Spoilt but valid. T he Prime Minister, Mr John Major, met representatives of other world powers in an attempt to establish a diplomatic plan to stop the fighting in Bosnia. Mr...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 WE ARE PREMATURE I magine Her Majesty's thoughts as she approaches the...

Here's one Labour supporter who's not so happy ALASTAIR CAMPBELL A sense of irony never having been one of Mr Major's strengths, the Prime Minis- ter rather missed a trick...

T hese are bewildering times for women. New Man (whom I never met) is out and Newish Man is the latest accessory. Not that I have one. Mine could not even be called Worn. He is...

The Hungarians might have a word or two in Mr Major's ear AUBERON WAUGH he Hungarian language is so impossi- bly difficult that you can communicate only with those Hungarians...

South Africa's black population, unlike that of other African countries, has gained its independence at exactly the right moment, argues John Simpson Durban THIS HAS been the...

Two American writers explain how the late Richard Nixon shaped their lives. Anne Applebaum blames him for her cynicism AFTER THE moon landing, which I recall very dimly indeed,...

SOMETIMES I feel I should like to become a hermit in the desert, to avoid all contact with humans. Even the honey and locusts might be an improvement on National Health Service...

Charles Glass argues that it was a tragedy for America when Kennedy beat Nixon A YEAR after I was born, the junior sena- tor from my home state, California, Richard Milhous...

THE ELUSIVE ALE AT LAST IN VIEW (And thought of the heady pleasures that await spurs them on.)

Ian Buruma examines the way in which different governments exploit memories of the second world war IS THERE anything meaningful to be gained from gazing at the pebbly Nor-...

Marlyn Harris ruminates on the effect the Channel Tunnel will have on the British psyche THE Channel Tunnel is a dreadful disap- pointment. From the observation tower at its...

The second instalment of the unexpurgated 1939 diary of Sir Charles Mappin 21 August Uneventful day. At sea. Captain very subdued. Sat up till about midnight on deck, Simone...

Tis4 TWICE as rich as you and twice as clever,' the Red Queen said to Alice. But newspapers and broadcasters often refer to an increase from 100 to 900 as a '900 per cent...

De Klerk has engineered a suicide leap into universal suffrage PAUL JOHNSON ith the spectacle of tribal savagery W provided by Ruanda-Urundi before every- one's eyes, it seems...

THIRTY YEARS ago Hurricane Betsy blew in from the Gulf of Mexico and left tankers stacked one on top of another like cars on a scrapheap. Asked to comment, Sir Paul Chambers,...

An elegant hole in the ground in EC3 throw your money in here CHRISTOPHER FILDES I have a new and improved plan for Lloyd's of London. It fits in with my pro- posal to...

LLOYD'S always argued (and wrote into its own Act of Parliament) that the unlimit- ed commitment of its members was one of its strengths. I have long thought it a weak- ness and...

THIS is the popular idea of the moment. Already a dentist has successfully sued his Lloyd's agent for exposing him to unwant- ed risks. This week 3,062 members of Lloyd's have...

Sir: It is not in the least bit surprising that Mr Buchan is seldom asked out to dinner. The surprise is, given his militantly misogy- nistic attitude, that he is asked out at...

Sir: I read with interest, and inescapable dismay, Alan Clark's dismissive review of Clive Ponting's biography of Churchill (Books, 23 April), not because I dissent from the...

Sir: For an academic, Professor Cannadine is a distressingly loose thinker ('John Major, Just an undertaker on overtime', 16 April). He accuses Thatcherism of 'wilfully' set-...

yet another institution — that of academic argument — which has lost its bearings. Margaret Thatcher's record will speak for itself and drown his pip-squeak rant- ings, but I...

where we both live, a hostess's best food and drink are reserved for the Bores' Dinner Party, where they console her for the rude, dull and cantan- kerous. The rocket salad and...

Sir: Liz Hodgkinson has got it right (The joy of illness. Illness can be a rewarding state for many. But there is an eventual price to be paid for the pleasure and indul- gence...

12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £80.00 0 £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £91.00 0 £46.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$130 0 US$66.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175 0 US$88 Rest of Airmail 0 £111.00 0 £55.50...

Sir: A question for Mr Keith Waterhouse CA message from the AAAA's president', 16 April), esteemed president of the Asso- ciation for the Annihilation of the Aberrant...

Sir: It was only from the excellent, if a little too charitable, article by Dr Mark Almond that I learned about Sir Peter Ustinov's indulgent views of labour camps (Teter...

Sir: Robert Harris's statement (Diary, 23 April) that The Road Names of Thatcham is 'possibly the most boring title in the history of English literature' cannot go unchal-...

Sir: In his criticism of western military action in Bosnia, Simon Jenkins ('We should beware the laptop bombardiers', 23 April) 'In some areas we're reverting to traditional...

Sir: Perhaps I can set you a friendly chal- lenge? You say (City and Suburban, 23 April) that my primary purpose in life is the search for a weekly headline — and that many of...

Sir: Winston Churchill may or may not have been a racist ('Winston replied that he didn't like blackamoors', 9 April), but the point cannot be made from his use of the...

Mr Seitz has been sane beyond endurance SIMON JENKINS R ay Seitz retires today as America's envoy in London. Diplomatic etiquette requires that he be described in farewell...

