THE SPEG>IAIOR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street. London WCIN 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 OPEN SECRETS Tihe traditional attitude of the British...

Rory Peck THE SCENE at the headquarters of Ostankino, the Russian state television building, on Sunday evening, as the attackers and defenders exchanged fire, was terrifying....

If symptoms persist. .. IS THERE honour among thieves? I am not sure; neither am I sure it would be a good thing if there were. There is undoubtedly a code of conduct among...

Trapped in Webster MY OWN hunt for the yurt drew a blank in the 2-volume Oxford Dictionary but I finally ran it to earth in Webster: 'Yurt: a circular domed tent consisting of...

Persian version. .. ON THESE overseas journeys I like to bring a classic with me. This time I have learned from Herodotus that the Persians invented the business lunch: 'It is...

CITY AND SUBURBAN The strange case of the World Bank and the six-legged yurts CHRISTOPHER FILDES J Hampton, Virginia am worried about the World Bank. Change in what used to...

Fun and games LATEST ON China's bid for the financial Olympics - staging the 1997 World Bank and IMF meetings in Hong Kong: 'Still under consideration.'

Virtue rewarded THE MAN with the right idea about the World Bank is Karl Ziegler. He thinks it should stretch a point to help honest governments in the developing world, and...

Professional foul Sir: The contentious nature of your leading article (25 September) is dependent on an acceptance of what amounts to an all-corners record for errors and...

Doubts confirmed Sir: I am afraid Mr Anatol Lieven's article ('Keeping out the infidel', 18 September) deserves a rebuttal. He is biased in favour of Azerbaijan and against the...

L E T T E R S Here is the news Sir: Last week (Letters, 2 October), in one of the longer letters to The Spectator, Lord Chalfont denounced my recent article about television...

Not on the cards Sir: I refer to the interesting correspondence (Another voice, 11 September, And another thing, 18 September) originated by Mr Auberon Waugh and Mr Charles...

Who they? Sir: We're now getting fast steam-packets into port at least a couple of times a year so, even though at a bit of a distance, we're pretty well-informed here. But the...

Gem of a mistake Sir: A gremlin crept into Tire Spcctator's proof-reading room last week and tampered with the following sentence in my review of Amos Oz's novel, FJima. The...

The Source Almost finding it, he still can't hold The language back, those words With their insistence always Upon coming, sly definitives Which measure distances He should...

A sadder and a wiser man Jonathan Cecil A SHORT WALK FROM HARRODS by Dirk Bogarde I Viking, f15.99, pp. 273 l Dirk Bogarde's latest volume of autobiography is one of the...

A riddle still unsolved Carole Angier WONDERFUL SPHINX: THE BIOGRAPHY QF ADA LEVERSON by Julie Speedie I Virbgo, £17 99, pp. 291 The conventional wisdom about the upper...

He was always a hopeless husband Anita Brookner MRS DE WINTER A_ _ by Susan Hill I Siclair Stevenson, £12.99, 1p. 374 M r de Winter is proving a worse husband than Mr...

Ritual: it's done for unless everybody plays their part as in a Noh play, a function to integrate the individual into the unknown which our world does everything to destroy....

Wedding Song Perhaps even here, among the airiest moments Of wishing, there can be pre-emptive stillnessAs when the bride, gingerly easing out Of the limousine, pauses, with...

Achievements of a critic Michael Meyer WILLIAM ARCHER by Peter Whitebrook Methuen, £25, pp. 435 For over 30 years, from the time when he became theatre critic of The World in...

Theatre 2 The David Hare Trilogy: Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War (Olivier) Hare's breadth Sheridan Morley .A t the National, in an all-day sequence of...

Cinema Hard Boiled ('18', selected cinemas) Getting a kick out of Woo Mark Steyn These days, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and, for all I know, Woody...

High life High liver Taki M y liver is acting like Serbia. It is constantly enlarging itself and at times feels life-threatening. Last week was worst, and the great white...

Long life Dressed to kill Nigel Nicolson 71he first time I put on a uniform-a real uniform, that is, not counting the tails We wore at Eton to hide the holes in the seats of...

I Toothsome tidbits i- As 1 .. i HERE IS a good and original charity cause which I heartily endorse - also I think it is a very funny and cheeky idea. My friend and fellow...

SPECTATOR SPORT THIS WEEKEND we are invited to join in the anniversary celebrations for BBC Television's Grandstand programme, first introduced live from Studio H at Lime Grove...