L ord Havers announced his retirement after four months as Lord Chancellor, due to persistent ill health. He has been suc- ceeded by Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the first member...

UNPOPULAR CAPITALISM he last time a British Government and the City got into a row about BP shares, the Government was buying. On 31 De- cember 1974, in the very depths of the...

Mr Benn's nice young friends are not as nice as they look NOEL MALCOLM H ow pleasant to know Mr Benn, who has written such volumes of stuff! His recently published journal of...

CHARLES MOORE W hat do you feel about the Great Crash? My own reaction, though of course I realise and regret that almost everyone will be poorer, is of almost unalloyed...

An appeal for all the nation's madwomen to congregate under one banner AUBERON WAUGH A woman in Hove wrote to Alexandra Artley (Diary, 17 October) saying that she keeps the...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that politics caused the crash and only politics can stop it now Washington AT the top of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page was an...

Sarah Traxler on how perestroika pinches for the ordinary Russian Moscow TOWARDS the south-west edge of Mos- cow on a good day you can find several dozen Soviet-style...

Jeremy Gavron on the Ugandan witch who promises immunity from bullets Eastern Uganda SO FOUL and fair a woman Uganda has not seen. Rebel leaders in Africa seem, these days, to...

THE riots have died away in London, under the pressure of opinion and the police; but they will revive again with the first appearance of continued frost. It would be well to...

Gavin Stamp finds architectural hope in a divided city Berlin THE tramlines which run down the centre of the Potsdamerstrasse, once one of the busiest in the city, now...

Digby Anderson at the Motorfair observes the oddities of the journalists OTHER people's enthusiasms are always puzzling, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at how...

The press: Paul Johnson looks at a case of rural misreporting NATIONAL newspapers are curiously neglectful of the countryside. More and more people want to live there, or in...

GOODBYE and good riddance to some of that. Goodbye to the paper mills and printing presses churning out new share certificates, so that companies can issue them and exchange...

GOODBYE, we may hope, to our clumsy and costly way of selling shares, and, to Sid, a sailor's farewell. The stuffers argue that to release BP's underwriters from their...

CONFIDENCE, enthusiasm, panic, funk — that (I was saying) is the market cycle, with its worst moment when enthusiasm gives way to panic. Tim Congdon, the Sage of Shearsons,...

Goodbye to all that, from a City of stuffers and pullers CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he City split this week into stuffers and pullers. The pullers, led by Michael Richardson of N....

GOODBYE to much more. Goodbye, I suppose, to deregulation — the vogue word for removing the barriers from finan- cial markets, and opening them up to new participants, national...

Sir: In is article entitled 'Urine trouble' (12 September) Michael Woodiwiss cites the case of a naval doctor whose urine tests were regularly 'positive for morphine' due to his...

Sir: During the recent financial 'crisis' a participant in the New York Stock Ex- change said, 'This place is motivated by two things, fear and greed.' This is self-evident in...

Sir: I obviously misunderstood the state- ment quoted by Mr Mosley (Letters, 17 October) that in Nicaragua 'education is now indistinguishable from indoctri- nation'. I thought...

Sir: So The Spectator would emulate King Canute, by 'Turning abortion's tide' (24 • October). Mr David Steel's 1967 Abortion Act was not just a 'more liberal law'. It made...

Sir: Gremlins interfered with my article last week (`Heir to the Ayatollah') so that it read that Mehdi Hashemi was the first critic to be executed since Khomeni came to power....

Sir: As Sir Robert Peel's house in Whitehall Gardens was demolished (Di- ary, 3 October), surely the most appropri- ate location for a commemorative plaque is 16 Upper Grosvenor...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £ (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES 12...

Simon Raven — 'went to seed' KING'S AND QUEENS How I fell into the company of clever, charismatic and mad dons MARK BOXER Dadie Rylands, who said, 'Write about money.' I...

Anthony could not do it David Carlton THE FAILURE OF THE EDEN GOVERNMENT by Richard Lamb Sidgwick & Jackson, f16.95 I t is a cruel fate, even by the harsh standards of...

Frances Partridge KATHERINE MANSFIELD: A SECRET LIFE by Claire Tomalin Viking, £14.95 T here is a particular pleasure in dis- covering from his biographer that an artist's...

Anne Chisholm HER MOTHER'S DAUGHTER by Marilyn French Heinemann, f10.95 R eading this book is like spending a long flight in the next seat to a middle-aged woman who badly...

Anita Brookner MORE DIE OF HEARTBREAK by Saul Bellow The Alison Press/Secker & Warburg, f10.95 S aul Bellow is fiction's outstanding au- thority on what he himself has called...

