`Profit! Profit!' A settlement of the Wandsworth pris- on officers' dispute was reached after the Home Office stuck to its policy of manning the prison with regular police...

Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 NOT QUITE SWITZERLAND W ith the overthrow of the longest- surviving dictatorship in Latin America, things are bound to change...

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Now you see it, now you don't NOEL MALCOLM N igel Lawson, as we all know, does not always get his predictions right. His opening announcement on Budget day last year was that...

A lthough I have known for many years of the atrocities committed by the late Rear-Admiral Sir Anthony Miers when he was in command of the submarine Torbay in the Mediterranean...

Will Australia become the world's vineyard or Asia's golf course AUBERON WAUGH andering around Sydney under the hot summer sky in a daze of love, I came upon a street artist...

YES, PLEASE Nuclear energy is threatened by its high cost after privatisation, but Andrew Kenny pleads for it as far safer than coal I AM a vegetarian and therefore a...

Anatol Lieven takes a cup with Afghan guerrillas in a devastated country Peshawar We arrived in Ghaziabad towards evening, after a day's march through a deserted and largely...

Anne Applebaum on the Warsaw government's latest attempt to square Solidarity Warsaw THE Sunday night edition of the Polish television news featured a special advance report on...

Socialism and scandal are not mixing well in France. Diana Geddes reports Paris THERE has been so much excitement in the French press and on television over the Pechiney...

Luke Hughes wonders what is China's game in Tibet I RANG the Panchen Lama in Scotland last week. He would not speak to me at length, principally because his English is weak,...

GENERAL Sir A. Clarke evidently thinks there is 'something' in the report of fortifications for London, for he writes a letter published in Monday's Times, entirely condemning...

Michael Trend weighs up the effects of protests against Channel Tunnel links `THOMAS the Tank Engine says Puff to Harry High Speed', announced a placard carried by a little...

This is the first of our series on English spiritual writers. It will run throughout Lent. IT IS Samuel Johnson's personal infir- mities that make him particularly approachable...

Sharon McCullough questions the value of mass-screening for breast and cervical cancer THREE days after the plans for the new-look NHS were formally unveiled, the British...

Kate Burnett joins the Labour Party, but finds little encouragement MR KINNOCK has for some time now been talking about cheering up the Labour Party. Labour headquarters in...

asks: do we publish too many books? I HAVE always agreed with Dr Johnson's remark, 'Sir, no one but a blockhead ever wrote a book except for money.' But is there money in...

THE Treasury has a bone to pick with Harold Macmillan. It is not just that he routed its three senior ministers when they wanted to cut public spending, or that he passed off...

W HY do the companies writhe under the in stitutions' gun? Why do they not raise their hands and come quietly? They have for long had a multiplicity of reasons for wanting to go...

THE stock markets should read their Cicero. Not to understand what happened before you were born, he said, is to be a child all your life. If they cannot read Cicero, they...

Make my day the investment cartels are caught in the pincers CHRISTOPHER FILDES I detect a pincer movement closing in on a fortress of City privilege. It has long withstood...

Sir: I have already received two issues of The Spectator, dated 14 and 21 January (were you celebrating the New Year until 7 January?) and I am delighted. I got im - mediately...

Sir: I was fascinated to read the extracts from the interview Nicholas Bethel! had in 1977 with Yitzak Shamir, present Prime Minister of Israel (`Sharp methods...', 28...

Dear Friends: Ivan Jirous and Jiri Tichy have been arrested in October of last year for protesting against the increasingly rep- ressive measures taken by the Czechoslo- vak...

Sir: I note that Jaspistos (28 January) relished R. Reymond's washing lines. Perhaps your readers would like the quat- rain in full: Daily she came from Bromley to the City,...

Sir: Poor old Paul Johnson (The media, 21 J anuary) misses the point about Viz, the adult' comic. It is satire. In fact, all the cartoon strips to which he so painstakingly...

Brain Damage 'suggests that the Cassandras were right when they predicted in the 1960s that scrapping the !tiles would end not in enhanced liberty but In moral chaos'. However,...

Sir: Noel Malcolm (4 February) is a little rocky on his reporting of our 'Death on the Rock' programme and the subsequent Windlesham/Rampton Report. We did not conclude that...

Sir: My six-year-old son regarded with scorn the cover showing flying chess pieces (28 January). He pointed out that as the missile was going straight ahead, it should have been...

