M r Cecil Parkinson, the Secretary of State for energy, announced his plans for privatising the £27 billion electricity supply industry. His proposal to split up the central...

SPECTATOR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 CAMBRIDGE'S VIDEO NASTY C ambridge University has made a video...

FOR Lord Young to describe the British Aerospace approach to the Rover Group (the old British Leyland minus the sexy bits) as 'unsolicited' is rather like a man with a for Sale...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £45.00 0 £23.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £55.00 0 £28.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $90 0 USS45 Rest of...

Has Mr Lawson joined the tinkering tendency? NOEL MALCOLM A free market, as the new Conservat- ism never tires of telling us, possesses a sort of collective wisdom of its own....

I t's good news that President Reagan has decided to finance a new phase of the space programme. It seems there hasn't been a good invention in years. Every time you go down to...

Time to teach the French a lesson they will not forget AUBERON WAUGH 0 n Wednesday of last week, a small ceremony was held in the Park Suite of the Inter-Continental Hotel,...

The 'right-on' generation of the Sixties has grown into a powerful Green movement with new power in the market place. Alexandra Artley reports. CHILD GREEN Ca child of the...

Christopher J. Walker explains why thousands of Armenians are marching in protest WRITING from Mountainous Karabagh in the 1830s, Eli Smith, an American missionary, described...

Ambrose-Evans-Pritchard on the Democratic candidate who electioneers on the foreign trade issue Williamsburg, Virginia DEMOCRATS have done well in state and local politics over...

Jonathan Dimbleby meets the men who fight while peasants starve Eritrea `HELLO, Dimbleby,' said the fighter at the checkpoint, 'welcome to Eritrea.' Af- ter a 12-hour journey...

Denis Hills is surprised by a version of his role in letting Jews into Palestine CHARLES Glass ('When the boat goes up', 20 February) mentions the Kimche brothers' book The...

Christopher Huhne celebrates the gathering of the lobbyists for another year's Budget THERE is lobbying and lobbying. This is the time of year for serious lobbying, measurable...

M. Pasteur is really a competitor for the prize of £25,000 offered by New South Wales for the destruction of rabbits, and as a competitor has exported, it is stated, chicken...

The press: Paul Johnson offers advice to two journals contemplating matrimony THE proposal to merge New Society and the New Statesman, and relaunch the com- bined publication...

Exit the gentleman from Whitehall who didn't know best CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he roads out of the City had become congested with refugees, fleeing from the prospect of being...

Sir: With reference to Mr Evans- Pritchard's piece, 'Fascist Sandinistas and Marxist Contras' (13 February), I suggest that the real facts are these: the Nicara - guan people...

Sir: Apropos of Andrew Kenny's article `The racism of Black Africa' (6 February) and the responses by Bernard Levin and Naomi Mitchison (Leters, 13 February), all concerned may...

Sir: I was disagreeably surprised to find The Spectator (30 January), (in an issue that elsewhere gave usefully serious warn- ing that the British economy, with four years to go...

Sir: I knew I would never get through to Barbara Smoker (Letters, 20 February). She now says it would have been all right to abort me because I would have known nothing about...

CHARLES MOORE This is the second extract from my journal of my first visit to South Africa. I went there as the guest of Mr Dawie Le Roux, the National Party MP for Uitenhage...

S ensational, frank, affectionate and hugely entertaining!' shrieks the dust cov- er, in black, white and red, the colours which old Fleet Street shared with Hohen- zollern...

Philip Glazebrook THE TEMPLE by Stephen Spender Faber, £10.95 THE BEAUTIFUL ROOM IS EMPTY by Edmund White Picador, f9.95 THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY by Alan Hollinghurst...

Ian Dunlop FRANK STELLA 1970-1987 by William Rubin Museum of Modern Art, £26.95 DAVID HOCKNEY: RETROSPECTIVE with the participation of R. B. Kitaj and others Thames &...

Victoria Glendinning SYLVIA PLATH: A BIOGRAPHY by Linda W. Wagner-Martin Chatto & Windus, £12.95 S ylvia Plath wanted to be famous. Her suicide ensured that she would be,...

`Oh!' cried the glass of Burgundy wine, • `0 Moon, thou horned cup divine That spillest from thy golden rim Thy pale inebriating light Like some soft sacramental hymn Upon the...

Peter Paterson INSIDE LEFT: THE STORY SO FAR . . . by Derek Hatton Bloomsbury, £3.95 T his is a tale told by an idiot, a bombastic account of recent events bearing only a...

Tim Garton Ash RETURN TO POLAND by Denis Hills Bodley Head, £12.95 A reporter working on the Daily Telegraph's Peterborough column in 1985 owes Denis Hills — and all his...

Exhibitions Solid objects of concern Alistair Hicks `Noble and Patriotic': The Beaumont Gift 1828 (National Gallery, till 3 May) S ir George Beaumont believed he could...

Pomeroy, till 26 March) Beneath the surface gloss Francis Hodgson C olour photography has been slower to find acceptance as a legitimate art medium than black-and-white....

Repentance (PG, selected cinemas) No rest for the wicked Hilary Mantel T his film is a kind of public monument: weighty, austere and larger than life. It was made five years...

Time and promotion Rodney Milnes A mongst the many amiable dotti- nesses cast up by the controversy surround- ing Clause 28 — marked, alas, by a hint of unreasoned hysteria...

Capital Crafts (London Institute Gallery, till 18 March) Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie (Paul Rice Gallery, 7 March – 2 April) Six Ways (Anatol Orient, till 12 March) The fine...

The Possibilities (Almeida) Bitter Sweet (Sadlers Wells) Bloodthirsty world Christopher Edwards T his is an evening of ten short playlets by Howard Barker. His title refers...

Goodbye to romance L ast week Antoinette Sibley made her farewell appearance at Covent Garden. I missed all her great years but in the early 1980s she made a tentative comeback...

Comics anonymous Wendy Cope omeone once pointed out to me that all women make the same noise when they see a donkey. It's a prolonged `Ah' with a dying fall, indicating that...

Don't blame Austria Taki E dgar M. Bronfman is a billionaire booze-maker, president of the World Jew- ish Congress, and one of the most un- pleasant men I've ever had the bad...

Fear of flying Alice Thomas Ellis I was interested to learn that a recent near-miss involved a Bulgarian aeroplane, since I was in the back of one of them once. It rattled all...

Fantasy Five Jaspistos I N Competition No. 1512 you were asked to write a narrative poem including, doors, teeth, mountains, snakes and the Queen, the five things, it has been...

Quick spirit Raymond Keene A player to watch is Tony Kosten. I first became aware of him when he shared third place with me in the 1982 British Championship behind Tony Miles...

N R 0 P Erl CIEFI L D 3 1.1ARBOURO 71 CEA!. 3 1( T 0 C RI o Ltj ari 1 3 I S AR 4 C'91Sp u ROTATABL3A E 4 0 TI A 'L 0 4 G MC P P IENT 2 I'SAM E NWAR I 3 C A 4 L. T ' 3 11...

A poem, please, containing the following rhyme-words in the following order: Lawr- ence, part, abhorrence, art, heart, molested, arrested, spoil it, par, toilet, catarrh, tar,...

848: Six-by-two by Jac 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...

C/o Redpath and Thackray Wines, Common Lane, Sawston, Cambridge CB2 4HW Tel: Cambridge (0223) 833495 No. Value 1. Beaujolais (Pierre Jomard) 1986 12 bots. £46.39 2. Bourgogne...

Pleasanter, fruitier and more forward Auberon Waugh T he small Cambridge firm of Redpath and Thackray has established a very good reputation among Spectator readers with its...