`You mean there's someone else?' M ore than 2,000 people who had been tested for cancer in Birmingham over the past eight years are to have their cases re- examined after a...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 A TIME TO DIE A few weeks ago, we published an arti- cle which asked...

The Strange Case of the Toothless Candidate ANDREW GIMSON T he time has come, in The Strange Case of the Toothless Candidate, to talk to the dentist. It would be wrong to...

WILSON I rather admired a friend of mine who inherited a baronetcy this summer and decided not to use his title. He and his wife both lead middle-class lives in London and felt...

It's time for the bourgeoisie to rise up against the capitalist oppressors CHARLES MOORE T he death of E.P. Thompson makes one realise how few socialist intellectuals now...

Dominic Lawson reveals the psychological, physical and emotional tension at the heart of the forthcoming World Chess Championship between Nigel Short and Garri Kasparov I FIND...

THE SUBJUNCTIVE. makes my head spin. The trouble is that it's becoming extinct, like whom, and we don't know when to use it. It is particularly trouble- some in conditional...

John Simpson returns to Angola after 17 years, and finds that the slogans have changed but the war goes on Benguela UNDERNEATH OUR helicopter the landscape was pure Rider...

ONE LEARNS such useful things in prison: among others, how dangerously one underestimates the criminal mind, and how lacking in imagination one is by comparison. If those mighty...

Edward Lucas says that the West should not let the Russians retain their imperial ambitions in the Baltic states Vilnius IMAGINE THAT the second world war had continued rather...

John Plender argues that the Church Commissioners' incompetence is a scandal which has not been honourably dealt with ARE THE Church Commissioners, whose ill-judged adventures...

Martin Vander Weyer examines the state of private education in Britain and discovers a new entrepreneurial spirit in the face of adversity A FUNNY THING happened at my last...

John Kay argues that manufacturing has become a cult, long after it has outlived its usefulness MANUFACTURING is back in fashion. John Major, we are told, 'believes passion-...

IT IS reported, we see, that the first- class is to be abolished on all Prussian State railways from October 1st, and, the reporter, who approves the change, says that it is...

Sir: Yes, Mr Fildes' memory is playing him tricks (City and surbuban, 28 August). The branch line powered by a horse was Fin- tona, in Northern Ireland. It was closed down in...

Sir: It is ridiculous of Roderick Smart to argue (`Cutting the old school tie', 21 August) that the Oxbridge admissions sys- tem is prejudiced against public schoolboys, and the...

Sir: On returning to Belgium from the UK where I was at the time of King Baudouin's death, friends confirmed what I had sus- pected, that the BBC, practically alone in Europe,...

Sir: What unfounded nonsense was Adam Nicolson's essay on bow-tie wearers (`Clever Dickies', 28 August). He says that `they' — and I admit to owning over 130 bow ties and hence...

Sir: Now Alastair Forbes claims kin with Sweet Fanny Adams (Letters, 21 August). Is there anyone to whom he is not related? John Kallinicos 278 Manor Avenue, Sale, Cheshire

Sir: Nicholas Coleridge is afraid his nanny `will be headhunted, like Aunt Dahlia's chef Anatole in the Wodehouse stories' (The rise of the big bucks nanny', 28 August). In fact...

convenience. I am sorry that Adam Nicol- son is still dominated by his stepfather, as there could be circumstances in which he too would find one convenient. Edward Cope Pond...

12 Months 6 Months UK ❑ £77.00 ❑ £39.00 Europe (airmail) ❑ £88.00 ❑ £44.00 USA Airspeed ❑ US$125 ❑ US$63.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175 ❑ USW Rest of Airmail ❑ £111.00 ❑ £55.50 World...

Relative values apply John Cornwell W hen Albert Einstein died in Prince- ton on 18th April 1955, his brain was removed from his skull and preserved in formaldehyde for future...

Penelope Lively YESTERDAY CAME SUDDENLY by Francis King Constable, £16.95, pp.328 A utobiography comes in many guises — as stern narrative, as expiation, as justifi- cation, as...

Christopher Bray SHEAR A novel about an adulterous English geologist doesn't sound much like a sizzler, but just try putting Tim Parks's Shear down. I would have read it at a...

Mark Archer THE PURSUIT OF REASON: THE ECONOMIST 1843-1993 by Ruth Dudley Edwards Hamish Hamilton, £30, pp. 1020 F or 150 years the Economist has shaken its head at the...

