DIARY 1995 £12 Plain £ 13 Initialled The Spectator 1995 Diary, bound in soft black leather, is now available. Laid out with a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the diary...

Star quality. T he Irish Government released the murderer of Lord Mountbatten and other convicted members of the Irish Republi- can Army for Christmas. The Queen told the...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 LOOK BACK IN THANKS I am haunted by thoughts of the things I may never do again,' wrote John Osborne in his Diary column for the last issue...

spEcnroR SUBSCRIBE TODAY - RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £80.00 1=1 £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £91.00 0 £46.00 USA Airspeed LI US$130 0 US$66.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175 0...

S eason of goodwill be damned. I spent Christmas in a sequence of towering rages. Roman Catholics are taught to avoid 'occa- sions of sin'. Anger is one of the seven deadly...

Now that the environmental theories of Marxism have collapsed so spectacularly, perhaps the same fate will befall Darwinism, argues Warwick Collins university atmosphere, and...

persist.. . I WAS in Casualty last week when a woman who had tried to hang herself was brought in. I do not think her effort was a very concerted one: her four-year- old son...

Michael Heath

Simon Winchester explains the pleasures of the most enjoyable job in the world: ambassador of anywhere to Brasilia Brasilia NEW YEAR'S EVE in Copacabana is a magical occasion...

Rebecca Nicolson is thrilled that at last the English are beginning to learn about the true nature of the horse and its attractions NEXT YEAR should be the year of the horse....

Anne Applebaum charts the development of the exercise class: however much it changes, the customers never vary 'UM,' said my aerobics instructor, `um, I think you might have...

a Welsh mountain to find what the future holds in store for us MICHELANGELO had visions on top of a mountain, and we ended up with the Sis- tine Chapel. Moses had visions on...

`MUMMY,' said Veronica, 'why haven't you written again about up to and down to?' `Because, fruit of my womb, I left all the letters on the subject kindly written by readers on...

How can the Guardian become a paper of truth and honour again? PAUL JOHNSON W hen a newspaper ceases just to report and comment on the news and becomes a news story itself,...

The British hangover delivers the goods austerity, frugality, eternity CHRISTOPHER FILDES I am not sure that what we need now is a sobering thought, but here goes: hangovers...

A ROTTEN Christmas for Mark Reed. He has lost his livelihood. Mr Reed was a director of the (rotten) Levitt Group. The Securities and Investment Board thinks that present and...

YOU WANT to overdraw, or to mortgage your house or insure your life? Goodness, how old-fashioned you must be. What you are is a potential member of a delineated socio-economic...

A BAD year for investment was, by defini- tion, a good year for the Bad Investment Guide. Advertising agencies, the Guide says, do not need outside capital and blow it if they...

FOR AN example of how not to do it, I look with confidence to Mexico. President Zedil- lo's government, in office for a month, ran into heavy weather and has cast the peso...

SIR WILLIAM Harcourt was, so I learn from the Treasury's Christmas card, the man who laid down that ministers exist to tell the Civil Service what the public wil l not stand....

in the Daily Telegraph about the Gott Affair. I particularly enjoyed his claim that I am willing to print pieces by any old lunatic off the street, provided that they contain...

Sir: While the wish of the Health Secretary to be known as Mrs Virginia Bottomley apparently remains an issue of earth-shat- tering importance, it is worth recording that, at...

Sir: Having recently discontinued my sub- scription to your magazine, I have today renewed it. I have at times resented your magazine (and still do) for some of your writer's...

Sir: First Dominic Lawson telephones me to complain about the way the Nine O'Clock News covered the Richard Gott story, while admitting he hadn't seen it (though he knew a man...

Sir: It seems a pity that such a distinguished writer as A.N. Wilson cannot find enough material for his Diary (19 November) with- out gratuitously introducing offensive refer-...

media have decided that You have run allegations on Mr Richard Gott to distract attention from the Chief Secretary of the Treasury. They are, of course, to distract attention...

Drowning in fripperies Bevis Hillier F ording the right title for a book on a virgin subject is a hit-or-miss conundrum. In 1968 I wrote a little book with the title Art Deco,...

