T he Court of Appeal confirmed the Home Secretary's powers to set tariffs for juveniles' prison sentences, but ruled that he 'departed from the standards of fair- ness' in...

Hobbes, Rousseau, Michael Howard and the right to order BRUCE ANDERSON T here is no answer to the problem of punishing the Bulger murderers. They com- mitted an atrocious...

D oes anyone know what I can do with the first act of an abandoned play, working title Hitting the Fan? It was to have been a dramatisation of the Alan Clark Diaries a sort of...

Philip Hensher lists the similarities between the end of the 20th and of the 19th centuries. There is a craving for a new genius. Meanwhile, Damien Hirst is our Beardsley,...

Michael Heath

NOW, if you can tear your attention away from speculating about my age for a few minutes, spare a thought for the woes of wireless broadcasters. I don't mean the wickedness of...

Milton Shulman punctures the tales told about the most famous postwar play, now aged 40 But in the summer of 1956 the play was admired as a splenetic spasm of rage by England's...

I ARRIVED in the hospital last week to find a new notice immediately inside the main entrance. It was signed by a man called the Complaints Manager, and he seemed to be touting...

E.C. Hodgkin recalls his time on the Times, after Nasser seized the Suez Canal forty summers ago I RECALL two occasions when, as a jour- nalist, I heard people talking...

. . . but it's not always done by those PR people, says Brian Basham — one of the original City PR men IN HER good and overdue article about how City pages are influenced by...

A painful poke in the eye for some nasty left-wing Oxford dons PAUL JOHNSON T he donation of £20 million by Wafic Said to Oxford University to expand — in effect to transform...

The taxman is neutral, so Sharon and Darren get down to a spot of research CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he scene is the stockroom of the Cen- tre for Policy Studies. Sharon and Darren...

Sir: Poor Alistair Forbes! Most people grow mellow with the passage of time but in his case, as is evident from the disjointed ramble that passes for a book review (27 July),...

Loquacious apes Sir: Most of the points raised by Claudia Parsons (`The wrongs of rights') and Victo- ria Elliot (`Sheep may not safely graze') in your issue of 27 July might...

large amount of money goes to charities which have enough already, compared with unfashionable char- ities. For example, although of the cancers prostate cancer is now the...

Sir: I was very concerned to read Dominic Prince's article about royal patronage and charities (`The truth about the loss of royal- ties', 27 July). I will set the record...

Sir: In reply to Nicholas Kenyon's letter (20 July), I am not sure where my disingenu- ousness may be said to lie. I was making a general point about the BBC monopoly, which it...

Sir: It is agreeable to say that Father Daly and Taki are both right up to a point about La Badia, near Orvieto (Letters, 27 July). The ancient Abbey of Ss Severn and Martirio...

Sir: May I mildly protest at Mr Lawrence Rickard's statement in his letter (13 July) that not since he was a young man has he seen a young person offer an elderly person a seat...

Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 6 July) claims that 'we have to overthrow the doctrine of universal rights. . . . Only God has rights'. But Paul Johnson surely does not...

Sir: I hope I am never invited to join Anne McElvoy on one of her modest picnics, for when she serves me wine in a long- stemmed glass, as her article (Wine and food, 13 July)...

Sir: Alan Watkins (Wine and food, 13 July) is puzzled that he was able to drink Chablis, Vosne-Romande and other such bur- gundies for strangely little money at El Vino in the...

Sir: I am surprised that Patrick Higgins denies that the Butterfield archive contains evidence that Sir Herbert Butterfield visit- ed prostitutes (Letters, 6 July). Some years...

Sir: I can confidently assert, as one of the literary executors of Nancy Astor, that nei- ther version of the quip about the tango can be ascribed to her (Leader, 1 June and...

Sir: As the aunt of a real-life Sharon Queen (`Be a constitutional expert', 20 July) might I say that the Prince of Wales could do much worse than to consort with a real woman...

Sir: Regarding Aldeburgh town council's preference for a birdbath to a statue of Benjamin Britten (Leader, 27 July), it might have helped the composer's cause if he had kept a...

The women come and go Mary Warnock SOMERVILLE FOR WOMEN: AN OXFORD COLLEGE, 1879-1993 by Pauline Adams OUP, £40, £17.99, pp. 394 P auline Adams is Librarian and Archivist of...

Roy Jenkins BRADMAN by Charles Williams Little, Brown, £20, pp. 336 I have only once previously reviewed a book about games-playing, and that was also in The Spectator. It was...

