M rs Thatcher said that she would emerge strengthened from the proposed challenge to her leadership from Sir Anthony Meyer; she said that she would carry on as Tory leader and...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 NO TORY TOUCHSTONE It is certainly true that Mr Heseltine would like to be leader of the Conservative Party. He has said that he is 'in the...

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I t was that old newspaperman Lord Cudlipp who first pointed out to me that Mrs Margaret Thatcher had not actually said what the Sunday Correspondent claimed she had said: that...

week.

Now We Are Fifty AUBERON WAUGH My own experience was a feeling of liberation. I celebrated the event by not writing a column for The Spectator last week, while recovering from...

Twenty years of repression have collapsed ice of communism crack at last in Czechoslovakia Prague IT HAS been a year of peaceful revolu- tions in Central Europe, but this is...

Diana Geddes wonders how much the French President can control history Paris THESE are exciting times for President Mitterrand. Well, yes, for everyone, you might reply. No,...

Naming of particles Here come the names of what physicists call elementary particles. They are cal- led elementary because, along the trail of analysing the structure of...

Daniel Johnson reveals his role in the dismantling of the Berlin Wall THE Berlin Wall vanished from the calcu- lus of world politics, to become little more than a quarry for...

Charlotte Eagar wonders about the Cold War thriller writer now that the Berlin Wall is down JAMES BOND is lucky. Fleming is dead, and whatever he originally intended for Bond,...

W. J. West investigates the last time that Russia tried to end all wars IN THE flood of news in the press and on television about the events behind what used to be called the...

THE Times made a revelation on Wednesday of some literary interest. The elder among our readers will prob- ably remember a series of letters, signed "An Englishman," which began...

Michael Heath

Karan Thapar on the fall of the Indian Prime Minister New Delhi THE Indian general election has produced no winners unless, of course, you share my view that the voter has...

Michael Ivens remembers his own moral struggle when a serving soldier SHOULD a soldier disobey orders if he morally disagrees with them? That was an important issue in some of...

Dominic Lawson meets Godfrey Bradman a man who has done well, and is doing good GODFREY Bradman, property develop- er, former tax adviser to the rich and desperate, President...

The press: Paul Johnson on the efforts of newspapers to postpone a privacy law MONEY talks, not least in the newspaper world. It was the increasing tendency of juries to award...

THE Banque de l'Indochine et de Suez, now Indosuez for short, was the suitor in Morgan's disfavour. Chancing to bump into John Craven on his way back from a day's shooting, I...

ACROSS the road from the Bank of England sits the statue of George Peabody, honoured as philanthropist and merchant banker — a singular combination — and the founder of Morgan...

HERE's a useful runner in the Budget for Savings Stakes, to be staged, surely, by John Major in the spring. This one, trained at the London School of Economics by Professor...

Dear John, the honeymoon's over and the pound falls out of bed CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he new Chancellor's honeymoon with sterling has been a short one, but I am surprised that...

HERE we are at the moment of decision, and I still cannot get worked up about water. Maybe it is the promotion, maybe it is the product. Considered as a beverage (as Mr...

Sir: Your correspondent Mihir Bose (`The illusion of influence', 25 November) is less than fair to the British companies active in Hong Kong. Whether he likes it or not, it is...

Sir: Your editorial on changes in abortion law omits the main reason for opposition to reducing the time from 28 weeks (28 October). Few people have had any rela- tionship with...

Sir: I hold no brief for the detention of suspects without trial for more than 24 hours. On the other hand when this coun- try is castigated on this issue by the European Court...

Sir: I am a barrister and I am sick to death of reading slanted rubbish about my pro- fession of the kind produced by Marcel Berlins (`Counsels of despair', 25 Novem- ber)....

Sir: Asian relations in ballot boxes (Let- ters, 11 November) are misinterpreting the liberties afforded by our gentle democracy. But whilst Mr Childs makes a sound case for...

Sir: Unlike Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 11 November), I have been to luncheon with the Prime Minister in the Thatchers' flat upstairs at Number Ten. Incidentally, she cleared...

Sir: Some of the Grinling Gibbons carvings at Hampton Court were indeed removed for safekeeping during World War II, and so it would seem perfectly reasonable for G illy Cryer...

Sir: Paul Johnson's 'appalling' statistic (28 October), that one in four births in Britain is illegitimate, conceals something other than tensions, misery and conflicts. The...

Sir: Taki is wrong (High life, 18 Novem- ber). Alice Mayhew is neither, as it hap- pens, Irish, nor, in any way, intolerant. I am on my fourth book for her now — that surely...

Sir: Paul Johnson's usage of 'shooting in the foot' for Neil Kinnock is surely right and Spencer Jones wrong in his derivation of the phrase from malingerers in World War I. It...

Sir: Your music critic (21 October) sug- gests that modern music should feature in our conversation as much as modern litera- ture and does not understand why we do not pay more...

DEVELOP. To build a shopping centre on top of. LIFE. Life is what you brood about when you are not doing it properly. PHOTO-OPPORTUNITY. A phe- nomenon wherein fact-finding...

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...

FOR ME it has been a J. R. Ackerley year. Having found that an old favourite, Hin- doo Holiday, stood up well after 37 years, I followed it with his other three books (My Dog...

Books of the Year A further selection of the best and most overrated books of the year, chosen by some of the Spectator's regular reviewers Stephen Spender THE Body and...

NEITHER Krystyna Kawecka's Journey Without a Ticket (Fineprint, Nottingham, £6.90) nor Janek Leja's Janek (co-author A. Dowling, Ringpress, £14.95) would claim great literary...

