M r Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said on television of his Budget in the autumn, 'The public will be deeply suspicious of any tax cuts because they remember...

DAVID HARE I have been in New York for two weeks for the opening of Skylight. It's been the full Broadway experience, at once tense, highly charged and, at the last,...

The stress of reporting the Lib-Dems drove me to shoot dead the blonde with big breasts MATTHEW PARRIS A nyone who has endured, as I have, the cruel and unusual punishment of...

Bruce Anderson thinks that Mr Blair's conference speech was a piece of cynical effrontery. It may also have been an effective means of vote-garnering Blackpool ONE question...

Michael Heath

Anne McElvoy moves among the spin doctors, their patients and the splitters-in-waiting Blackpool It had to happen. The only wonder is that it took so long. Three young men...

James Hughes-Onslow is for the real Mr Blair. But he's also for the real Mr Major TO DROP a name, I first met Tony Blair 23 years ago when he shared a house at Oxford with some...

David Pryce - Jones recalls the subterranean passage that is cause, and metaphor, in Jerusalem's latest crisis ARABS and Israelis will make peace one day, though nobody can be...

Ruth Rees on her personal experience with women who set out to entrap members of the Roman Catholic clergy I FIRST encountered the species in Africa soon after I became a...

YOUR suggestions as to the origin of the term spend a penny have poured in, but I cannot say that all of you have really been concentrating. The problem I set was a reference to...

On the eve of this year's, Richard Kelly says the Conservatives' annual gathering is still misunderstood — especially by New Labour TEN YEARS ago, I wrote a book which tried...

AWFUL PEOPLE? . . . is what Simon Blow hopes he will not end up saying about the revived Cafe de Paris THE CAFE de Paris has been brought to life again. This news stirred...

Ewa Lewis claims there is a fundamental longing for a return to social rules and order YOU WOULDN'T think that Debrett's New Guide to Etiquette and Modern Man- ners by John...

Michael Harrington rejects the well-worn myth that Britain could ever have had the leadership of Europe NOT FOR the first time have Sir Edward Heath and other Europhiles been...

Oliver Knox on what it was like to be asked for an opinion on Germany, on M Chirac, or indeed on any foreign topic, by Mrs Thatcher I DON'T know about Charles Powell's demons...

Lessons in civility from a great gentleman who put the public first PAUL JOHNSON H istory sometimes appears as a record of unrelieved human depravity. But it is also lit by...

Say we've lost the money, and go home the world's debtors deserve better CHRISTOPHER I I LDES Washington h ehe war in Vietnam was going badly wrong. What, asked the President,...

Sir: Charles Powell's acid review (Books, 28 September) saddens me. On the very first page of my book I point to the deformation professionnelle inherent in the work of every...

by dismissive asides and personal sneers. I refer to Sir Charles Pow- ell's review of Mr George Urban's account of the famous, or notorious, 'Chequers seminar' (Books, 28...

Sir: May anyone join in selecting the Com- posers' XI? I think room should be found for Britten, not only because he must be the only composer to have been captain of his prep...

Sir: Professor Cameron Watt's letter (28 September) on the subject of the BBC pro- gramme on Hiroshima is so admirably definitive that I intervene only to assure your readers...

but seems temporarily unable to read, other- wise he would not have attacked (Politics, 28 September) those of us who signed the letter on Europe to the Independent for...

Sir: Milton Shulman's article (Teaching the truth about the war', 27 September) contains some highly speculative assertions about the reasons for Hitler's defeat. He makes the...

was very amusing indeed — provided one is not Max Hast- ings. But I know of another side to the coin. A while ago, a wildlife charity of which I was a trustee went into...

Sir: Tunku Varadarajan, of the Times, dis- interestedly leaps (Letters, 28 September) to the defence of his colleague Rachel Campbell-Johnston, to tell us she is 'writing...

Sir: Once a hack, always a hack. Lord Deedes suggests in his letter (28 Septem- ber) that my 'intemperate attack on Max Hastings relates . . . to some bruising encounter with...

Sir: As the reporter on the William Hickey column of the Daily Express who spoke (twice) to your Low life columnist, Jeffrey Bernard, about his Spectator lunch, I was surprised...

The Guardian comes well out of the case, but its ally, Mr Al Fayed, does not STEPHEN GLOVER M any people may find themselves dis- inclined to take the Guardian's side in the...

Chips from a German workshop Jasper Griffin A HISTORY OF ROME UNDER THE EMPERORS by Theodor Mommsen, edited by Thomas Wiedemann Routledge, £40, pp. 642 T heodor Mommsen...

Alan Watkins HUGH GAITSKELL by Brian Brivati Richard Cohen Books, £25, pp. 492 0 f politicians since the war, five have been loved: Aneurin Bevan, Anthony Crosland, Michael...

Brian Masters THE POWER TO HARM: MIND, MEDICINE AND MURDER ON TRIAL by John Cornwell Viking, £18, pp. 336 W hile the rest of the world's press sat hypnotised by the 0. J....

