`Our executive is willing to give you one last chance.' M r Tony Benn announced that he was standing as the Left's candidate against Neil Kinnock for the Labour leadership....

1'706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 OUTHOUSE TO WHITE HOUSE? F rom the guttermost, to the upper- most,' chants Jesse with a charmingly defiant smile; 'From the outhotise to the...

be announced in our Spring Books issue of 16 April. The winners of the Spectator-Adam and Company three cities art prize for the best reflections of Edinburgh, Glasgow or Lon-...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! ' RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £45.00 0 £23.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £55.00 0 £28.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $90 0 US$45 Rest of...

Wood and Howes 'were on an undercover operation' on the day on which they were murdered by the mob in Belfast. This suggestion seems to have been mistaken, and we apologise for...

Mr Benn's tragedy: a second performance is announced NOEL MALCOLM H egel remarks somewhere', as Marx remarks somewhere else, 'that all important historical characters and...

R adical surgery can have a deleterious effect on personality. I mean that the consequence of having chunks of one's body sliced up or hacked out is liable to be a foul temper....

An Easter message from the curious incident of the dead cat AUBERON WAUGH Last week, the Archbishop of Canter- bury launched what was described as a major investigation into...

Anthony Daniels sees the poor people of La Perla labouring under superstition and ideology FINCA la Perla is a short ride by light aircraft from Guatemala City, but in all...

Ambrose EvanyiPritchard finds that the American drug culture has been pushed back to the ghetto Washington WASHINGTON is becoming like San Salvador. There are about two...

Alexander Norman meets the Dalai Lama, who will be cold-shouldered by the Government here next week New Delhi THE prospect of spending 40 minutes in the company of an...

Gavin Stamp finds the civil service mind blighting the care of historic buildings A FEW weeks ago, in the course of a largely unnecessary external cleaning of Chiswick House,...

THE best proof yet received of the increasing order in Ireland, is that the two men accused of murdering J. Fitz- maurice, near Listowel, in Kerry, have been convicted and...

Alexandra Artley visits an advanced vegan household in Hertfordshire THE COLD, soggy, grey linings of other people's wellies make me want to scream. But as they were so kindly...

spread of bhangra fever among young Asians in London WHO can doubt that the teenage children of East End Indians are a new race of mankind altogether, closely allied to the...

The media: Paul Johnson wants to extend Thatcherism to Ulster THE relationship between the media and the IRA in Ulster has now reached a crisis and the Government has a duty...

ANOTHER needless handicap for person- al pensions is the nannyish restriction on what can happen when they mature. The pensioner must at once buy an annuity from a life...

Institutionalised arrangements for watering the workers' beer CHRISTOPHER FILDES P ersonal pensions are under starter's orders for the off this summer like a high-class horse...

I HAVE the answer for the City Commu- ter Services Group. You didn't know there was such a group? Nor did I until this week, when it reported, but it turns out to be one of...

WARD Hunt and his island are on the map, and not before time. The intrepid baronet Sir Ranulph Fiennes, defeated in his attempt to walk to the North Pole on his frost-bitten...

THIS same government has now tilted the balance further away from personal own- ership of shares. See what happens if you choose to own shares directly. Your future capital...

Sir: Mr Latimer (Letters, 26 March) does not say why he considers the incomes of late-19th-century landowners to be evi- LETTERS dence of lack of generosity. In fact the peers...

Sir: Naturally, in the enlightened freedom of your pages, Mr Mackay of Darwen, Lancs, is entitled to his opinion of the Cornish (Letters, 25 March). It was ex- pressed with the...

Sir: Jeff Bernard (Low life, 13 February) was good enough to quote me as saying that writing novels is a substitute for living. May I offer him the full text (by courtesy of the...

Sir: As a former freelance journalist, I know how hard it is to earn an honest penny, but isn't Richard West (`The idyllic labour camp', 19 March) becoming just a teeny bit...

Professional closed shops Sir: As the guilty author of the occasional 'clearly inspired' article about the Spanish practices of the learned professions (although not, I am...

Sir: Michael Leapman's account in 'Lime grove conspirators' (26 March) is a sad distortion of the real and important debate that is going on in BBC news and current affairs, a...

Sir: I am glad to see that Jeffrey Bernard is now finding solace in music (Low life, 16 January). Only a few years ago the Coach and Horses, of which he is such a notable...

Sir: I find your suggestion (Diary, 19 March) that the appeal of the Independent lies in its sparse coverage of royal events less convincing than one advanced recently by a...

DuJff, (:2), a retired engineer, very lame and rather deaf, a resident of Deddinham Court Rest Home, is man of the month.