The shop bell's whanging coil, their entry's imprimatur, boxed provisions carried for them to the boot: We'll settle up next week if that's acceptable. The cost of it. I've...

Idealists versus realists Nicholas Henderson DIPLOMACY by Henry Kissinger Simon & Schuster, £25, pp. 1104 K issinger's Diplomacy is about the conflicting theories that have...

Nicholas Harman A pushy 24-year-old, fed up with the rich life in Ladbroke Grove, trusts that somebody in Kenya will welcome an extra teacher of English. She insists that she...

James Simmons HOUSE OF SPLENDID ISOLATION by Edna O'Brien Weidenfeld, £14.99, pp. 216 h e narrator and central character is an old lady, alone and unhappy in a decayed 'big...

Andro Linklater CITY LIGHTS: A STREET LIFE by Keith Waterhouse Hodder, £14.99, pp. 218 J oumalists may be good at writing about the world around them — it is, after all, their...

John Bowen DEAD LAGOON by Michael Dibdin Faber, 04.99, pp. 297 M ichael Dibdin's crime novels fall into two groups. There are the construc- tions — The Last Sherlock Holmes...

James Buchan SUMMING UP: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Yitzhak Shamir Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 19.99, pp. 288 h e man who calls himself Shamir I met only once, in Germany of all places, in...

Tom Shone WHAT A CARVE UP! by Jonathan Coe Viking, £15.50, pp. 512 h e novel had been trundling along quite contentedly, somewhere between middling and sub-standard, and then...

Jonathan Cecil THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS by Roger Lewis Century, £20, pp. 817 E merging from Roger Lewis' massive biography of Peter Sellers I was sure of three...

Philip Glazebrook ON SECRET SERVICE EAST OF CONSTANTINOPLE by Peter Hopkirk John Murray, £19.99, pp. 418 T he author of this pacy, readable account of Anglo-German conflict in...

Margaret Forster BARN BLIND by Jane Smiley Flamingo, £5.99, pp. 218 arvellous, isn't it, how an author's first novel can suddenly be worth the risk of publishing when their...

(for Naomi and Tim) As if this is what I was meant for and it's taken forever to find place and vocation. I'm swashbuckling, hearty and fresh from the sea. Over the sea-honed...

Exhibitions Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect (Museum of Modem Art, New York, till 10 May) Construction of a blockbuster Michael Wise A mong the scores of anecdotes about Frank...

Blond Eckbert (London Coliseum) Barn howls Rupert Christiansen D enis Marks's first season as General Director of the English National Opera was bound to be a bumpy and...

The Boyfriend (Players) Sunset Boulevard (Adelphi) Butterfly Kiss (Almeida) Bring back the golden oldies Sheridan Morley A l the songs we once sang to our girls driving back...

Talentless self promotion Sophie Constanti ill T. Jones wants you to love him. In fact, Bill T. Jones believes that his audience is going to fall in love with him —or so he...

Five Protagonists (Browse & Darby, till 21 May) Fluxbritannica: Aspects of the Fluxus Movement 1962-73 (Tate Gallery, till 19 June) Simon Lewis (Todd Gallery, till 14 May)...

events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics OPERA Fedora, Royal Opera House (071 240 1066), from 9 May. Barn- storming verism opera by Giordano in which a nihilist...

Best of British Alan Rusbridger T he Hunt for Michael Jackson (BBC2, Monday, 9 p.m.) was a dreadful warning to any youngster contemplating a career as a billionaire pop star....

Heavyweight friends Jeffrey Bernard What a fight it would have been if he and his friend, Rocky Graziano, my boyhood hero, had met. As it was, Jake and Rocky just used to send...

Pink girls are best Taki Washington A ong with the Forsythia, the pansies and various Massachusetts Congressmen were out in force last weekend in the nation's capital....

Ireland belongs to Edna Nigel Nicolson M y connections with Ireland are mul- tiple and thin, but, like electric wires, heav- ily charged. As a boy I reduced my grandmother to...

restaurant I originally intend- ed to review this week turned out to be the last restaurant reviewed by my locum: any food eaten at the Brackenbury is not wast- ed or to be...

Ii RI • %it/ I . 11 1111 'A 141+1 ,.. Pills from Parnassus Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1827 you were invited to provide a sickeningly or irrita- tingly cheerful poem,...

CHESS I SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA • e 6 • Kasparov crushed Raymond Keene Moscow LAST WEEK I WROTE of the 18 - year- old Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Kram- nik, one of the rising...

r i t14.1 GRAHAM'S1 PORT CROSSWORD H PORT W GRAHAM'S 1157: Maypole dancers by Mass A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first...

You are invited to write a poem (maximum 16 lines) either in doggerel or in the manner of A. A. Milne on the subject of the Prince of Wales's lost Jack Russell terrier, Pooh....

18, 36, 37, 41) and those at 2, 7, 28, 43 are ANTELOPES (19D). First prize: Charles F. Peers, Pin- ner, Middlesex; Runners-up: Patri- cia Kershaw, London NW7; Ann Reekic,...

Rounds and rounds Frank Keating YOU NEVER saw a man get through a career so fast. At Las Vegas on Saturday, the world heavyweight champion, Evander Holyfield, had swaggered in...

Q. I work in the fashion department of a glossy magazine. Because there is a no- smoking regulation in my office I am forced to go downstairs and stand in the street outside the...