T he new decade began in sober fashion, with police reporting a large drop in the number of drivers returning positive breath tests over the holiday period despite an increase...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fai 242 0603 THE RACE QUESTION A fter many decades of being told (according to the gospel...

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Nice Lytton Strachey used to say that he could only read Sir Thomas Browne in Oxford. I find in middle age that to read a book that is both long and serious I have to go abroad....

The countries of Eastern Europe are changing fast. Timothy Garton Ash argues that whether they prosper or fail depends on the response of the West IN THE autumn of 1916 the...

Metallic hydrogen INCREDIBLE thought. That when the lightest of gases is compressed and compressed, there is evidence of its being transformed into solid form and finally...

Noel Malcolm reports from Rumania on the hard task of reconstruction Bucharest 'CITIZENS! Disorder does not serve the cause of the revolution! Do not dishonour the memory of...

James Bowman on the connection between Panama and Eastern Europe MARY McGrory called it the 'Bubba' campaign. 'Bubba', for the uninitiated, is the archetypal, good-ole-boy...

Alan Bond's business collapse is only a stage in the Australian financial crisis, argues Stephen Fay WHAT they will say in Sydney is that Bondy's going belly up. The receivers...

Stan Gebler Davies on the ambitions of Charles Haughey to be a kind of European President Dublin SOME delusions are amusing and some are not. C. J. Haughey, in a touching...

Veronica Gillespie remembers the Kindertransport children who lost everything but their lives IN 1938 and 1939 the British public knew nothing about Hitler's plans for a...

Ross Clark reviews another decade of megalomaniac enterprise ONE hundred years ago, according to legend, the director of the New York Patent Office wrote to the then president...

The press: Paul Johnson argues that big circulations can be won without sleaze ROBERT Maxwell's announcement that he is to give the People two years to prepare for a...

Ghosts at the Chevening house-party JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE W hen Mr Major and his merry men from the Treasury assemble for their annual reading of the runes at Chevening next...

IT IS hardly credible to those who have watched the deluge of volumes which have poured this year from the press, that many fewer have actually been published than were...

A New Year resolution to tackle the importers of Whitehall CHRISTOPHER FILDES I must begin by wishing John Major an unhappy New Year. It is so evidently what he wants; 1990 is...

I HEAR that the Government's latest wheeze for restoring its popularity is to sponsor a horse-race. The novel feature will be that all winning bets will be paid out in full in...

WE pay to keep the sharp end of our army in Germany, and Germany does not keep the blunt end of a lance-corporal here. That military imbalance reflects itself in the balance of...

DAVID Davis must be a good guesser or a well-placed kite-flier, so his guesses on kites should be followed. He is the MP who two years ago wrote Clear the Docks, a pamphlet for...

Sir: I write in defence of pigs and their sexual inclinations. According to Dr Ahmed quoted in Jane Kelly's piece on the coming Islamification of Ireland, 'it has proven that...

Sir: Michael Trend says he has consulted many in the armaments industry before deciding whether Britain still needs or can support its own tank industry (The fog of peace', 9...

Sir: With jaundiced eye I observe the recent upheavals in Czechoslavakia. It is almost 20 years to the day when, in a group of Polish students, I descended into a beer cellar of...

Sir: Your correspondent Richard Whitting- ton (Letters, 16 December) refers to 'Eli- zabeth David's promotion of the Harrods recipe' for dry-spiced beef. Could he be a little...

Sir: Anthony Blond, in his review of Livia Svevo's memoir of her husband (23/30 December), asserts with some optimism that 'the Italians successfully avoided deliv- ery of their...

Oh, what a beautiful morning! Colin Welch SUNRISE by Larry Lamb Macmillan, 17.99, pp.260 S ir Larry Lamb's lively and provocative apologia pro vita sua is subtitled 'the...

J. G. Links MOZART: THE GOLDEN YEARS, 1781-1791 by H. C. Robbins Landon Thames & Hudson, £14.95, pp.272 hat have we here? Mozart with 215 illustrations, 32 in colour —...

Jonathan Clark HOLY LIVING and HOLY DYING by Jeremy Taylor, edited by P.G. Stanwood OUP, £45, pp.420; £35, pp.312 hen the name of Jeremy Taylor is no longer remembered with...

Patrick Pender-Cudlip STANLEY: THE MAKING OF AN AFRICAN EXPLORER by Frank McLynn Constable, £17.95, pp. 411 STANLEY, Henry Morton, KCB, Grand Commander (of the Osmanlie, of...

After years of corporate mismanagement it's over, box-office slumping to a few Maltesers melting from hand to mouth. The whole façade is down. I stand where the screen used to...

Anita Brookner T he awarding of the Prix Goncourt seemed to have aroused little excitement last year, which was not surprising, given the quality of the entries. It went to...

Hugo Vickers EDITH OLIVIER FROM HER JOURNALS 1924-48 edited by Penelope Middelboe Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £19.95, pp.334 I n Night Thoughts of a Country Land- lady (a book which...

Art The Rodchenko Family Workshop (Serpentine Gallery till 28 January) Toe-nails of socialist saints Giles Auty W ith the crash of walls and govern- ments in Eastern Europe...

Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet (Sadlers Wells Theatre) Back to earth Deirdre McMahon alanchine's Divertimento No 15 (to Mozart) is one of the most sublime ballets in the...

Hansel and Gretel (Coliseum and BBC2) Der FreischUtz (Covent Garden) Particular and universal Rodney Milnes T he big question about a highly person- al and 'particular'...

Thark (Lyric Hammersmith) Playing it for laughs Christopher Edwards F arce must rank as one of the most difficult genres to stage successfully. The recent revival of...

All about Eves Taki eave it to a woman. In the year the Berlin Wall came crumbling down, the mother of my children erected her own by stipulating that no bimbo, not even a...

A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics DANCE Royal Ballet, Covent Garden (240 1066). Chabukiani's virtuoso Laurentia pas de...

their columns next week.

Down in the valley Jeffrey Bernard I f I hadn't wanted to take my daughter to lunch on Christmas Day I would have stayed in bed. It was pretty awful for me but seemingly okay...

Rock Island Diner SOMETIMES when I find myself in one of the burgeoning number of All-American, Y'Have-A-Nice-Day-Now restaurants in London, I speculate on how visiting Amer-...

Zenga Longmore e beauty of this column this week is T h that it is not going to be another appraisal of the Eighties. Nowhere will you see a single mention of the rise of...

Battling Boris Raymond Keene T he Foreign and Colonial tournament at Hastings this year (which is currently at the halfway stage) is once again category 14 on the World Chess...

Old Year letter Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1606 you were in- vited to compose a letter addressed to the New Year by the outgoing incumbent, giving advice, serious or...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word `Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

$7/E A .4. S F I r. E1 D A 'L T R I X I L 1 H I It B Y Y T A R V AI T I k i d 01 LIA I l' ENCHJLR * NEEDERS I n f o ,...L.L21.1 U x 1 _I I rlr 1 N 1 ors i n . A It _I UMBLE R OA...

Chesterton introduced us to 'the wicked grocer', but we have all come across wicked postmen, wicked bus drivers, wick- ed plumbers. A song of wicked glee (maximum 16 lines),...