La Vice Anglaise. M r John Major, the Prime Minister, rebuked Mr Michael Portillo, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, for suggesting that European monetary union would be...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 THIS SPORTING DEATH Not surprisingly, there were immediate calls for the respective sports to be made safer or, in the case of boxing,...

Never glad confident morning again, again SIMON HEFFER The level of dissent being broadcast pub- licly makes it seem there is little point using coded language. Mrs Shephard,...

A usual the early part of the year has been Good News Bible-black, a poisonous pall of foreboding. Now, in this 13th week of encircling gloom it is all but scattered. The antics...

Victims of this Trench warfare CHARLES MOORE The boys whom I saw flogged had incurred their fate by chasing a colt about a field, or something of that nature. After 12, when I...

Murders by the insane are running at about one a month. Alasdair Palmer argues that the Government's own policies have ensured that the killings continue BAD IDEAS never die....

TODAY I would like to explain why black is white and how the sainted pro- prietor of this magazine is connected to a river in hell. Black is a word of some interest; the Oxford...

Fel- lowship, 28 Castle Street, Kingston, 081-547 3937.

Anne Applebaum on the fate of the Conservatives in Strasbourg.• the harder they work the more they are hated by their Westminster colleagues Strasbourg JUST FOR one moment, set...

Timothy Yates argues that the Government seems prepared to let the armed forces return to standards last seen during the Crimean war IN 1868 a new Liberal government took office...

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."' Sir, — In the Spectator of April 21st there is an article on Apes, in which the following occurs: — "Monkeys, we believe alone among animals,...

persist. . . WHEN I walked on to the ward one morning last week I surmised from the exhalations of stale alcohol which greet- ed me that I might have to endure an insult or two...

The third instalment of the unexpurgated 1939 diary of Sir Charles Mappin 31 August Sea and wind dead against us. Making only two knots. Infuriating to see Rapa only 25 miles...

Wiping bums with the help of 16 quarterings of nobility PAUL JOHNSON By now you ought to have guessed. No? Well, he is called His Eminent Highness the Grand Master of the...

KENNETH CLARKE need not trouble to publish the minutes of his latest chat with Eddie George this week. They agreed a month ago to leave things alone and see what happened. This...

A little Norwich is a dangerous thing not all the candidates pass CHRISTOPHER FILDES A friend of mine who is chairman of a public company got a stiff letter from Michael...

I HOPE that the Queen, as she emerges from the Channel Tunnel this weekend, will stop the Royal Train for a word with Lord Kingsdown, her Lord-Lieutenant of Kent. He is her...

I CAN see why Rosalind Gilmore has gone to Australia and will be looking for a job when she gets back. She is the First Com- missioner of Building Societies and there may soon...

I WOULD have helped Richard Branson's ideas department by putting the Tate Gallery in County Hall. Instead, its modern art is moving into Bankside power station and will be a...

I IMAGINE that someone at the Norwich has got hold of my treatise, How To Make Money From Life Assurance (Crowbar Press, price on application.) The secret, as You may recall, is...

Sir: Inspired by the AAAA (Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostro- phe), I shall be forming the AAIULCD, which, though not quite as mellisonant, is equally...

Sir: Andrew Roberts' description of the British Nationality Act of 1948 in the fourth paragraph of his article on Churchill (Winston replied that he didn't like blackamoors', 9...

Sir: Mark Almond's perceptive article ('Peter Ustinov is not funny any more', 23 April) demonstrating other aspects of Sir Peter Ustinov's character prompted me to look again at...

Sir: Rupert Christiansen would have ENO leave the London Coliseum (`this hideous old Edwardian barn'), abandon Puccini and Verdi, and decamp to a smaller theatre in Hammersmith...

12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £80.00 0 £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £91.00 0 £46.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$130 0 US$66.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175 0 US$88 Rest of Airmail 0 £111.00 0 £55.50...

For the new South Africa, apartheid will be a wonderful friend in need SIMON JENKINS emocracy is an unromantic ideology, but the old girl can still draw a tear. I have never...

The great letters of a great poet James Buchan ELIZABETH BISHOP ONE ART: THE SELECTED LEFIERS edited and introduced by Robert Giroux Chatto & Windus, f25, pp. 668 I have often...