Anthony Storr MEMORY by Mary Warnock Faber, £11.95 M ary Warnock describes her new book as a sequel to Imagination (Faber, 1976), which many readers will remember as a...

Francis King THE REMAKE by Clive James Cape, f10.95 T he hero of this novel, an Australian called Joel Court, is an astronomer whose television appearances have caused him to...

It may be, as you say, Wise as the world is wise Not to be seen together. I can live with lies: But why, in dreams' dark secrecy, This flinching of your eyes? Ono no Komachi...

My image of myself Is of some lonely bay Where the sea-winds sigh among withered grasses. I have nothing to say Of my crane-like lover, that dot in the sky, As he dwindles...

Michael Ivens CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH ON TERRORISM edited by Paul Wilkinson and A. M. Stewart Aberdeen University Press, f45 THE AGE OF TERRORISM by Walter Laqueur Weidenfeld...

Dervla Murphy A RIDE ALONG THE GREAT WALL by Robin Hanbury-Tenison Century, L12.95 T he label 'explorer' is too often misap- plied; by now there is nowhere left to explore,...

A giant among craftsmen Tanya Harrod recalls the life and work of Michael Cardew T o my eternal regret I did not meet the late Michael Cardew. He was Bernard Leach's first...

Lotte Laserstein (Thomas Agnew, till 4 December) Lotte Laserstein (Belgrave Gallery, till 4 December) Overdue tribute Giles Auty E xperience of looking at art suggests that...

Perkins's plunder Alistair Hicks S t Francis's monastery in Assisi hardly needs another eulogy. Its basilicas were painted by most of the early Renaissance masters. Much of...

Finders keepers T he more bearish the stock market, the more bull there will be in the art market. It is one of the natural laws of Bond Street life. For the past few years the...

Rosenthal I think that my certifiable bibliomania began at 13, when my family moved to Cambridge and David's stall in Cambridge market became my little Mecca. Over the years I...

There is so much humbug shown in galler- ies and opinionated humbug written about contemporary art that I, who run a gallery of 20th-century art, find refuge, solace, humour and...

I tried to explain my passion to a friend. Tunbridge ware ... treen ... wooden by- gones? But he did not know what I was talking about. So, here I go again. From the early 18th...

For the collector, typewriters have one comforting quality. The first commerically successful models of the machine which was to emancipate women appeared only a little over a...

In the army and subsequently in business in Africa and the Far East I have been thrust into many aspects of life, and my curiosity has been especially awakened by the colo- nial...

Collecting has elements of the excitement of the chase. Once you are on the trail there is no giving up, and unlike in hunting collecting has no climax. The hobby re- mains with...

A true collector was once defined as someone who pays no regard to estimated prices, investment value, or the predeter- mined location on his or her walls or floor of a...

Lettice and Lovage (Globe) A touch of spice Christopher Edwards P eter Shaffer's new comedy opens with the sight of Maggie Smith (playing Miss Lettice Douffet) poised on the...

Hats are going out of fashion all over the world; that is why it is such a good time to collect them. I own a red woollen pom- pom hat, identical to that worn by Father...

regular critics THEATRE Entertaining Strangers, Cottesloe ( 9 28 2252). David Edgar's 'promenading' piece set in 19th- century Dorchester, full of vivid, locally researched...

Lessons of the past Wendy Cope A t the end of the discussion program- me Shoa — Experience of the Holocaust (Channel 4) the participants were seen to stand up and leave the...

The Belly of an Architect (`15', selected cinemas) Carnivorous city Hilary Mantel K racklite comes to the Eternal City to die; but crossing the Italian border on a train, he...

Use a long spoon Taki A s everyone who reads The Spectator knows, Alexandra Artley is no fan of Mrs Thatcher, which is her right, I suppose, just as it is the right of, say,...

The harder they fall Jeffrey Bernard I t is all so horribly sad. Yes, I know he was guilty, but that is neither here nor there as far as my feelings are concerned. The ruin of...

Wayside grazing Alice Thomas Ellis I was sitting in Cheng Du at lunchtime the other day waiting for my companion to arrive as arranged. And waiting. The third son who was also...

,s,, THIS week's column represents something of a first for me; a voyage of discovery, though on a purely gastronomic level no great adventurous spirit was called for. Le...

First time Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1495 you were in- vited to provide a famous writer's account of an unexpected and untypical first experi- ence. In my mid-forties I...

Repeat performance Raymond Keene K Seville asparov's debut with White was a disaster. I believed at the time that much of this debacle could be ascribed to a choice of opening...

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...

You are invited to write an acrostic poem in which the first letters of the lines, read downwards, spell GUY FAWKES NIGHT. Entries to 'Competition No. 1498' by 13 November.

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