to get out.' T he TUC conference opened in Bright- on. The TGWU had decided beforehand that it would oppose the Labour Party's plan to introduce a statutory minimum wage, the...

KINNOCK'S 'CONSENSUS' L ast year, Mr Neil Kinnock deemed it prudent not to attend the TUC Confer- ence. This year he went, and was warmly received when he addressed the...

IT WAS amusing to hear the LBC Tuesday morning news babbling gaily on about how Mr Gorbachev's 'new policy of openness' is reflected in Soviet reporting of the sinking of a...

THE magical television pictures of the Titanic on the floor of the ocean go to confirm that nature imitates art. The wreck appeared as Hardy imagined it at the time in his poem...

months of this year show that the Spectator sold an average of 29,949 copies per week, making an annual in- crease of 29 per cent. As far as we know, this marks the first time...

The waiter and the porter and the upstairs maid FERDINAND MOUNT Brighton ur activists know that trade union- ism is not just about scrambling for a few extra pounds in the pay...

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER I am surprised there has not been more stir about the recent article by John Grigg in the Times, summing up the great debate over Harold Macmillan's role in...

A call to the youth of England now abed AUBERON WAUGH I t is true that I no longer read the left-wing press as closely as I used to do, finding it has mercifully little...

Stephen Robinson finds that the growing violence of the African National Congress is attributable more to young radicals than to Moscow `WHEN I consider the future of the...

Nicholas von Hoffman on the aide to McCarthy who died this summer of Aids Washington WHEN Roy Cohn died this summer in a government research hospital outside Washington, many...

Stan Gebler Davies laments the failure of his fellow Irishmen to speak their native language Kinsale, Co. Cork THE Dutch speak Dutch and the Germans German. The Greeks speak...

a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding. . . Or as Knox put it, 'It was customary with our Ancestors to designate Mahomet by the title of The False Prophet. A...

retail price (equivalent to 10 issues FREE) Subscription rates are being held at the old price for a limited period only. Take advantage of this special offer now! I would like...

John Read remembers the life and work of the sculptor, who died this week I LAST saw Henry Moore some 20 months ago. The BBC had asked me to help make a compilation from my...

The press: Paul Johnson discusses two cases of editors disagreeing with bosses IF relations between managements and unions continue to be the dominant issue of British...

HERE it is: a new way to make money. Observe it in (of all unlikely places) a catalogue from Henry Sotheran, the admirable antiquarian bookseller. Sother- an now stocks...

The race is not always to the swift, which explains how they're betting CHRISTOPHER FI LDES uying new issues of shares in the City is like racing in Ireland. You must not...

OPTIMISTS wonder when we shall see inflation as low as this again. Pessimists wonder whether. Here we are with the Retail Prices Index measuring inflation at 2.4 per cent, the...

ONE horse which is past the post already is the Trustee Savings Banks, and its under- writers can count their winnings. I was saying a month ago that the issue did not need...

Going round the bend on the curve JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE At home the National Institute is still forecasting doom and disaster, with a record balance of payments deficit, stagna-...

Sir: Being a Scot, I am more inclined to agree with your correspondent, Allan Mas- sie, than with Charles Moore (Letters and Diary, 9 August) about the Queen's title as Queen of...

Sir: Mr Kavanagh (Life and letters, 23 August) need not despair. There was an old Norwegian farmer who left his tractor out on his field with the engine running. When frugal...

Sir: Dhiren Bhagat promised (`Race to the top', 23 August) to explain why A. Siva- nandan of the Institute of Race Relations is so highly regarded on the Left, but then got so...

with the rest of the right-wing media in their attempts to discredit Sivanandan and the Institute of Race Relations. Half of his article reads like a schoolboy essay. 'Read the...

Sir: Much of the argument regarding South Africa can be swept away by one fact. The ANC and their supporters and the UDF bear the brunt of the suffering in South Africa. If...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - At 20% off the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for f (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES: 12 Months 6...

Sir: I taught in Australia for a period roughly corresponding to the premiership of Whitlam and, I must say, my class of ten-year-olds there did not need then the help of his...

Sir: I see that Richard West names Ken- neth Tynan (`Brum Bruin', 30 August), the `porno-dramaturge', as being with others responsible in the swinging Sixties for the present...

Sir: Please don't cut or sub me into illiteracy and make me seem to have written of 'Harold Robbins, whose The Storyteller shows' this, that and the other (Books, 23 August)....