Tim Parks AN ENIGMA BY THE SEA by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, translated by Gregory Dowling Chatto, £9.99, pp. 420 I t is not often that one comes across detective...

You speak to me in tones of urgent angst: `Oh! Where's the sellotape? Who had it last?' I place it gently in your sticky grasp. You sigh a grateful sigh and mutter, 'Thanks....

Paul Foot JOHN STEINBECK: A BIOGRAPHY by Jay Parini Heinemann, f20, pp. 604 J ohn Steinbeck's great novel about the migrant workers of the American depres- sion, The Grapes of...

Alasdair Palmer DEN OF LIONS by Terry Anderson Hodder, 19.99, pp. 355 W riting about boredom without being boring is the challenge of the prison memoir. Being in prison is...

Philip Glazebrook GRANDMOTHER'S FOOTSTEPS by Imogen Lycett Green Macmillan, 120, pp. 360 his book is a touchingly uncritical account, by an adoring grandchild, of Pene- lope...

Cressida Connolly CHILDREN FIRST by Penelope Leach Michael Joseph, £14.99, pp. 302 T here are three things which everyone likes to consider themselves expert at: driving a car,...

Raymond Carr THE GREEN COLLARS: THE TARPORLEY HUNT CLUB AND CHESHIRE HUNTING HISTORY by Gordon Fergusson Quiller Press, £28, pp. 512 F or those who hunt in Cheshire, this...

Art More Smut please we're British Nigel Spivey blames Stephen Fry for the decline in comic writing B ottoms are flourishing. Outsize or hourglass, from Bournemouth to...

Andy Warhol: Portraits; Cecil Collins: works from the collection of Elisabeth Collins (Anthony d'Offay, till 28 May) The wig and brush Giles Auty I n a week in which we learn...

Very pleased to see you Mark Steyn T he finale of Ace Ventura — Pet Detec- tive almost drowns in pathos. The corrupt policewoman stands awkwardly in her underwear, while the...

Three Tall Women (Promenade Theatre) A stroke of genius Douglas Colby R ealism is the last thing one has come to expect from Edward Albee, specialist in dramatic conundrums....

Too much ethnic twangle Robin Holloway A remarkable document has come my way: the draft of a New Music Policy from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orches- tra. To what extent...

Three chirps for Radio 1 Marcus Berkmann N oone should ever be denied the sim- ple pleasures, and there are few pleasures simpler than putting the boot in on the BBC. One can...

Keep on the Dusty track Martyn Harris cycling doesn't work on television, though I don't know if it's the dour places like Nottingham and Belfast where it takes place, or the...

Widow of opportunity Taki A everyone who has ever heard of Randolph Churchill, Averell Harriman, Gianni Agnelli, Elie de Rothschild, Aly Khan, Jock Whitney, Frank Sinatra,...

Green and pleasant lines Nigel Nicolson There was one experience that I particu- larly wanted to enjoy, and one place that I longed to see. The experience was to ride the...

New leg in the post Jeffrey Bernard I have been out twice this week, once on a nice gentle little tour of Soho being pushed in my wheelchair by my daughter and one of my...

BY THE time you've found out, it's too late: 'Glad you could come. No, no, don't come in, let's go round to the garden, it's so glorious we decided to have a barbecue.' It's...

CHESS gCODDRIIMIM SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA Nos morituri Raymond Keene AT FORMER TIMES in the development of chess the cry has gone up that the game would die through an excess of...

it Ht . Queen solicits Queen Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1828 you were told that Oscar Wilde, as editor of Woman's World, once asked Queen Vic- toria for any early verses of...

CROSSWORD GRAHAM'S PORT A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 23 May, with two runners-up prizes...

Betjeman's famous poem 'Phone for the fish-knives, Norman' didn't deal with the garden, an area in which snobbery apparently can be rampant (see David Cannadine's views on...

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Very, very dead Frank Keating ON SUNDAY evening we had seen Ayrton Senna, with a stony mourning solemnity, visit the spot on the Imola track where Roland Ratzenberger had died...

Dear Mary. Q. I have a very nice, very pretty friend who Is longing to get married and who can't undertand why she's still single. I do. She has a large, flat, colourless mole...