T he miners' strike entered its 16th week, still the main news story. Mrs Thatcher made a direct and unheeded appeal to the 120,000 miners on strike to return to work, Mr...

Saving the BBC S carcely a day has passed since May 1979 when Mrs Thatcher's Government has not been indicted for 'hurting the poorest people in our society'. On Tuesday, for...

T he Government's defeat in the House of Lords last week over the issue of compulsory postal ballots in union elections was a characteristic minor example of Mrs Thatcher's...

T n his autobiography, Malcolm X, the 1 American gangster who became a black power leader in prison, recounts how he graduated from petty drug peddling to `running the numbers'...

T he Spectator's architectural correspon- dent, Gavin Stamp, won a considerable coup at the public inquiry into the Mansion House Square development on Wednesday. Re produced a...

M rs Thatcher claims a success at the EEC summit at Fontainebleau. Yet the main result of the summit is that the spending of the EEC — and Britain's con- tribution to that...

D ritain's decision not even to attempt to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 30 per cent before 1993 is a shaming one; and the arguments used to justify it are specious. If...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £17.25 £17.25 £20.50 £26.50 One year: £34.50 £34.50 £41.00 £53.00 For special offer turn to p.33 Name Address US Subscriptions: $75.00...

Pop goes the weasel Auberon Waugh T he Duke of Gloucester waited ten years before making his maiden speech in the House of Lords. Perhaps it has taken him that amount of time...

D isappointment bordering on dismay gripped my household with the arrival of last week's issue of Country Life. In place of the full-page engagement photograph which...

Joseph Santamaria Melbourne W riting about in vitro fertilisation in the Spectator (30 April, 1983), James Hughes-Onslow asked of Melbourne's Monash University test-tube baby...

Frank Johnson Paris itons will be broadly aware that a start- lingly r ingly huge march took place in this city on Sunday over something unclear to do with education. That...

Christopher Hitchens Washington mailer than a man's hand, they say, this L./little polyp in Ronald Reagan's derriere. But already, we know more about it than perhaps we want...

E. C. Hodgkin suppose he was the last of the Palestin- ians,' someone said as, on a Monday afternoon earlier this month, we followed the coffin of Musa Alami from Aqsa mos- que...

We suppose that, on the whole, Mr. Hughes is right; and that for lads who can 'rough it' easily, and like out-of- door life, and have the ability to utilise labour,...

Philip Jacobson Manila S ome attribute it to powerful new drugs, others to a remarkable triumph of mind over matter. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but nobody...

Murray Sayle Londres A s I write, 32 of the 90-odd starters in the Observer Singlehanded Transatlan- tic Race (OSTAR) are still at sea, while two are unaccounted for, although...

Andrew Gimson W hat more irritating subject than reli- gion? Those not provoked to rage by the mere mention of it, will very soon be annoyed if they think you are being too...

is looking for someone to sell advertising and to help with the marketing of the magazine. A love of selling is most important. Previous ex- perience would be a help but is not...

Andrew Brown S o many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Under the marijuana fog of a summer evening a crowd flowed through an African city of tents and stalls...

A Thatcher suicide? Paul Johnson he public relations of the Thatcher min- i. istry are the most inept of any govern- ment I have known, and they grow steadily worse. The only...

Who's a fraud? H ere is how to silence a City luncheon room with one easily-dropped brick. When last, you ask, did anyone in or around this part of the world g o down for seven...

t this point, those lunchers who are still in the room will a g ree that your q ues- tions are g rowin g in ur g ency. The re g ula- tion of the City is becomin g more formal,...

F raud, of course, is one thin g , and scan- dal another — but q uite fri g htenin g enou g h, at that. It afforded the frisson of that autumn day, two years back, in Bri g...

T he revolution at. Schroders now brin g s a new chairman to join the new chief executive. The Earl of Airlie is transferrin g to the Palace, as Lord Chamberlain, and hands over...

L ord Roskill heads the Fraud Trials L./Committee, briefed (in resonant le g al En g lish) 'to consider what chan g es in ex- istin g law and procedure would be desirable to...

Sir: I was very surprised to read P. J. Kavanagh's report (Postscript, 9 June) that `the air was filled with dandelion seedlings'. Surely some terminological inexactitude here....

Sir: Who should be the next Poet Laureate? Forget costive librarians and Angry Old Men. The answer lies under your nose. Spectator literary competition reports frequently offer...

Sir: Your cricket correspondent Alan Gibson (23 June) should know better than to quote the 'famous Yorkshire phrase' as `We'll get them in singles'. What Rhodes said to Hirst...

Sir: In correcting Francis King's `totally erroneous' account of the massacre at Oradour in June 1944, Mrs Montagu (Letters, 2 June) is almost wholly mistaken. She claims that...

Pro patria Sir: Does Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 16 June) really think that people of my generation and that of his father, whom I knew pretty well, so enjoyed the 1939-45...

