M ost of the post-election publicity directed at the unions has misleading- ly concentrated on the hollow posturings of Mr Arthur Scargill, whose arithmetic, bor- rowed from the...

Mrs Thatcher's mote Charles Moore 'Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's...

A lthough Ernestine Carter worked for many years on the Sunday Times, she always said that she much preferred the Telegraph, not only because of their superior news service but...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail S months: £15.50 112E17.75 i15.50 £24.50 One year: £31.00 IRL35.50 £37.00 £49.00 Cheques to be made payable to the Spectator and sent to...

Tony Allen-Mills Managua, Nicaragua T he US State Department recently issued a glossy 20-page background paper on Central America 'in the interest of con- tributing to a better...

Richard West O nce more we are told that the troubles of Central America face the United States with a 'new Vietnam'. The same warning reached a crescendo a year ago when the...

Bohdan Nahaylo I n 1930 the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam went on a long pilgrimage to the portion of the ancient land of Armenia which in the early 1920s had become part of the...

Charles Glass Beirut 'No government is unwilling to make allies. But when these allies send large armies, over which it has no control, to in- vade its territory, expecting to...

Sir, — I think the question has beep mooted in your columns as to whether dogs sometimes understand our lan- guage. A circumstance that has just oc- curred leads me to think...

Ronald W. Jones T he only Labour speaker I heard at any length during the election campaign warned that Mrs Thatcher's followers were hellbent on installing a right-wing...

Jo Grimond I have been reading for the second or third time John Sparrow's Clark Lec- tures. They are called Mark Pattison and the Idea of a University. Sparrow is a...

Alan Gibson I was rather sorry that MCC decided not to send a side to South Africa, for two quite different reasons. The first was that South African cricketers do seem to have...

Judgment of Parkinson Jock Bruce-Gardyne R ole reversal usually offers innocent enjoyment to spectators. As the champion of competition, the Labour Party is about as Plausible...

Keep it in the family Paul Johnson I n a letter to the Times last Friday, Lord Devlin remarked that the case of Gillick v West Norfolk Health Authority 'may well be socially...

Colin Welch T abour is a socialist party, 'or it is nothing'. It was Eric Heffer speaking in the great televised Labour leadership debate. Down memory lane I wandered off. How...

Not Oxford's Church Sir: is the Church dead? asks A. N. Wilson (23 July). Having witnessed the faded Jamboree of the Oxford Movement he Comes to the conclusion that it is, and...

Sir: The Government has directed that what would have been protracted court pro- ceedings against the Stock Exchange be abandoned, thereby, it is reported, saving millions of...

bare the bones of the silent majority. What price the Oxford Movement if the Church of England is allowed to progress, unwittingly, towards a unity with Rome, in form, if not...

N. Wilson's description of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Oxford Movement (23 July). I agree with many of his observations regarding the Present state of the Church...

Sir: Andrew Brown, in his article about incest in Sweden (23 July), says that the estimates of a ten per cent incidence of this vice appear to be derived from studies done in...

Sir: You rightly reprobate the unnecessary renaming of Selous Street in Camden (Notebook, 23 July), but the problem is not a new one. I scribble away opposite the eponymous...

The Austen family Elizabeth Jenkins A Goodly Heritage: A History of Jane Austen's Family George Holbert Tucker (Carcanet Press £9.95) fictor Gollancz used to say that while...

Francis King When 1 Was Otherwise Stephen Benatar (Bodley Head £7.95) F rom time to time, as the eye skims across the shallows of the daily newspaper, it is hooked by a small...

Andrew Brown Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley Timothy White (Elm Tree Books £9.95) B ob Marley, a Jamaican mulatto who died in 1981 of cancer in the liver, l ungs, and...

Taki The Von Bulow Affair William Wright (Arlington Books £9.95) his is a step-by-step account of the 1. events that led to the conviction of Claus von Bulow for the attempted...

Peter Ackroyd Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas Dale Pollock (Elm Tree Books £9.95) Cleorge Lucas, at the age of 39, has directed or produced nine films among them...

Eric Jacobs De Lorean Ivan Fallon and James Srodes (Hamish Hamilton £8.95) T he story of John De Lorean is that rarest of things, a soap opera with an ending, a tale of...

Harriet Waugh J titian Rathbone's new political thriller, Watching the Detectives, returns to his Im aginary European setting starring his right-wing hero, Commissioner Jan...

Peter Levi M y nice old-fashioned publisher tells me there are so many books about Britain at present that none of them sell many copies. But my other, whizzish, diabolical...

Sun dance Peter Ackroyd The Rise to Power of Louis XIV ('U', Minema, Knightsbridge) Q ince this film was , made in 1966 1.../(for Italian television) and its director died...

Bicentenary John McEwen David Cox 1783-1859 (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery till 14 October; Street, WI, till 12 August) avid Cox passed the prime of his career h is...

Worthy Maureen Owen T he Today pro g ramme recently drew attention to a poll conducted in the United States which asked radio listeners what kind of material they preferred...

No great shakes Giles Gordon Tartuffe (RSC: The Pit) Smile Orange (Tricycle) Annie Wobbler (New End) IVI oliere's Tartuffe, in Christopher Hampton's low-keyed and unflashy t...

Suspect Richard Ingrams I didn't bother to watch the second of Dr Anthony Clare's Motives as the inter- viewee was the former Postmaster General and jailbird John Stonehouse....

Ladies' men Taki T f I had known that Arthur Koestler was /also a womaniser my admiration for him would have been even greater. Having just read some extracts from George...

Loopy Jeffrey Bernard W hat people will do to be loved! Dear God. There's a dog in the house I've been weekending in which got me thinking about it. She eats your shoes and...

Silliness P.J. Kavanagh I t is odd that some professions seem, to some people, inherently ridiculous. There is a play by Graham Greene called The Complaisant Lover in which...

Crisis Raymond Keene A ll hell has broken loose over the venues for the Candidates' semi-final matches between Kasparov and Korchnoi and Smyslov and Ribli. In face of a...

No. 1281: Alma Mater Set by Jaspistos: An extract, please (max- imum 150 words), from the pre-war memoirs of a precocious teenage aesthete, of either sex, at a public or...

Report by Jaspistos: Competitors were ask- ed for a sonnet beginning, as one of Wordsworth's does, 'Clarkson! that was an obstinate ... ' Well, er, actually it doesn't: it...

Copies of last week's issue containing the £200 Chequers chess competition are still available at £1 (post paid) from Back Numbers, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N...

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A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 22 August. Entries to: Crossword 619, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WCIN 2LL. a 1 10...

T owards the end of the new Conservative government's first session the Tories received a bad fright in the by-election for Lord Whitelaw's old seat of Penrith and the Border,...

HELIOGABALUS by Louis Coperius and 'At Century's Ebb' by Cyprian Cope. Barry Hum- phries, Garrick Club, Garrick Street, London W 1 . DICTIONARY OF THOUGHT (Tryon Ed- wards...