David Profumo ARTHUR RANSOME ON FISHING by Jeremy Swift Cape, £14.99, pp. 280 R eturning home from his stint as war correspondent in Russia in 1919, Arthur Ransome was grilled...

James Simmons I found myself unable to finish two of these books. This review tries to solve the mystery. Many years ago when Night in T unisia first came out, I read it with...

G. Cabrera Infante T he other evening at Le Bistro, South Kensington, an Italian film director with whom I was supping all of a sudden, and a propos of nothing, praised Robert...

Fiona Maddocks THE COSMOPOLITES by Harry Brewster Michael Russell, f20, pp. 338 A favourite character in this book is a neo-Christian called Beryl. She only says two words...

Anita Brookner S ince French literary prizes are won by writers for the benefit of publishers, it is interesting to note that the great trium- virate of Gallimard, Grasset, and...

Opera Beatrice et Benedict (Welsh National Opera) Fidelio (Scottish Opera) Oberto (Opera North) Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Metropolitan Opera, New York) A ring of regional...

Brave new year Giles Auty I n recent weeks a number of artists in their thirties have told me of the gnawing anxieties they have about the business in which they have chosen...

Spectator's regular critics THEATRE To The Lighthouse, Lyric Hammersmith Studio (081 741 2311), 4 January. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Empty Space has a first stage...

Down memory lane Sheridan Morley I t was the year when a High Court judge solemnly banned Maxwell the Musical, not then even in preview, on the grounds that it might do damage...

Put on your L Ian Hislop T owards the end of the year I decided to make a small gesture on television. I was not sure if anyone would care or even notice but I did it anyway...

Take ten years off Taki here it is, another year gone by, and now that I'm on the wrong side of 57, every year feels like a day, a day whose hours are short. (Sorry Oscar.) As...

In search of happiness Jeffrey Bernard T h . e next person who tells me that there is always somebody worse off than myself is going to get a crack over the head. It is of no...

Oh to be a wood Nigel Nicolson O ne of the greatest and most puzzling achievements of our ancestors was the destruction of the primeval forest that spread rapidly across the...

Party of merry ripples Holly Budd S o we were to have two office Christmas parties: one for important bores hosted be the Line Manager and a secret on afterwards hosted by us...

if a footnote, at the bottom of the page: New Year's Eve cannot, it always seems, be other than significant. For me it has a particular weight, in that it marks the completion...

J U R A SINGli MAU SCOTCH %KIM COMPETITION isLEof F ORA Easy chair Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1861 you were invited to provide an extract from the inau- gural lecture of...

Menchik Club Raymond Keene IN RECENT YEARS there has been a tremendous explosion in performances by female players. Fuelled by the fabulous Polgar sisters, the effect has been...

ID 121.12V A'S i ' CI OS 0 7A R A E Errwt-1 S E "C PI U R C T L 4 1 E VIE R A COE/ T"A H 11:141 1 1 7E S S E VI _E RI A T E VA A G N C O L *14$ OIATIS EFOI F 0 11 PE A B U L R I...

GRAHAM'S PORT A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 16 January, with two runners-up prizes of £15...

You are invited to supply an extract from a local newspaper's account of a village fate in which there are at least a dozen risible misprints. Maximum 150 words. Entries to...

Screen tests Frank Keating I FULFILLED a lifelong ambition over the holiday and recorded Monsieur Hulot's Hol- iday. The tennis sequence is one of the all- time classics for...

Q. This year what seemed like dozens of my co ntemporaries (i.e. people getting on a bit) decided to get married. I gave ruinously expensive presents and parties, yet within m...

Volume 273 July—December 1994 O OOOO •••••• OOO O OOO 0 • Indiana University • • • • • JUL 3 1 1995 • • • • • Library • • • • • • • • • • • 0 0 • • 41 • • • • Published by...

Arrangement of entries Entries are arranged in letter-by-letter alphabetical order, i.e. spaces between words are ignored. Thus the entry 'Asher, Michael' precedes 'As Much as I...

(A) ARTICLE (AA) AND ANOTHER THING (AR) THE ARTS (AV) ANOTHER VOICE (CO) COMPEL] LION (CP) CENTRE PONT (CS) CITY AND SUBURBAN (D) DIARY (F) FICTION (1) ILLUSTRATION (L) LEI...