M r Albert Reynolds, the Taoiseach of Ireland, said that the ceasefire by the Irish Republican Army was permanent; Mr John Major, the British Prime Minister, was not so sure. He...

-The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 JOHN BULL MEETS JOHN VENN M ulti-speed, multi-track, multi-lay- ered':...

And what, pray, does all this have to do with the American administration? BORIS JOHNSON L ast weekend, the Irish foreign minis- ter, Mr Dick Spring, paced the lawn at...

DOMINIC LAWSON L . fe, as is commonly observed, tends to reflect art. But I have never seen this exemplified so clearly as it was in last week's oddest news story: the defeat of...

Radek Sikorski says that the critics of John Paul II misunderstand the inspiration behind his crusading pontificate THE FIRST TIME I saw John Paul II was on the first day of...

Charles Glass says that the United States has never been interested in establishing democracy in Haiti; President Clinton provides no exception THE MILITARY rulers of Haiti, who...

Robert Haupt finds out what happens when Boris Yeltsin pays a visit to the supposed showpiece of Russian enterprise Nizhni Novgorod COUNT POTEMKIN'S façades were built in the...

I WAS ON my way last week to the home of a patient — or perhaps I should say to the home of an alleged patient, for I had been called because he was lunging drunkenly with a...

Kenneth Roberts suddenly sees the bright side of being bombarded by Bosnian Serb heavy artillery Zenica WHEN THE first shell landed my instinct was to leave the table, but...

After a siege of 40 years, it seems that Britain's most famous hotel group has been captured by the infidel, reports Martin Vander Weyer by the infidel, reports Martin Vander...

EVERYONE I know seems to be read- ing Patrick O'Brian's novels about the Navy during the Napoleonic wars. And quite right too: they are excellent. Mr O'Brian takes a cautious...

John Lyttle examines the new phenomenon of stars who want their fame to be infinitely translatable LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, pause a moment with me to consider the strange case of...

THE DUTCH, who are at home an effi- cient people, make a horrid mess of their foreign possessions. The natives in South Africa regard them with horror, and in the Eastern...

Looking forward nervously to the triumph of Madame Butterfly PAUL JOHNSON A we approach the 21st century, signs are beginning to appear that we may be experiencing a...

THE FIRST guest on Ricupero Live is Ken- neth Clarke, who says: 'My policy this year has been to put my feet up, and it seems to be working rather well. I told Eddie that, but...

THE DESTINATION of choice for this weekend is Lindau, where, by a German lakeside, Europe's finance ministers meet for a session of Borrowers Anonymous. At Maastricht they...

ARE YOU worried about your occupation- al pension? Then kindly don't bother the Occupational Pensions Board. Its time is too frequently wasted in this way. A note of...

On candid camera with Rubens Ricupero the sound-bites are in the can CHRISTOPHER FILDES I have snapped up Rubens Ricupero for my latest venture, City and Suburban...

SO WHAT ARE all those pension regula- tors doing up in Newcastle on Tyne? Well, they are certifying that your pension scheme passes the test for contracting out of the state...

MY MILTON Friedman mug has arrived. So has my Hayek T-shirt. It shows the great liberal economist trying to look like Mahat- ma Gandhi. 'Competition', he is saying, 'must be...

believe that the world popula- tion explosion is not a problem. It is sim- ply not true to say that people will only have children if they want them. There is a huge, unmet...

Sir: What I am about to write will be painfully unpopular with the heartbroken, the weepers, the 'do-gooders' and other bands of hope. But it's got to be said and said loudly,...

27 August) on the popula- tion explosion. I have both interest and experience in this field, and such a breathtaking piece of claptrap cannot be allowed to go unchal- lenged,...

Sir: Spanish is an example of a language which distinguishes between Why? (from LETTERS what cause?) and what F. Miles (Letters, 27 August) calls Quhy? (for what purpose?)....

Sir: Charles Moore goes further than the Catholic Church in the reservations he expresses about the Cairo Population and Development Conference. The Vatican is not responsible...

rattled by Richard Dawkins. His column is only a slightly incoherent assertion of his beliefs, with a list of people to whom 'it had never occurred' to question theirs. It seems...

sparked off in part by the vexed question as to whether Christ was entirely divine or partly human'; adding that the issue no longer bothers the Church of England (Diary, 27...

Sir: I am sure it will come as an immense surprise to Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 23 July) to learn that many of the peoples of the Pacific rim had reached a high cultural...

Sir: Richard Dawkins is prone to overstate- ment and excessive simplification in his arguments against religious belief, but his case is not disposed of quite as easily as Paul...

courtesy, omits one thing: that Sir Roy Caine has six chil- dren. This descredits Sir Roy's claim to concern about overpopulation. Sir Roy Caine appears to be preaching...

12 Months 6 Months UK D £80.00 0 £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 01.00 0 £46.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$130 0 US$66.00 USA Airmail El US$175 U US$88 Rest of AirmailD £111.00 0 £55.50 World...

Sir: If Martyn Harris — your recent con- tributor ('No sex please, we're married', 20 August) — is to get married next Septem- ber he will do well to bear in mind some- thing...

the latest surveys on this important subject but was remiss in not mentioning the findings of an earlier sur- vey, carried out in Britain, which revealed that after sex 2 per...

Sir: If Paul Johnson wants some female equivalents to a dick (Letters, 27 August) he should look up Lecher's Lexicon by J.E. Schmidt (MCMLXVII, ISBN 0-517- 455463). It contains...

Sir: No one likes to be told they've written an awful book, and when I picked up Tom Hiney's review of my novel, The Romantic Movement (Books, 27 August), I thought of suicide....