Anita Brookner THE STORIES OF VLADIMIR NABOKOV edited by Dmitri Nabokov Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 663 T his handsome volume reprints all of the stories in Nabokov's four collections,...

Fiona Maddocks WHEN THE MUSIC STOPS by Norman Lebrecht Simon & Schuster, £16.99, pp. 455 N a average scoop-crazed journalist would choose classical music as a subject on which...

Main de Botton LOST PRINCE: THE UNSOLVED MYSTERY OF KASPAR HAUSER by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson Simon & Schuster, f16.99, pp. 254 I n Nuremberg in 1828, there appeared a...

Richard Dorment ABOUT MODERN ART: CRITICAL ESSAYS, 1948-96 by David Sylvester Chatto, f25, pp. 448 A bout modern art? I suppose you can call Brancusi, Lkger, Matisse and...

Raymond Carr SPANISH HOURS by Simon Courtauld Libra Mundi, £16.95, pp. 192 `S pain', the tourist slogan of the 1960s proclaimed, 'is different.' Its unique qualities as a...

James Teacher LONGITUDE: THE TRUE STORY OF A LONE GENIUS WHO SOLVED THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM OF HIS TIME by Dava Sobel Fourth Estate, £12, pp. 176 n 22 October 1707...

Frances Partridge THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD: VOLUME IV, 1920-1921 edited by Vincent O'Sullivan and Margaret Scott Clarendon, £45, pp. 362 I t would be...

good Tim Parks HISTORY AND UTOPIA by E. M. Cioran, translated from the French by Richard Howard Quartet, £7, pp. 118 W hatever his qualities,' writes E. M. Cioran, opening an...

Images and language of the time Barry Millington responds to last week's article about Wagner and anti-Semitism here are the Jews in his works?' asks Michael Tanner with...

Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, till 18 August, and at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, from 21 Sept till 12 Jan 1997) A rollicking good...

Royal Ballet Mixed Bill (Royal Opera House) Sheer pleasure Giannandrea Poesio A n all-star cast performing an evening of bravura dances is every balletomane's ultimate dream....

Promises Promises (Bridewell) The Lights (Royal Court) Here we go again Sheridan Morley L ike the Habsburgs, producer Michael White forgets nothing and learns nothing; 30...

Denise Calls Up (15, selected cinemas) Crossed lines Mark Steyn F or anyone seeking shelter from Twister and the other summer smasheroos, the best bet is revivals. I can...

Take the money Marcus Berkmann T here's nothing like a good short-list to stir the blood. The nominations for this year's Mercury Music Prize for the best British album are as...

Sporting mania Simon Hoggart T hank goodness the athletics is under- way. The first week of an Olympics is devoted to the sports nobody enjoys except the participants. (Polo...

Rude talk Michael Vestey P oor old Brenda, the farmer's wife from Warwickshire. She made the mistake of telephoning an awful drip called Tommy Boyd on Talk Radio UK's daily...

We'll miss you Robin Oakley T he blues composer W.C. Handy once observed, 'It may well be that true riches are laid up in Heaven. But it's sure nice to have a little pocket...

Going for gold Taki Gstaad Just before he left for Atlanta and the masking agent games, I had a drink with ICing Constantine of Greece, and he expressed his concern about the...

What a swing! Andrew Robson AN 'advance sacrifice' is an effective strat- egy whereby a player with excellent sup- port for partner but a weak hand makes a spectacular jump in...

THERE MAY be no such thing as a free lunch, but it is certainly a less expensive meal than dinner, especially if taken in one of London's gastronomic pinnacles. Take those two...

• UNITED KINGDOM • THE PHEASANT INN Bassenthwaite Lake, Nr Cockermouth, Cumbria Quiet situation between forest and lake. 20 Bedrooms with private facilities. NO television or...

ISLE OF i U RA 111..1 StllICII IOW COMPETITION Point of departure Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1943 you were invited to take the first line of any popular lyric since 1930...

IN-THE-STRAND SIMPSON'S IN •T HE•STRAND CHESS Rois fainéants Raymond Keene DURING THE PERIOD of Soviet domi- nation of world chess from 1948, when Botvinnik won the title,...

A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1989 Port for the first correct solution opened on 19 Au g ust, with two runners-up prizes of £15 (or, for UK...

The quest for flight Simon Barnes I HAVE a theory that all non-confronta- tional sports are about one thing — flight. I once dined with an ex-gymnast who told me she dreamed...

Dear Mary. . . Q. Someone rather glamorous has invited Me to stay in Scotland this month. I accepted With the proviso that I would have to leave on a certain day in order to...