IRA QUIZ TIME There are ten weapons hidden in the IRA stronghold. Can you find them? The winner gets a candlelit dinner with Peter Mandelson G eneral John de Chastelain reported...

Hague strikes with Mafia professionalism; and may face revenge PETER OBORNE A an Clark was granted six final weeks last summer in which he knew that he was going to die. That...

JULIE BURCHILL I 'm in the Dome: a six-ft light-box of me looking rather ravissante bundled up in a blanket on Brighton Beach. I'm in the Self- Portrait Zone, which has 00.00...

Madeleine Albright and the Italians have joined a crusade — against the corrupt Inglesi NICHOLAS FARRELL S Predappio peaking to world leaders in the Swiss ski- resort of...

Andrew Marr reveals the ruthless determination of Tony Blair to rout the euro-sceptics and scrap the pound THERE is an air of triumph in the camp of the euro-sceptics. Its...

The governor of Texas could have won in New Hampshire if he'd listened to me, says Mark Steyn New Hampshire 'GET out there, meet lots of people,' I told Dubya at Laconia...

1 HAVE just moved the cat from the kitchen table in the hope that it had made a day-bed of some annotations I had collected on J.K. Rowling. I thought they would be timely (or...

THE World Health Organisation and the American government are fond of dedi- cating (at whose behest, and on whose behalf?) days and even whole years and decades to some medical...

Justin Marozzi says the wild claims made for eco-friendly foods make you wonder if supermarkets have gone barking This coffee is easy to drink, It was fertilised without...

A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit IN one of James Thurber's short sto- ries, rabbits were blamed for starting earthquakes by beating their little hind...

Pubescent boys have enough to contend with, says Sarah Sands. Spare them the efforts of sex-education evangelists • IF you are a middle-class 13-year-old boy you are probably...

Charles Glass on the failure of the Committee to Protect Journalists to recognise the Serbian journalists killed by Nato IT's official. Thirty-three journalists died violently...

Michael Heath

John Laughland says the EU's attack on Jorg Haider is further evidence of its socialist globalism THE German foreign minister, Joschka Fis- cher, could not have been clearer....

When Cap'n Bob and the Prince of Darkness went quark-hunting in a Bubble Chamber PAUL JOHNSON do not claim to understand the physics of subatomic particles, but I am...

article was so full of inaccuracies that it is quite impossible to deal with all of them in one letter. A few of the wilder examples will have to suffice. First, the idea that...

From The Rt Hon. The Lord Chalfont Sir: There is at least one statement in Andrew Gilligan's article ('Blair's plans for a Euro-bomb', 22 January) on the nuclear deterrent...

From Mr Victor Black Sir: Your leading article (29 January) right- ly draws attention to the different media reactions to Labour sleaze when compared to what John Major had to...

From Margaret, Viscountess Long Sir: John Tavener, although much younger than 1 am, is my Orthodox godfather and has written an introduction to my latest book. Like Peter...

From Louise Guinness Sir: I was shocked by Olivia Glazebrook's review of Helena McEwen's novel The Big House (Books, 29 January). The ,Big House is a remarkable first novel...

From The Revd Kevin O'Donnell Sir: Peter Mullen's article 'Jesus wept' (15 January) was exaggerated and ill-informed at times. The ASB was not meant to replace the Book of...

From Mr Tony Leach Sir: You say that the NHS is underfunded and that it should be further financed by insurance rather than higher taxation (Leading article, 22 January). If...

From Mr Philip Hensher Sir: I wonder if Jonathan Keates can cast any light on an apparent error in Virginia Woolf? Did she really believe, until the end of her life, that...

Mr Hague has lost the Times, but he could still win the hearts and minds of other right-wing papers STEPHEN GLOVER I was indisposed last week, so unable to say anything about...

Homosexuals must lower their expectations and not frighten the horses PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE N ever having sat on a real commission, royal or otherwise, and never being likely...

The euro goes down like a runaway lift, the Chancellor broods on new tests CHRISTOPHER I- ILDES A City friend presents me with a tennis ball got up to look like a euro. He...

From the bard's harp to the tango Raymond Carr THE TOTAL LIBRARY: NON-FICTION, 1922 - 1986 by Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Eliot Weinberger Allen Lane, .£20, pp. 559 I n the...

diplomacy and death David Pryce-Jones MILOSEVIC: PORTRAIT OF A TYRANT by Dusko Doder and Louise Branson Free Press, £17.99, pp. 304 S lobodan Milosevic is a man on the make....

