The Socialist Circus, Blackpool 1990 A t the beginning of the Labour Party conference, polls suggested the party was more electable than it had been for 20 years. Neil Kinnock...

SPECTATOR 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex: 27124; Fax: 071-242 0603 MIKHAIL THE TERRIBLE C ompared with the programme of re- forms that...

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by 10p — just over 7 per cent — to £1.50. This is necessary to cover some of the increase in our costs over the past 12 months. The subscription price, for the time being, will...

Signs of the old Adam in the new model Labour Party NOEL MALCOLM Miss Cossey is very beautiful. A highly successful model, she has appeared in a James Bond film and is due to...

JOHN WELLS I n the middle of last summer I was in East Germany making a programme for the BBC. We had just finished filming in a community centre dedicated to the mem- ory of a...

VOICE Should the problem of sentencing be left to Mum and the Daily Mirror? AUBERON WAUGH L ast year, for the first time since 1973, the average number of people held in...

The after-eighties: A. N. Wilson talks to Lord Home about Mrs Thatcher, drawing room comedy and Hitler MANY of the younger delegates about to assemble in Bournemouth for the...

Poles and Soviet Jews are suddenly unwelcome in Grossdeutschland reports Amity Shlaes Berlin THE photograph of the Brandenburg Gate shows pillars ringed by men in uniform,...

Russian experiments in Ukraine have destroyed a nation and a culture reports Anne Applebaum WHEN the Chernobyl nuclear reactor first began to overheat, it was because a few...

Michael Heath

James Bowman on the threat of recession posed by the protectionist mood in America Washington IT began its run during the televised Miss America pageant on 8 September. It is...

persist . WE WERE called to a very important emergency meeting at district head- quarters last week. It was convened by the hospital managers — men to whom, their many...

Vicki Woods follows a carving from Carrara to Rodeo Drive MY NEIGHBOUR the urologist has a vineyard at Camaiore near Lucca, from which it's only a half-hour drive to the...

A REUTER'S telegram from Kimber- ley received on Tuesday gives an account of an interesting speech deli- vered by Mr. Cecil Rhodes, the Cape Premier, at a banquet given him on...

Thomas Rees, on a clandestine mission to Iraq, is offered Saddam Hussein's plans to invade Saudi Arabia LAST week the pool bar of the Marriott Hotel in Amman, Jordan, was...

The Prime Minister must say what her inflation policy is, argues Nicholas Budgen HAS Mrs Thatcher's monetarism gone the same way as Nigel Lawson's? This question is provoked by...

broadcasting balances raises deeper issues than the public realises LAST week The Spectator published an attack on myself and others who favour balance in public sector...

THE Senate Banking Committee is wondering just now how the lenders got themselves and everybody else into such a tangle. The cry goes up: where were the regulators, why weren't...

SIGN of the times, which I observed outside a house-agent's office in Staunton, Virginia: GRIM REALTY.

Technological trouble with a flying clipper aimed at Saddam's moustache CHRISTOPHER FILDES I New York t would be nice to have a short, sharp recession, in the same way that it...

THE United States is in danger of running out of money this weekend. No panic is expected, though, and it is thought that the population will be watching football on television,...

Sir: 'To stop Inflation go for Indexation'. Let the Chancellor announce the immedi- ate end of all official index-linking, includ- ing pensions. A modest beginning has already...

Sir: In your issue of 22 September, Ian Hislop (Diary) makes perhaps rather ex- aggerated fun of the Liberal Democrats' new logo, for it is a harmless-looking and indeed rather...

Sir: Your Literary Editor may be, as Shakespeare had one of Henry Vs soldiers say of his sovereign before Agincourt, 'but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to...

Sir: How clever of the Independent to have found a Scottish poll tax payer living 'in a remote cottage without piped water, elec- tricity, gas, sewerage or roads' and there-...

Sir: Brian Inglis's article (`No one wants Ulster', 22 September) reveals his com- plete misunderstanding of Conservative Unionism, and the reasons for the appa- rent rise of...

Sir: I am writing a life of my mother, Dame Celia Johnson. I would be most grateful for any information about her life and her work in the theatre that readers might have. Kate...

A war without limits Eric Christiansen THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR: VOLUME I, TRIAL BY BATTLE by Jonathan Sumption Faber, £20, pp.659 THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR by Robin Nei!lands...