Secreted in White's Hugh Trevor-Roper THE SECRET SERVANT: THE LIFE OF SIR STEWART MENZIES, CHURCHILL'S SPYMASTER by Anthony Cave Brown Michael Joseph, £19.95 S tewart...

In memory of my mother Making a home was what you could do best; and cookery (the ritual at the heart of it) you had a kind of genius for. So what I first recall, thinking of...

Patrick Skene Catling TALKING HEADS by Alan Bennett BBC, f4.95 I don't know why it should be only Catholics who are thought never to escape their religious upbringing,' Alan...

Anita Brookner THE FASHION CONSPIRACY by Nicholas Coleridge Heinemann, £12.95 T he extent of the conspiracy is indi- cated by the photographs, which show beaming and...

Radek Sikorski THE INHUMAN LAND by Jozef Czapski (available from The Polish Cultural Foundation, 23 Coleridge Street, Hove, Sussex BN3 5A B, f6, plus 50p postage) W hich is...

Fiction: Only By Mistake by P. J. Kavanagh, John Calder, £5.95 The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and The Temptation of Eileen Hughes by Brian Moore, Paladin, £3.50 each Close...

Francis King OSCAR AND LUCINDA by Peter Carey Faber, £10.95 T he narrator of this remarkable novel — as it were, Peter Carey himself — is a present-day Australian who looks...

Montagu Curzon VOYAGER: THE FLYING ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME by Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan, with Phil Patton Heinemann, f12.95 E veryone familiar with the The Right Stuff, Tom...

Exhibitions College crew Giles Auty Exhibition Road: Painters from the Royal College of Art (Royal College Galleries, till 24 April) A number of times occur in a London-...

Empire of the Sun (PG', selected cinemas) Unlucky Jim Hilary Mantel J .G. Ballard, on whose novel this film is based, has had brushes with Hollywood before. It was he who...

The Jew of Malta (Barbican) Cymbeline (Pit) Nods and winks Christopher Edwards hese two RSC productions arrive in London from Stratford. They offer prom- ise of an...

Robert Mapplethorpe: Portraits (National Portrait Gallery, till 19 June) Hot shots Francis Hodgson R obert Mapplethorpe may or may not be a very fine photographer. At the mo-...

Has Big Al got it right? Peter Watson examines the art market six months after Black Monday S pare a thought this weekend for the blood pressure of Lord Gowrie. He has been in...

111A1-9Y A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics MUSIC The 1988 Celebration of British Music continues on 10 April in the...

Electrical faults Wendy Cope L ast Friday I was laid low by a stomach upset and spent 12 hours unable to do anything except sip Lucozade and feel extremely sorry for myself....

Improving with age Taki There was one guest — an academic I believe — who left early. He was heard to mutter something about being snubbed by Princess Michael of Kent, an...

Thai break Jeffrey Bernard I felt very much at home again last Saturday to lose some money on the Lincoln Handicap and in the rain. But memories of Thailand linger and I...

Motorway madness Alice Thomas Ellis T he magpies have been behaving strangely recently. Our local ones, who I thought were divorced, appeared together on the morning of the...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

Black knight Raymond Keene U nfortunately, I missed this year's Oxford-Cambridge match; it was arranged at short notice and clashed with an impor- tant meeting of the Hastings...

Wrinkles for the wrinklies Jaspistos I N Competition No. 1516 you were invited to supply an advertisement for a school for the over-80s. This was not an easy competition,...

SIMPLY Nico (48a Rochester Row, Lon- don SW1. Tel. 630 8061) must have been open for over a year now, and though I have had a most marvellous dinner there I have never tried the...

If Bums's mouse, Shelley's skylark or Lawrence's snake, or any other animal addressed in a well-known poem, had been able to give its view of the matter in verse, how would it...

'I. R -3 E 3 C 0 6111/ 4 C I 3 0 U 6 S N 7 E S 3 S r il A I L W A V EFS1 DE L 13 A , x 09( E R 0 X Ai A I N L3 I T14711E1_1. T H E T I ME I IIIGOR I II STCIRMPIPIS...

Going for quality in the N. Rhone Auberon Waugh Last November, when the Spectator Wine Club celebrated its fifth birthday with a last bottle of the original Avery's 1969 Nuits...

c/o Yapp Brothers, Mere, Wiltshire Telephone: (0747) 860 423 1. Syrah de l'Ardeche (St Desirat) 1985 2. St Joseph (St Desirat) 1985 3. Comas (Clape) 1984 4. ate R6tie (Champet)...