VIRTUE Virtue is not strictly a cant word, but its absence from public de- bate is worth mentioning, as words, like people, can leave absences bigger than their presence ever...

D espite its allusive twin titles, it seems that the onlie begetter of this absolutely excellent first book by a Hoosier Professor of English, bearded, happily married with two...

David Caute PRISONER OF LOVE by Jean Genet Picador, £12.95, pp.3 75, I n this his last work, Jean Genet de- scribes his pilgrimages to the dispossessed: a pederast at sombre...

Simon Lloyd ENGLAND AND THE CRUSADES 1095-1588 by Christopher Tyerman University of Chicago Press, f24.95, pp.492 t last, someone has been bold enough to consider, at full...

Robert Silver GILBERT: THE MAN WHO WAS G. K. CHESTERTON by Michael Coren Cape, £12.95, pp.270 C A third-class carriage is a commun- ity; a first-class carriage is [for] ......

Kingsley Amis Columbus Books, £35, pp.280 F rom the outside the Grove dictionary looks expensive all right, if not quite up to what is surely a lot of money for something...

Francis King FIGHTING BACK by John Bowen Hamish Hamilton, f11.95, pp.224 M ost of us worry about how not to waste our lives. But, as we grow older, we should perhaps worry...

Douglas Johnson THE IDENTITY OF FRANCE: VOLUME I: HISTORY AND ENVIRONMENT by Fernand Braudel translated by Sian Reynolds Collins, f20, pp.432 F ernand Braudel was born in...

Don't batter my heart, three-personed God. Father, Son and Spirit, somewhere else employ Your powers. The dents I have are no great bother, And too many cooks could spoil this...

It isn't fear of death I find So disconcerting in my mind, As niggling fears that there might be An after-life where some of me Still clung like creeper, intimations Of my lost...

a start David Wright THE DIAMONDS AND THE NECKLACE: A SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNEY by Richard West Hodder & Stoughton, £14.95, pp.219 H ow can one explain what is at the same time...

N othing if not original, the Architectu- ral Association has chosen to bind a most elegantly designed catalogue about the Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerenz (Sigurd Lewerenz...

Suursweet (`15', Curzon West End) Through Eastern eyes Hilary Mantel T he story has its ebullient beginning at a wedding in Hong Kong: a noisy, jolly Wedding, with a young...

The Wars of the Roses: Richard II (Old Vic) Hedda Gabler (Olivier) Power play Christopher Edwards T he English Shakespeare Company has arrived back at the Old Vic after a...

Never jam today Peter Phillips I am beginning to wonder whether any- thing written before 1950 was actually composed for the classical symphony orchestra as we know it. Or...

Sidney Nolan (Waddington Galleries, till 25 February) Edith Granger-Taylor (Gillian Jason Gallery, till 3 March) Sadiq (New Art Centre, till 11 February) Fame and fortuity...

There's always something Wendy Cope m depressed', said Michael in last week's thirtysomething (Channel 4) 'about the impossibility of ever having anything in, your life the...

Brumming it Deirdre McMahon T he announcement last month that Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet is to become the resident company at the Birmingham Hippodrome in 1990 prompts a...

East side story Taki arl Bernstein is the pockmarked half of the duo that helped bring down Presi- dent Richard Nixon, and an American hack superstar as a result. He is an...

Man's worst friend Jeffrey Bernard T he journey by rail from Norwich to Liverpool Street last Sunday was a night- mare. The first leg of the trip was a two-carriage job to...

Flying saucers Alice Thomas Ellis W hat', mused Alfie the other day, 'do you suppose it's like to be a chicken, just clucking and scratching all day?' I don't know, Alfie. I'd...

The lesser breeds Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1560 you were in- vited to write a poem celebrating one of the less publicised inmates of a zoo. I once worked in a zoo, but...

T he remaining three world cham- pionship quarter-final matches are over or winding down. Last year, of coiirse, Jon Speelman qualified for the semis at the expense of Nigel...

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A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word `Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

Supposing Stevenson had written Travels with a Monkey, or Hemingway The Old Man and the Pea, or Graham Greene Journey Without Mass, how would the blurb-writer have described the...

.1•AL .PNLANNL0 JorkJeLfitt WHAT a lot of occasions at the beginning of February this year give thought for food rather than vice versa; Shrove Tuesday feasting, Ash Wednesday...