RARELY does a reviewer truly enjoy a book he or she is reviewing. He has too many notes to take — 20 pages on average I find. Then at the end he has to ask himself, on behalf of...

A BOOK that will, I think, be recognised as a classic is. Little Legs: Muscleman of Soho by George Tremlett (Unwin Hyman, £12.95) — the 'as told to' recollections of Royston...

ASTONISHINGLY, Sport and the British by Richard Holt (Clarendon Press, £19.50) is the first serious attempt to make sense of sport as part of the general social history of...

THE Real Charlotte by Somerville and Ross was my all round favourite fiction. A most enchanting book and the obvious precursor of all the splendid, dotty Irish books about...

PAUL Theroux's My Secret History (Ham- ish Hamilton, £11.95) seems to me to be one of the best books he has ever written. There is a wit, energy and precision to his style which...

MOST architects are, perhaps fortunately, rather dull and conventional, and books about them tend to do them justice. A curious exception is John Wood, the man who created...

THOUGH chiefly conspicuous in these pages by the prolonged leaves of absence from them their editor is pleased to grant me, I am only too happy to confide to readers how greatly...

I RECOMMEND the reprint of the trans- lation of the lives of Saints Ninian and Kentigern, which appeared under the title Two Celtic Saints as a 'Facsimile Reprint 1989 by...

THIS year I have escaped reading any overrated books except lunatic ones about Shakespeare, which is an area that does not count. One of the best was the poems of Bei Dao (The...

I ENORMOUSLY enjoyed Dominic Lieven's Russia's Rulers under the Old Regime (Yale, £27.50). The book repre- sents a highly successful combination of massive statistical tables...

TERENCE Stamp's latest memoirs, Dou- ble Feature (Bloomsbury, £14.95), is an evocative account of his tortured love affair with Jean Shrimpton. After a life of `scrumptious...

ROBERT NYE's A Collection of Poems 1955-1988 (Hamish Hamilton, £12.95) is a surprise, yet not a surprise. Most perci- pient of our poetry reviewers, having hid his own poems...

NOT yet having found a cure for agnostic- ism, as an ageing theological recidivist I have a growing appetite for books about What It All Means. During the past year, the best...

Noel Malcolm SCHOPENHAUER AND THE WILD YEARS OF PHILOSOPHY by Rtidiger Safranski, translated by Ewald Osers Weidenfeld, £35, pp.385 P rofessor Ernest Gellner once told me...

every , word John Gross ABSENT FRIENDS by Geoffrey Wheatcroft Hamish Hamilton, £15.95, pp.29I T wenty-two men and women, with only two things in common. One big thing: they...

He kept his wife in a box he did And she never complained though the neighbours did Because of the size of the box and the way He tried to behave in a neighbourly way But smiled...

Francis King HUXLEY IN HOLLYWOOD by David King Dunaway Bloomsbury, f18.95, pp.458 I n general, when one is reviewing a book, it is a good rule not to quote from the blurb....

Geoffrey Wheatcroft THE CROCKFORD'S FILE: GARETH BENNETT AND THE DEATH OF THE ANGLICAN MIND by William Oddie Hamish Hamilton, f14.95, pp. 232 W hy did he do it'? The Revd...

Mary Keen current film, Dead Poets Society, is about an English master who gives his class a fresh perspective on life and literature by persuading them to stand on their...

Art The Turner Prize 1989 Long faces at the prize-giving Giles Auty L ast year a concerned reader wrote to the editor of The Spectator complaining that in my article dealing...

The Good Person of Sichuan (Olivier) Bad timing Christopher Edwards T he momentous events in Eastern Europe have taken most people by sur- prise, including our own National...

Five by Twelve: Studio Ceramics (Gallery North, till 23 December) Geoffrey Whiting, Potter (Aberystwyth Arts Centre, till 3 February and touring to Bath, London and Paisley)...

A Private Life (`15', Cannon Tottenham Court Road) Quiet victims Hilary Mantel I t is desperately difficult to explain to people who have never been to South Africa that...

Starter's orders Martin Gayford M any people do not find buying jazz records easy, I know. On previous occa - sions when I have recommended one in print, a shower of letters...

6: '91.• ECI_ ( : MEER ARTS 7F y A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics DANCE The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden (240 1066), 7...

On location Wendy Cope 'ID ear Wendy Cope. You will no doubt some time over the next month be reviewing The Ginger Tree, which is start- ing on BBC 1.' No doubt? This letter,...

That sinking feeling Taki iving in Palm Beach is like making love to a beautiful woman who insists on reading a gossip column during the exer- cise. Better yet, it is like...

The wonder of Worthing Zenga Longmore I t is with deep, self-indulgent nostalgia that I write to you today. Last weekend I went to find my roots. To root-find on a Saturday...

Slagged off Jeffrey Bernard A colleague wrote a review of my book the other day that was so bitchy it vi z a spiked. How very naïve of him to submit it to this journal. Anyone...

_.074L ...*LtioNL oostL,AjoiLiskA . ADVENT starts next Sunday, rather late; it will only just manage to squeeze itself in before Christmas day. But before that we must not...

chazar fn lokshen. Which roughly translated from Yiddish means 'Don't ask the London Tourist Board where to go for Jewish food: they'll send you to Blooms.' This may explain why...

Gigantomachy Raymond Keene A t the lnvestbanka tournament in Belgrade, which finished on Monday, Kas- parov made chess history by pushing his Elo rating to 2808, which should...

Baker's dozen Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1602 you were chal- lenged to incorporate the following 13 words, in any order, in a plausible piece of Prose: allegro, simian,...

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...

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Alcaics and sapphics, two popular metres among Greek and Roman poets (see any good dictionary for definitions), have often been used by poets writing in English. You are invited...