Ned Sherrin THE PENGUIN BOOK OF LIES: AN ANTHOLOGY edited by Philip Kerr Viking, £15.99, pp.543 I have never worried too much about the odd lie and this book furnishes a lot of...

Antony Lambton KING EDWARD VIII by Philip Ziegler Collins, £20, pp. 654 I hope the Queen will make Philip Ziegler a knight. His Edward VIII is a good book. He writes with style...

Patrick Skene Catling A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS by Ray Bradbury Grafton, £13.99, pp.285 S ome masters of denigration, such as Nathanael West and Terry Southern, have already...

Mark Ills DECEPTION by Philip Roth Cape, £12.95, pp.208 TEMPLES OF DELIGHT by Barbara Trapido Michael Joseph, £13.99, pp.317 THE CIRCUS ANIMALS by James Plunkett...

Geremie Barme MOVING THE MOUNTAIN: MY LIFE IN CHINA FROM THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION TO TIANANMEN SQUARE by Li Lu Macmillan, £13.95, pp.224 THE SEARCH FOR MODERN CHINA by Jonathan...

Already bespoke on his last day at boarding-school Nobody missed him which wasn't surprising Because his lost name still appeared on the roll call Of embryo Old Boys from Alpha...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft THE FABER BOOK OF THE TURF edited by John Hislop and David Swannell Faber, £14.99, pp-362 RACING IN ART by John Fairley John Murray, £35, pp.224 C...

David Jenkins DANGEROUS CANDY by Raffaella Fletcher and Peter Mayle Sinclair-Stevenson, £10.95, pp.88 R affaella Fletcher, a nice middle-class girl with loving parents,...

Donald Trump Anthony Flew on Wittgenstein Caroline Moore on Patricia Highsmith

Grinling Gibbons A case of Dutch iris N o upside-down or backwards- mounted carvings this time (The Specta- tor, 28 October 1989), but the latest revelations from the fire...

Cyrano de Bergerac (Greenwich) Fences (Garrick Moscow Gold (Barbican) Knight in a swagger Christopher Edwards I t is hard to think of a more absurdly romantic play than...

Tuneful exceptions Marcus Berkmann h e huge and merited success of the new albums by George Michael and Prefab Sprout doubtless due entirely to the rave reviews given to them...

Presumed Innocent ('15', selected cinemas) Regions of disbelief Hilary Mantel T his is a big film (over two hours) of a big book (over 400 pages in the Penguin edition) — a...

Greek (ENO, London Coliseum) Nothing offensive Rupert Christiansen S uch a flurry of excitement, I can't tell you. As someone in Time Out put it, the first London...

Malcolm Morley (Anthony d'Offay, till 12 October) George Baselitz (Grob Gallery & Runkel-Hue-Williams, till 2 November) Frank Auerbach (Marlborough Fine Art, till 20 October)...

Blind to reality Martyn Harris T he great puzzle of Blind Date (ITV, 6.30 p.m., Saturday), is why none of the Daters — or should it be Blinders? — have yet got married to each...

Faulty recall Taki I New York t is amazing how good the Bagel feels after the stench of the Big Olive. As long as one sticks close to Park Avenue, that is. Autumn is the best...

Squatters' rites Zenga Longmore 0 lumba is busying himself in the kitchen having just prepared a dainty array of cold collations. Omalara plays around my feet, re-designing...

PHEASANT shooting began this month so I shall continue in the same vein as last month's cooking of game. I was reminded of an old favourite by Patrick O'Connor in the Literary...

library ... or over £30 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it can be to track a copy down. Now you...

THERE is a game I used to play and, as far as I know, coined, which I recommend to all those with suitable temperaments. It is called Deprivations, and it is a game I can...

Wislonry Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1645 you were in- vited to imagine A. N. Wilson at work interviewing an octogenarian celebrity of the past. Most of you put the...

Fire and ice Raymond Keene h e Kasparov-Karpov world chess championship match, their fifth, starts in New York on Monday. Any Spectator reader in New York who wants to visit...

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You are invited to write a poem with the following rhyme-scheme: wax, knocks, cocks, thwacks, lacks, unlocks, ox, axe, frivolousness, glut, less, belief, thief, occi- put....

A first prize of 00 and two further prizes of 110 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

Welsh rugby gloom Frank Keating THE BARBARIANS rugby club, chival- rous and shimmying in intent, continues its merry celebrations in Wales. Merry? Not across Offa's Dyke these...