Sir: With reference to Gavin Stamp's review of John Cornforth's Inspiration of The Past (9 August) I would just like to correct some of the criticism aimed at John Fowler....

Sir: Mr Charles Moore's criticism of the Barbican (Diary, 9 August) is welcome. May I suggest that you make a regular feature of it — a sort of agony column about the ghastly...

Sir: I can sympathise with Auberon Waugh in his experience on board a cross-Channel ferry (Another voice, 30 August). I have for some time maintained that there must exist a...

Spaghetti Junction was 'the worst cock-up in British civil engineering history, worse than the Forth Bridge'? Both Forth Bridges are still standing. Could he be referring to the...

Sir: I do not know Audrey Parry who wrote to you (16 August) about the wicked Liberals in Surbiton, nor do I know the Liberals there, but I warmly admire them if, as Ms Parry...

Influenced by Swiss role Colin Welch AND THERE MY TROUBLE BEGAN: UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS 1945-85 by T. R. Fyvel H erself a Russian Jew, T. R. (Tosco) Fyvel's mother, when the...

Peter Paterson UNION MAN: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Jack Jones Collins, f15 C uriously reticent in all sorts of ways is this autobiography. Apart, perhaps, from Ernest Bevin, Jack...

Patrick Skene Catling COLOMBO HEAT by Christopher Hudson Macmillan, £9.95 I t really is a bit thick: not only do the RAF want to build a runway on the newly improved premises of...

Anita Brookner DR GRUBER'S DAUGHTER by Janice Elliott Hodder & Stoughton, f9.95 T his slim novel contains a plot so voluminous that it would have furnished a good 400 pages...

What are we doing together two old scolds stuck in the stocking of marriage? suspended at the foot of what princeling's bed? Jump up — will he? - from his giant mattress one...

Charles Glass THE LURE OF ZION: THE CASE OF THE IRAQI JEWS by Abbas Shiblak Al Saqi Books, f4.95 T he Jews of Iraq, almost alone among their co-religionists outside...

Exhibitions Indian ink Giles Auty Rabindranath Tagore: Paintings and Drawings (Barbican till 5 October) W. Eugene Smith: His Life and Photographs (Barbican till 19 October)...

Rosa Luxemburg (PG, Lumiere Cinema) Death of a revolutionary Peter Ackroyd T he introduction in the credits is re- latively mild, the most extravagant claim being that she...

Ourselves Alone (Royal Court) Noel and Gertie (Donmar Warehouse) Emotional clichés Christopher Edwards T his is a revival of Ann Devlin's highly praised play about three...

11 trovatore (Coliseum) Hideous corruption Rodney Milnes P ottering contentedly, as one does, down the leafy lanes that lead to old age the only disadvantage of which, I...

Dance and drama Wendy Cope T he programmes have got better this week, a mixed blessing from my point of view, because now there is even more that I feel I ought to watch....

Thrill- Jeffrey Bernard Y et another idiot student approached me yesterday and among other things said how exciting it must be to be a hack. Well, of course it is. Take this...

End of the line Taki has been said, written, and but why, oh why, do the travel? Athens airport last ust like those mob scenes we able to enjoy in the air- coolness of a...

The restless earl Alice Thomas Ellis was watching telly yesterday and wishing wistfully that I could crawl into the set and throttle Brian Aherne or at least wring him out. He...

is looking for a college-leaver with good telephone manner and enthusiasm to act as a receptionist/audio-typist. Please apply to: Rachel Turner, The Spectator, 56 Doughty...

Gold standard Raymond Keene T he landscape of British chess should never be the same again. For a month the two greatest and most exciting players since Bobby Fischer have...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £12.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

ansearizonarr A W E I Mar . ea t b r ri L I, rl R t' S R a R arum! EICIFIOA , 0 R CF A T : re , ki l rEil I .ra p C lirreir I. ' riling Olk, Arir 0 Fr C FI T F K it...

Crazy chain Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1436 you were asked to supply a 'crazy chain' of messages (six including the original) garbled by oral transmission. `Tickle your...

EVERY time I pick up the local paper, it is to find someone whining about 'school dinners'. These turn out to be lunches in the local council schools and the county council is...

If Lovelace had been writing to Lucasta today, his famous first line might have read, 'Don't tell me, sweet, that I'm unkind . . A lyric, please, in the metre and rhyme-scheme...