Sir: Out from the whole world we received letters and telegraphs, in which people support our campain 'Save the Sea- Turtles'. Also a lot of daily newspapers as well as...

find myself totally in agreement with Colin Welch. Everything he says in his article is true. M. Grant Cormack 13 Maryville Park, Belfast

Sir: Colin Welch refers to 'malignant clap- trap' (Centrepiece, 16 June). His entire article on the teachers, in my view, comes under this heading, to which I would add the word...

Sir: Before `nig-nog' (Letters, 9 June) was transmogrified into a term restricted to racial abuse, 'nigger' suffered the same fate. The 17th-century English Queen Elizabeth of...

Saved from the majority Colin Welch S ome think my fears about the teaching profession exaggerated, the examples I gave in the past two weeks untypical. Most sincerely do I...

Reaching for the Araldite Ferdinand Mount The Politics of Consent Francis Pym (Hamish Hamilton £8.95) T ooking natural is not what politicians r are best at. For the first of...

Brian Inglis A Leg to Stand On Oliver Sacks (Duckworth £8.95) Doctors Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £10.95) O liver Sacks, neurologist extraordin- ary,...

Patrick Skene Catling Swallow D. M. Thomas (Gollancz £895) M ako [the US Secretary of State] strode around with increasing des- peration. He could see there was some- thing...

Lewis Jones Doctor Slaughter Paul Theroux (Hamish Hamilton £6.95) T here is as much in the way of tourism in Paul Theroux's fiction as in his books about long railway journeys....

CHARLES DOUGHTY: 'Travels in Arabia De- serta' and any title by Anthony Carson. Skea, 2e Cambaht Rd, London SW15 6EW. JOHN BUCHAN: 'Julius Caesar' and 'Man and Deeds'. M....

Artemis Cooper The Princess of Siberia Christine Sutherland (Methuen £8.95) Tn the early 19th century, the average leducated Russian knew as much about Siberia as the average...

Mark Amory Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation Noel Riley Fitch (Souvenir £14.95) t starts as a romantic story. Sylvia Beach, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, comes...

Harriet Waugh Wanting Angela Huth (Harvill Press £8.95) Strange Loop Amanda Prantera (Cape £8.50) The Garden of Earthly Delights Lawson Davies (Michael Joseph £8.95) I ii her...

Peter Quennell The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain Edited by Kenneth 0. Morgan (Oxford University Press £15) A full-scale history of any great country is apt to resemble...

Frances Hill Morning Star Simon Raven (Blond & Briggs £8.95) T his is strictly a novel for addicts. New readers are unlikely to push their way far through the tangle of heavy,...

Past lives Peter Ackroyd The Return of Martin Guerre (`15', Curzon) A nd also the return of Gerard Depar- dieu — although he has been away only momentarily; here he is again,...

Third degree Alistair Hicks O ver 2,500 students roll off the art school conveyor belt every year, yet throughout Britain there are only some hundred painters and sculptors...

Water torture Giles Gordon The War at Home (Hampstead) The Spanish Tragedy (National: Lyttelton) Aren't We All? (Theatre Royal, Haymarket) or much of its four scenes, James...

Going native Geoffrey Smith T he last few years have been the best and worst of times for Gilbert and Sullivan — worst for devotees of the operas a la D'Oyly Carte, best for...

Play of the day Harry Eyres CT t will get worse. [It] will combine 'structural infantilism with hardnosed technology. It will be harsh, and it will lack both modesty and...

The Spectator for twelve months and receive FREE either THE KNOX BROTHERS A biography by Penelope Fitzgerald or UNDER SIEGE Literary Life in London 1939-45 by Robert...

Whiz kids Alexander Chancellor T was pleased to have it confirmed by no 1.less an authority than Sir Clive Sinclair, the electronics genius, that video tape recorders are so...

Furniture P. J. Kavanagh T think I stumbled recently on one of 'those Great Divides which make people with one set of mental furniture forever unable to understand the...

Tennis racket Taki D uring the French championships at Roland Garros in 1965, my Greek Partner and I drew the formidable Amer- ican team of Frank Froehling and Cliff Richey as...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for a rhyming poem containing as many acronyms as possible. This was a tough assignment, especially as 1 don't believe there's a...

No. 1327: 1 was robbed Set by Jaspistos: A Mr White, a black singer, is 'shocked' that he has just been turned down as 'unsuitable' for the parts of Monterone or Sparafucile in...

Prize: 110 — or a copy of Chambers Dictionary, 1983 edition (ring the word 'Dictionary' under name and address) — for the first correct solution opened on 16 July. Entries to:...

N 17b R .077W•O.R , 0 IC I n r R 0 , DIEM A 1% 4 B ri r H I !Al G i s A N TlEi0 E LL ADV ETHU OR IPIDAU 7 1tEE EIP L I '1 , 1 S H H1OTE B A 0 L E I A ja.i 1 , 0 P A T 14 .44 1 H...

Red brick road Raymond Keene T hanks to what the Guardian has des- cribed as the 'initiative and vision' of the London Docklands Development Cor- poration (notably Eddie...

W hen it comes to food there is a war on: nouvies versus the regionalists. What sweet relief it is to go to a house where someone bangs a joint of meat in the oven, boils a few...