T he immediate reaction of disgust to the news that Mr Ken Livingstone of the Greater London Council has invited Gerry Adams and Danny Miarrison of the Provi- sional Sinn Fein...

E xplaining his decision to invite the two Sinn Fein leaders to visit him in Lon- don, Mr Ken Livingstone of the Greater London Council declared on Monday: 'We do not know...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £15.50 1R£17.75 £ 18 .50 £24.50 One year: £31.00 1R£35.50 f- 37 .00 £49.00 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made...

Fighting the funk Auberon Waugh A new season for anti-nuclear protest in the West has opened. There are two e , )( P l anations, I suspect, for the often- 'etnarked fact that...

Murray Sayle Hong Kong Mime was, in the grimmer days of Chair- 1 man Mao, when the border crossing from the People's Republic of China to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong...

Richard West Johannesburg The South African press has not been slow to observe that the two principal Stars of the recent Test match in Brisbane I re both local men: Allan...

Christopher Hitchens E dward Kennedy will not now be run- ning (as I exclusively predicted to the favoured readers of the Spectator last July) for the Democratic presidential...

S hiva Naipaul I n the creation of Hindu culture, Bihar ri, ne ettPies a pre-eminent place. On its rich ar 'd Plains north and south of the Ganges tri b al %at e of the earliest...

Peter Ackroyd Austin, Texas W hen I arrived here, they told me it was different. It wasn't like Houston — well Houston was just too big and too rich, ' they were taking so much...

Andrew Brown Ellemann-Jensen, was accused by his Social Democratic predecessor of `betray- ing the cod of Greenland' two days before the summit started. He had allowed the West...

an Stewart O Rangoon n e Year ago this week, and two Of decades after he first seized power, one rk,.the World's toughest heads of state of- aLla!IY retired. Pleading old age,...

John Naughton T Phis is the Year of Information Techno- logy. What that means in practice is the hardest sell any British government has engaged in since the early days of...

Mr Anthony Trollope died on Wednesday, after a few weeks' severe illness, from which after a time it was hoped that he was likely to recover. Of no other writer, living or dead,...

John Gross T he secretary of the Soviet Peace Com- mittee, Mr Grigory Lokshin, has recently reminded us that in 1950 an appeal calling for a ban on atomic weapons which was...

Sir: Will you please allow me to crrect an error in Mr Stamp ' s otherwise amirable article ( ` The ladies of King ' s COSS ' , 27 November)? He writes about ' till sort of...

Sir: For years television news has been criticised for concentrating upon the events of a particular day , at the expense of broader and deeper . issues. This led, we were told,...

Misunderstanding Gandhi Sir: Peter Ackroyd ' s attack on the film , a , ne hi is scruffy, ignorant and mean - w - : ; 11c1 . e d, a failure of spirit, schoolboy ; "tIn g: It is...

Sir: I should like to support your editorial ' s call to Mrs Thatcher to appoint a successor to Mr Nott as Defence Minister, who can not only run the Department well, but also...

`Ah, horrible war!' Max Hastings Man of Wars Alan Hankinson (Heinemann 12.50) SS even years ago, Philip Knightley wrote a history of war correspondents entitled The First...

Philip Warner The Phony War 1939-1940 Tom Shachtman (Harper & Row £8.95) T he eight months between the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and their invasion of France...

Francis King Tarr Wyndham Lewis (Penguin £2.95) O n e of the few advantages of growing th old is that one can approach as or ° ,4 11 for the first time some person, place k -...

A. L. Rowse The Royalist War Effort, 1642-1646 R. Hutton (Longman £12) A great deal of historical writing still goes into the Civil War and its origins, much of it from the...

Christopher Neve The England of Eric Ravilious Freda Constable with Sue Simon (Scolar Press £18.50) R avilious could whistle in thirds. He whistled in thirds while painting....

Gavin Stamp The Egyptian Revival James Stevens Curl (Allen & Unwin £30) Athenian Stuart: Pioneer of the Greek Revival David Watkin (Allen & Unwin £10.95, £4.95) Tt is not...

The Stately Homes of Britain Sibylla Jane Flower (Debrett 12.50) - Por once Sydney Smith was not quite right. 'The pursuits of an English nobleman', he said, 'should be...

John Jolliffe Portrait of Poland Poland in Perspective Konrad Syrop (Robert Hale £9.50) U ntil the election of the Pope and the formation of the Solidarity Unions, Poland was...

Peter Levi The Private Art (Allison & Busby £9.95) Collected Poems 1963 - 1980 (Allison & Busby £9.95) Blessings, Kicks and Curses (Allison & Busby £9.95) Geoffrey Grigson...

Well-cloaked Jann Parry The Tempest (The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden) V ou certainly have to know your Shake- '. speare in order to go to the ballet these days. It is no use...

Take your pick John McEwen I t is hard to keep a head above the shows at the moment, as the galleries make their final surge to Christmas. The City's Pictures (Barbican Art...

E.T., go home Peter Ackroyd E.T. ('A', selected cinemas) D ring handkerchiefs as large as sails, the 1/advance publicity suggested, audiences are weeping hysterically in the...

Sweet charity Taki New York ?This is the g ayest — and I use the word in its ori g inal meaning — time of the year to be in New York. Durin g November and early December New...

Replay Richard Ingrams After the row about Channel 4 some way 16 `)Ple are predictably g oin g the other Th e 'ncl sayin g it isn't as bad as all that. tt en Y :ven claim to...

Shoa business Patrick Marnhant A book has been published that sh°1/eild cause a few headaches for the is ra a o government's information officers It associated apologists. It...

In all sincerity Jeffrey Bernard There are very few sights more revolting 1 and disgusting afforded to the owner of a television set than that of a gaggle of ac- tors and...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for an extract from a BBC or ITV weather report in the more colourful, 'swinging' style of the future. Metaphorically taking the wet...

No. 1248: That was the year... Set by Jaspistos: You are invited to sum up the events, momentous or trivial, that in your eyes distinguished 1982, in up to 16 lines of verse....

Traditions Raymond Keene T he Brighton International has succeeded in surviving into its fourth year, and the latest tournament in the series commences on Monday 13 December...

as also is Basil (FawItY). 11 0 Winner: David Pugh, 24 AO Square, St Austell, Cornwall.

A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 31 December. Entries to: Crossword 587, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. 1 2...

S ixteen people were killed — 11 of them „ soldiers — when a bomb exploded i lthout warning in a public house in s allYkelly, Co Londonderry; more than 60 e uffered serious...

FATTYPUFFS AND THINIFERS by Andre Maurois. Edition prior to 1968, illustrated by Jean Bruller. R. F. Berger, 2 Rose Cottages, Ex- minster, Exeter, Devon EX6 8BX. Tel: 0392...

E ach issue of The Spectator until the Christmas issue (18 December) will carry a clue. Each clue is made up of three separate questions, designed (except where stated) to give...

Answer How does each question lead to the answer? Name. Address: Company (if eligible for special prize) Important: Please keep this answer form, as you will need to keep a...

- E'or once this week the clue is made up of three different places in the British Isles rather than one — and what they have in common should eventually prove a useful hint!...

Treasure Hunt Set by Christopher Booker T his issue of The Spectator has the tenth clue in the Great SPec; tator Treasure Hunt. The Treasure Hunt will last for one 1110r s...