John Grigg CHURCHILL AND THE SOVIET UNION by David Canton Manchester University Press, £45, £11.99 (paperback), pp.240 T he flow of books about Winston Churchill shows no sign...

Lucretia Stewart THE WORLDS WITHIN HER by Neil Bissoondath Heinemann, 114.99, pp. 417 H alfway through Neil Bissoondath's impressive new novel, one of the characters says,...

Robbie Millen TUDOR CHURCH MILITANT by Diarmid MacCulloch Allen Lane, £25, pp. 284 W ith a name with such Celtic reso- nance, you would suspect that Diarmid MacCulloch must be...

Rhoda Koenig THE RISING OF THE MOON by Gladys Mitchell Virago, £6.99, pp. 223 T he Sunday before last, wanting to give my mind a holiday, I turned on The Mrs Bradley Mysteries...

Katie Grant SMILE PLEASE by Jonathan Keates Chatto, £15.99, pp. 330 A a novel written by a straight man, Smile Please would constitute a feat of extraordinarily acute...

Hugh Massingberd MARRYING THE MISTRESS by Joanna Trollope Bloomsbury, £16.99, pp. 311 'm one of those rare chaps,' a genial Staffordshire landowner once told me, 'who can boast...

Games of illusion and reality Martin Gayford on an unknown Flemish painter of trompe l'oeil pictures V isitors to the house of the Dutch painter Samuel van Hoogstraten were...

Old Master surprises Susan Moore here are two kind of discoveries made at Old Master sales: those made by the saleroom's specialists, and those made by their clients. The...

Great expectations Marcus Berkrnann L ike several of its recent predecessors, 2000 looks likely to be a year in which many famous people release new records. The new Oasis...

American Beauty (18, selected cinemas) Rear Window (PG, selected cinemas) Petty prejudices Mark Steyn I 've taken an interest in the career of Sam Mendes ever since, at the...

Krapp's Last Tape (New Ambassadors) The Island (National) My Best Friend (Hampstead) OJ. Othello (Riverside) Sympathising with Kr app Sheridan Morley T he problem with Samuel...

La La Clemenza di Tito (Royal Opera House) The Magic Flute (English National Opera) Falstaff (Opera North) Mozart betrayed Michael Tanner I t seems that there are people,...

Bournonville 2000 (Royal Theatre, Copenhagen) Danish treats Giannandrea Poesio T he scholarly preoccupation with authenticity that underscores contemporary ballet has had a...

Squandering resources Michael Vestey A last the BBC has one director gen- eral instead of two. Last week John Birt finally left the BBC, hastened out of the door two months...

Counting on viewers Simon Hoggart W hile the papers fuss about Greg Dyke's share dealings, it's worth looking at the viewing figures. Even people who have satellite and cable...

Not impressed Gavin Stamp Now I suppose I ought not to air person- al complaints in this column, but if I describe my recent experience at the hands of Virgin Trains after a...

Thrills and spills Robin Oakley W e can always celebrate the glorious uncertainty of racing. But I have to admit it comes more easily after a 16-1 winner. Six weeks short of...

Getting away with it Taki Rougemont here's a marvellous scene in Huckle- berry Finn in which Colonel Sherburn faces down a mob that has come to lynch him. With the gang at his...

Nostalgia for £3.70 Leanda de Lisle lost a credit card on my day trip to Lon- don, but gained a copy of 'Britain's loveli- est magazine'. Entitled This England, it described...

Magic tricks Andrew Robson A HYPNOTIST and magician by profes- sion, London's Martin Taylor correctly divined the trump position on this week's slam deal. And this was without...

IT was not long ago that we were reading of a celebrated band of meteoric City traders called the 'Flaming Ferraris', Lord Archer's son among them. They managed to make colossal...

Now we aren't six Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 2121 you were invited to supply an 'I wish I were. . . 'poem in tune with the taste of the modern child. 'I wish I were a...

A dbeg www.ardbes.com CHESS Garry triumphant Raymond Keene GARRY KASPAROV has reasserted his authority in the chess world, winning the powerful tournament at Wijk aan Zee in...

A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's award-winning, Late- Bottled Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 21 February, with two runners-up prizes of £20...

Agassi Unbound Simon Barnes 'DO I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)' But Walt Whitman's notion (surely the...

Dear Mary. . . Q. While my late father-in-law was recover- ing from a stroke several years ago, he and I were taking tea alone. In his confusion he started talking, in the...