Sir: Dot Wordsworth is not, forgive me, comparing like with like (Mind your lan- guage, 3 September). Robinson Crusoe going about 'like he does in the pantomime' is loose but...

An Ulster truce that feeds the triumphalism of the winners and the fury of the losers SIMON JENKINS G loom is the occupational hazard of Ulster watchers. On a wet day it seeps...

Society of dead poets and others Peter Levi HISTORY: THE HOME MOVIE by Craig Raine Penguin, £18, pp. 334 T his is a poem which somewhat discon- tinuonsly tells a story: not by...

David Sexton DAN LENO AND THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM T he key to all Peter Ackroyd's work has unaccountably been omitted from the impressive list of his publications which preceeds...

I shall poke my finger in the holes between words; I shall return to wrestle with the grammar of small things: my daughters' toys and papers offered on the cloth, a chipped...

Jonathan Clark CONVERGENCE OR DIVERGENCE? BRITAIN AND THE CONTINENT by Jeremy Black Macmillan, £40, pp. 316 E ntry into the EEC, said Hugh Gaitskell in 1962, means the end of...

the womb with a view Charlotte Moore FLESH AND BLOOD by Michele Roberts Virago, £14.99, pp. 175 M y mother was my first great love, she was my paradise garden.' So says Fred-...

Alan Wall CROMWELL'S EARL by Richard 011ard HarperCollins, £20, pp. 283 N ow the Guelphs rule now the Ghi- bellines', wrote Elemer Horvath in his Quatrain for Mandelstam. We...

Stephen Gardiner ARTISTS' HOUSES IN LONDON by Giles Walkley Scholar Press, £50, pp. 281 h e more remote the 19th century seems, the more remarkable much of its architectural...

Daniel Caute THE ASTROLOGY OF TIME TWINS by Peter Roberts and Helen Greengrass Pentland Press, £6.95, pp. 120 A n astrology book that can be taken seriously by sceptics and...

(For Brendan) An old friend whose judgment I have sounded, one-time conductor and composer too, says logic is voiceless and confounded concerning Your good intent. He claims...

Warwick Collins PROLOGUE by Joan Brady Deutsch, £14.99, pp. 224 J o . an Brady's novel Theory of War, pub- lished last year, astonished this reviewer with its virtuosity. It...

Eric Jacobs YOU CAN'T DO BOTH by Kingsley Amis Hutchinson, £15.99, pp. 306 S ince the blurb of this novel reveals it to be 'strongly autobiographical', let me at once declare...

'Where in another century my mother Had played and laboured.' There, for him, all was changed. For me his lines recalled a Lowland valley My forbears laboured in: with nothing...

VISITING Warsaw these days can be a surprising experience. Along streets where once there were empty state shops, now there are full private shops; in the building where the...

Mu sic Sounding the wrong note Richard Cockett on the sentimental nonsense at the Last Night of the Proms I t is that time of year for the Last Night of the Proms again, when...

Paul Storey (Jason & Rhodes, till 15 October) Complex issue Giles Auty A fter five years or more of seldom relieved gloom in the art market one must hope that a new...

The killer bottom Marcus Berkmann A exclusively predicted in this column, Take That's radical new image has been greeted with dismay by the group's vast army of teeny female...

A terrifying experience Alasdair Palmer looks at the rocky business of film technology S ee women's heads sawn off in 3-D!' was the delightful promise of the techno- logical...

Clear confusion Nigella Lawson S omewhere high in the pantheon of thankless tasks is that of explaining The Troubles to foreigners, for, blind dogma aside, no single political...

A Matter of Life and Death ('U', Barbican) Wyatt Earp ('12', selected cinemas) Too much droop Mark Steyn he besetting sin of today's Hollywood, from Aladdin to The Three...

DIARY 1995 £12 Plain £13 Initialled The Spectator 1995 Diary, bound in soft black leather, will shortly be available. Laid out with a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the...

A hairy squeeze Taki A bout six years ago I wrote three love letters to Brooke Shields, who happens to be the daughter of a very old friend of mine. Mind you, I was doing a...

Island hopping Jeffrey Bernard I had a preview of American health fanaticism ten years ago when I stayed in Boulder with an otherwise delightful girl, who asked me to go out...

Sailing by Nigel Nicolson Como C oming suddenly upon the Italian lakes from the geological violence of the Alps or northwards from the suburban awfulness of Milan, one...

LiPILIAL WE HAVE a dear little saint on 15 September. She sounds like the patron saint of anti-fast-food emporiums, but is in fact one of the patron saints of servants, civil...

SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA ;TDDCOLEMIM SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA That game Raymond Keene SHOCK WAVES WENT round the world last week, capturing front-page attention for chess, when Garry...

COMPETITION j %Nat VALI )(INCH 14 HISCI URA Great train-spotter Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1846 you were asked for an obituary of a life devoted to the pursuit of...

That great spectator, Dr Johnson, began his Vanity of Human Wishes with the lines: Let observation with extended view Survey mankind, from China to Peru. Let us suppose that...

CROSSWORD GRAHAM'S PORT GRAHAM'S PORT 1176: Masterful by Columba A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution...

b N P 3 L A 4 T Ebp I A RJ 13 Y • I NT AGEItARAUI011 E U T t I ■■■ ,B B 0 N I DER HEER!O1BJE M EICJEFII I Y U'E U E P ANT ANA UIT A IR ER ■E A K E Ri 2 LD E M A HAS I't...

Hit for six Frank Keatin g TOPPED by that clunking clout clean over Father Time's grandstand, the blistering innings in the cup final at Lord's on Satur- day by...

Dear Mary. . . Q. Can you advise me on telephone eti- quette regarding my valuable time being wasted by friends who consider their time to be more valuable? The callers come...