly, no...

You are invited to compose a letter of resignation from a clubman (or clubwoman for that matter) citing examples of how the old place is not as it used to be, or ought to be....

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...

l° iir, A P R T DUD! A RLYsi RAEMI A ClD W 21 1 . I u g A ',. Aorr ALO Rig rre Onerridne minrromil onnwrion r en dMOOM Solutions of 3, 4, 5 or 6 etters had to be inserted...

Recorded deliveries Frank Keating IT WAS apt that the appealing (in every way) and self-deprecating trundler, Simon Hughes, should take the last two wickets to wrap up a...