Politics Our natural supporters C onservative MPs say that they are being inundated with complaints from their constituents about Sir Keith Joseph's proposed increases in...

Awful place While contemplating his new job as Nato Secretary-General, Lord Carrington was heard to wonder if he really had to live in 'that awful place'. Anyone who knows...

Notes L ast week, at a lavish dinner in the Capital Hotel, generously provided by the sponsors, the judges of the Spectator/ Highland Park Parliamentarian of the Year Awards...

Prolonging the strike Mr Herbert Brewer made a pathetic figure in Luxembourg: there was this representative of the workers being Spurned by the slab-faced capitalists of the...

Dean's iconoclasm The news that the Dean of Salisbury, the Very Revd Sydney Evans, intends to make a coach park on the water meadows within the Close will come as no surprise...

Diary Lord Wedderburn has, I see, been advising and appearing as junior counsel for the National Union of Mineworkers. I have known him off and on for 3() Years, ever since he...

Fourth estate on trial Christopher Hitchens WAaslhington A mcrican courtroom dramas, if thev involve the famous, are usually cases of divorce. alimony or remuneration. This...

'Informal' voting David Butler Canberra A ustralian elections have their charm. But they comne too frequently for mnost Australians - last week's was the Seventh in 12 years...

France's poisoned island John Ralston Saul hey were fighting in the streets in TCorsica again this week. Nothing serious; just the gendarmerie of Bastia defending itself...

Cambodian ignorance Richard West As the Spectator's Old Indochina Bore, I have several times commented on how the West has been trying to come to terms with the memory of that...

Repairing to La Paz Robert del Quiaro It looked like a good idea - avoid a big air fare in dollars by travelling from B3uenos Aires to La Paz by train and bus. Days one to...

Brewer and liquidiser Derbyshire solicitors may have many fine qualities - being sober, for instance, or level-headed. It is no reflection on Derbyshire's best-known solicitor,...

Aw P;n ICity and fL inuruburban Wrong numbers The Government's finances got off to a flying start this week, showing a capital gain, before lunch on Monday, of £1.350 million....

Tight-laced Those who make corsets will be pleased, and those who wear them may be less pleased, to learn that the Department of Trade has imposed a quota, limiting the import...

Unfair exchange Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance wants to tack itself two extra storeys on top of the Royal Exchange. Next time we shall see the Ecclesiastical Insurance...

Stags at bay Those who set out to do so found it 1harder than they thought. What a cull ?f the stags - who apply for popular new lssues, to sell the shares as soon as they get...

Gordon Sir: As an old fogey may I resurrect an old story about Gordon [see p.23], perhaps not known to your young fogey readers. In the days when the Sudan was a 'Country of...

Inconsistent Sir: Taki is entitled to his views (High life, I December) on the interview with him carried in the Sunda y' Times, although many who know him thought that it was...

Bad taste Sir: Until now, when in Central Europe attention was drawn, with or without bias, to some public figure's Jewish origin, one was able to point out that such...

Offensive twaddle Sir: I have written at far too great a length [over 1,()()( words. Ed.] to hope for the publication of this letter in even edited form, but I am aware of...

Nature imitates art Sir: It has been pointed out that the Bishop of Durham's story about the two miners' sons who had to share a single pair of boots first appeared in a novel...

Letters Aids Sir: As Centrepiece (I December) seems to be addressed to me, may I reply'? Would that Thornhill Square were in Avilion, but alas it is in the socialist republic...

Centrepiece Song and dance Colin Welch W ith horrified incredulity, as if in a v dream, I watched our two babes in the Russian wood execute a little soft-shoe shuffle in the...

Christmas Books II Strangers in Islington Ferdinand Mount The Needs of Strangers \Iichacl I ..matict'l' ( hatto t9.95) N ccdl is not an casy word. Children. N who arc so...

The butterfly's wing Peter Levi The Earls Novels icain Rh\s ( [)eutsch C8.()5) In consid-rintz the cuarl novels of Jean lthys, reprinted together at last in a handy volume...

Abandoned women Francis King Laughing Torso Ninke lianinelztt (Viraigo t4.95) I)rawn from Life Stclla B3owcn (Virago t4.50)) A t a tinic when writers and artists still A...

Oblivion books Andrew Brown I)e Allonce Tennis 1. 1'. Don leivv (Weidenfeld & Nicholson £8.95) The great attraction of gentlemanlinless. or chivalry, is that it offers a set...

Chaotic Nazi Harold James Goering: The 'Iron Man' R. J. Overy (Routledge and Kegan Paul £14.95) Western democracies have evolved two ways of dealing with unknown political...

Hon and hon and hon Anthony Blond The House of Mitford Jonathan u(i-ilncss with Catherine Guinness (HutchiiIsonl £12.95) A gencrcation and a decade ago at Oxford one of my...

Drowned bells Geoffrey Wheatcroft Voices of the Old Sea Norman Lewis (Hamish Hamilton £8.95) A writer's writer' is a silly phrase ('Peter Simple' once gravely reMarked that...

Forget his habits J. G. Links The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler Katherine A. Lochnan (Yale Univ crsitv Press 25. £t8.95) James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of...

Theatre Deviants Christopher Edwards Breaking the Silence (RSC: The Pit) Extremities (Duchess) Stephen Poliakoff's new play. Breaking the Silence, is an intelligent, witty...

Cinema Dirty pigs Peter Ackroyd A Private Function ('15', Odeon Haymarket) This is a film about the English - certainly not celebrating them, and yet not exactly burying...

Radio Red letters Noel Malcolm W hen five Romanian diplomats were expelled from West Germany last month, the undiplomnatic activities attributed to them included planning to...

High life Season tickets Taki The only good thing about not being allowed to travel is that one cannot be induced to fly to New York for what is known, among those who think...

Low life Ducky Jeffrey Bernard T he Peabody Ilotel in Memphis is oIe of the best hotels in America and one of the best known too. It is famous for its ducks. not (i l oratige...

I- z-141 D )) ? II-f Bant a bit before stuffing ~ .~n 116 A ) a Here we are in the season of Advent, the few weeks heralding the birthday of the Christ Child and not, I would...