Elizabeth Lowry EMILY TENNYSON: THE POET'S WIFE by Ann Thwaite Faber, £25, pp. 716 A fter a week spent at Farringford on the Isle of Wight in June 1859, which had given him an...

Cressida Connolly LET ME COUNT THE WAYS by Deborah Bosley Century, £9.99, pp. 122 I f bookshops and libraries arranged their novels in alphabetical order according to subject...

Nigel Nicolson MY NAME ESCAPES ME: THE DIARY OF A RETIRING ACTOR by Alec Guinness Hamish Hamilton, £16, pp. 214 A lec Guinness tells us that he has kept a sort of diary for...

Penelope Lively AFTER RAIN by William Trevor Viking, £16, pp. 224 S hort stories take up almost as much space in William Trevor's long list of titles as do novels — After Rain...

Kit McMahon ALL THAT GLITTERS: THE FALL OF BARINGS by John Gapper and Nicholas Denton Hamish Hamilton, £20, pp. 384 H ere's a funny thing. Last February Stephen Fay produced a...

Allan Mallinson ANGELS OF ALBION: WOMEN OF THE INDIAN MUTINY by Jane Robinson Viking, f20, pp. 298 W hat happened in May 1857 was more than a mutiny but a lot less than a war...

Rory Dunlop THE BEACH by Alex Garland Viking, f10.99, pp. 439 he Beach is a young man's novel. It is dominated by the character of the narrator, a young man (inseparable from...

Peter Bazalgette THE NIGEL LAWSON DIET BOOK Michael Joseph, £12.99, pp. 120 W hat's going on here? A former Chancellor, a noted trencherman and father of a noted trencherman,...

James Fergusson H eywood Hill's bookshop is 60 years old this month. Heywood Hill, who found- ed it and gave it its dash, is 10 years dead; Nancy Mitford, whose wartime...

A 3D triumph for the future Edward Lucie-Smith found paranoia as well as enthusiasm at a conference on holography H olography is a pariah art form perhaps, indeed, the only...

Living Bridges (Royal Academy, till 18 December) A bridge too far Alan Powers L iving Bridges has got people talking, but not, perhaps, in the way it was meant to. The...

Job lot Ursula Buchan T here comes a moment in every gar- dener's life when it seems right to buy a specialist gardening magazine. No longer do the newspapers and broad-based...

Das Rheingold; Die Walkiire (Covent Garden) Lower your eyes Michael Tanner I t would take a nicer capacity for dis- crimination than I possess to decide whether Bayreuth or...

Dance Umbrella (Natural History Museum) That's entertainment thannandrea Pomo W hile I was standing in the middle of the Natural History Museum's entrance hall waiting for...

Blue Murder (Touring) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Almeida) The Handyman (Chichester) Appalling manners Sheridan Morley N ot since Michael Frayn's Noises Off (and that...

The Nutty Professor (12, selected cinemas) Fat is funny Mark Steyn C all it Eddie Murphy's law: just when it's assumed that everything you do is bound to bellyflop, you...

Comedy of errors Michael Vestey T ricky Dickie' Nixon, to me the most fascinating and complex President of the United States this century, was the subject of a riveting and...

So bad he's unwatchable James Delingpole I once wrote an incredibly pompous defence of the rude comic Viz, in which I argued that the character of Farmer Palmer was the most...

Bad timing Gavin Stamp B eing a Not motoring correspondent can be a dispiriting task when — as is so often the case — those who ought to be allies turn out to be the worst...

The confidence factor Robin Oakley F rankie Dettori not only puts the joie into joie de vivre, he helps us all take a little out of the bookies' satchels. One tortured soul on...

Hammer horror Taki A rmand Hammer is a billionaire, an art collector, a friend of Prince Charles, an intimate of Gorbachev, and the greatest social-climber, name-dropper, liar...

Vanity affair Leanda de Lisle I am not surprised that a covert study conducted by the Martini drinks company found that men are the vainer sex. Twice as many men as women were...

BRIDGE 30 point pack Andrew Robson When North was asked why he had made such a rampant overbid on this week's deal, he replied that he was playing with a thirty point pack'....

11, 7 , 40# 1 4m. HOW MANY steamers can you pile on one gas ring? Before Mrs Anderson was Mrs Anderson she lived in hall at university. Her room, unlike mine, had a gas ring. It...

U , V \ ...,,I,CLE OM ,COIL141■111■11 ISLE OF t it u RA )HOLE .11s 01,11.1,11 COMPETITION Not fair! J aspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1952 you were invited to compose a letter,...

1N-THE-STRAND SIMPSON'S IN-THE-STRAND Home turf Raymond Keene IN THE long-range battle between Kas- parov and Karpov to be recognised as the world champion, Kasparov has...

A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1990 Port for the first correct solution opened on 21 October, with two runners-up prizes of £15 (or, for UK...

God was on his side Simon Barnes JUST THINK of it, if I had bet £1, just a single, measly quid. Yes, Frankie's going well, so why not? Had I done so, I would now be jangling...

Dear Mary. . Q. A friend of ours, who has lived in this area far longer than we have, has set us a prob- lem. We have managed to acquire an area of land on which there are some...