Neither of them spoke or ever dreamed This was the last they were to see of him Who didn't wind the window down Or wave or even turn his head But leant a little forward, showed...

Anita Brookner THE STONE DIARIES by Carol Shields Fourth Estate, f12.99, pp.361 have said that Mrs Flett recovered from the nervous torment she suffered some years ago, and yet...

Alan Coren ADRIAN MOLE: THE WILDERNESS YEARS by Sue Townsend Methuen, £8.99, pp. 182 T he trouble with a kitten is that eventu- ally it becomes a cat, but what the hell, it is...

for Andrea Dear girl, some fourteen years ago your pet Cockatiel died, and your eyes were wet, And, wanting much to set Priorities for you, Whose loved father had died just two...

Matt Jacomb STAND BEFORE YOUR GOD by Paul Watkins Faber, £14.99, pp.203 hen I was asked to write a review of a book about the experiences of a boy who went to the Dragon School...

Andrew Roberts PARLIAMENT AND POLITICS IN THE AGE OF BALDWIN AND MACDONALD: THE HEADLAM DIARIES 1923-35 edited by Stuart Ball The Historians' Press, £30, pp.365 T he Right...

William Dalrymple THE LAST BURDEN by Upamanyu Chatterjee Faber, £14.99, pp.303 I t is probably inevitable that every great literary success produces in its wake a backwash of...

DIARY 1994 T he Spectator 1994 Diary, bound in soft burgundy leather, will shortly be available. With a new layout and a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the diary is 5" x...

Museums Damaging admission I was intrigued to watch on television a few weeks ago an unsolicited tribute to the pulling power of the nation's cultural insti- tutions. The...

Sadness in the Siebenburgen Jessica Douglas-Home visited the vanishing world of the Saxons in Transylvania D oes there exist a scholar prepared to devote himself to a piece of...

Dancing to music Sophie Constanti O ver the past decade, the American choreographer Mark Morris has emerged as the singular and brilliant force behind a contemporary revival...

Sculpture Beside the Thames (Chelsea Harbour, till 3 October) Recent British Sculpture (Royal Festival Hall, till 12 September) Harbour lightweights Giles Auty T o look...

Later Life (Westside Theater) Wasp in a web Douglas Colby A matchmaking hostess tells her guest Austin, 'I'm setting the stage here', as she leads him from a cocktail party...

Passion Fish (`15', Mayfair) Sliver ('18', Empire) Charmingly boring Mark Amory T he first shot of Passion Fish is of the hand of a woman who is lying in a hospital bed as it...

Short swing Martyn Harris T hose affluent days. Those happy lov- ing days of the Sixties.' Thus spake Desmond Wilcox, husband of Esther and erstwhile editor of Man Alive. He...

Comparing lengths Taki I 've been trying to figure out who has been on holiday longer this year, Fergie or yours truly, the difference being that I'm on my daddy's Civil List...

Blood sports Nigel Nicolson U ntil last week I had never seen a bull- fight, and then I watched it only on televi- sion, in a hotel in Spain. They say that the experience is...

A foot wrong Jeffrey Bernard T he past four weeks have been a taste of hell. I thought I had got used to hospi- tals, going in and out of them to have my diabetes restabilised...

in New Orleans than anywhere else in America. It's not true, of course, but it is the particular nature of the American inferiority complex that feeds this myth. It's not...

PURE MALT . 0TCH Rum retelling Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1794 you were invited to retell the plot of any well-known work of literature in the metre of Hiawatha. Strange...

SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA ,CDIDDIagi SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA Icon Raymond Keene NEXT WEEK, starting Tuesday 7 Septem- ber at the Savoy Theatre, Nigel Short launches his two-month...

Several poems have been written about paintings (Auden's %/fusee des Beaux Arts' about Brueghel's Icarus, for exam- ple). You are invited to write a poem about a well-known...

CROSSWORD W. I 1 J. GRAHAM ' S PORT A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 20 September, with two...

I N E R1USSET , Y OrirlOVRIEIC 00r1 1113 ininiq RP i4E , ARS 'b / e ©o o N Eldilnii" nig E. r E • n N T L S MA I L I U.R A KU ALFWIIITTIEDSELE L N D S E 0 L r E R T...

A clash of colours Frank Keating FOUR MATCHES into the new season and already a Premier Division soccer man- ager has cleared his desk and mooched away with his parrot's...

Dear Mary. . . Q. Recently, when meeting new people, after answering the question, 'Where do you live?' I have been asked, 'House or flat?' I find this vulgar because, while...