T he Prime Minister said in an interview that she expected to lead her party into the next general election but did not think it was likely that she would seek a fifth term o...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 WHAT IS TRUTH? he story of Mr Nigel Lawson's resigna- tion is being used by...

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The lonely constitutionalism of the long-distance Prime Minister NOEL MALCOLM O ne of the exchanges in last week's interview with Mrs Thatcher in the Sunday Correspondent was...

N ow that I live abroad, coming to England for a visit makes me wary. If I allow myself to be lulled by the cosiness of familiarity, I get suddenly thrown by a disconcerting...

The Prime Minister, the Pornographer and the Prostitute: why Thatcher must go AUBERON WAUGH L ast week Paul Johnson quoted the Sun's valediction to Nigel Lawson with some...

discomfort among West German Marxists about those fleeing from the East Munich THE fluorescent green posters taped to the doors of the Schwabing beer hall advertise a...

The D-Day memorials tell us almost as much about war as do the fields TILLY-SUR-SEULLES war cemetery lies south of Bayeux and contains the graves of 1,222 men who died as...

published next year by Jonathan Cape.

James MacManus details new evidence of the part played by the Selous Scouts in the war against the guerrillas TEN years ago this month the war in Rhodesia was reaching a...

Michael Heath

Alfred Sherman traces the tribulations of the special adviser IN AUTUMN 1979, John Hoskyns, Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, and I decided that the Prime Minister...

Edward Whitley wonders why the high-street heroes are running into trouble TWO years ago, Benlox, a small engineer- ing company, made a takeover offer for Storehouse, the...

Jane Thynne on the way obscenity laws are circumvented by international pedlars IT'S a far cry from The Singing Detective. Two young women, in matching suspen- ders and...

Nicholas Farrell describes the night he was arrested for doing nothing MY own experience of rough justice at the hands of British bobbies is small beer compared to that of the...

Mr Lawson and the one-edged dagger JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE hen Nigel Lawson and I wrote a study of decision-making in Whitehall (The Power Game, Macmillan, 1976) (it hap- pens to...

Betting on a touch of class in the Lloyd's of London stakes CHRISTOPHER FILDES V ote, vote, vote for Rona, Lady Delves Broughton. Now is the time when that vocal electorate,...

LLOYD'S has been employing more capit- al than it can profitably use. This year some 2,000 members will drift away. Costs have risen, partly as the price of com- pliance —...

PUT not your trust in elected princes. That is the lesson of the Hammersmith and Fulham Council's failure in its freely accepted obligations in the money mar- kets. The court of...

THIS week the draft of the water prospec- tus dripped onto my desk with a resound- ing plop. It is the size of a telephone directory, and more exciting, but not much. I liked...

Ballot coercion Sir: I was brought up to believe that the secrecy of the ballot box was sacrosanct. This was so as to prevent the possible co-ercion of a voter. For me such...

Sir: I am sorry to report that Peter Brookes's cartoon (4 November) is out of date. Because of something called BS7114, the fireworks I bought this year had no blue .touchpaper....

Sir: By now, everyone you meet has an opinion to express upon green issues. Many of us, an increasing number every day, make some concession to environ- mental friendliness....

Sir: Richard Ingrams tears a strip off 'W. J. West, historian' (Letters, 20 October) for claiming that, by the summer of 1963, Ingrams had been editing Private Eye `without a...

Sir: How interesting was Alexandra Artley's article CA foundling father to our children', 21 October) on Thomas Coram's 18th century response to 'babies and young children, some...

Nigel Burke TERRORIST. A respected leader of the Commonwealth in larval form. GREY AREA. The unpalatable mixture of black propaganda and whitewash. HOMOPHOBIA. A...

Sir: I read the article by David Esterly about the Grinling Gibbons carvings at Hampton Court (`The mystery solved', 28 October) with great interest. By chance I have been...

Sir: Raymond Carr recalls (Books, 28 October) Charles Stuart's amusing counter to the argument that women should be admitted to Christ Church. His was not a lone voice. The...

Sir: There has been great controversy in my family of late, concerning the matter of whether your distinguished columnist, Mr Hilary Mantel is male or female. Could you please...

Sir: I am sure I will not be alone among those who abhor the memory of Dr Beeching in pointing out that Mr Coleridge (Diary, 21 October) seems to have been taken for rather more...

Sir: As the gypsies sit round the camp fire, stewing something succulent in a pot, they peruse their copies of Horse and Hound pausing only to remark: 'I see Ginny Leng won at...

End of the dinosaurs HOW and why did nearly half of all species, including the dinosaurs, come to a dramatic end? Was it simply in the course of evolutionary failure to sur-...

THE classic Cold War confrontation be- tween the two superpowers, between Nato and the Warsaw Pact, between militant capitalism and militant collectivism, is rapidly being...

U ncorking a bottle of wine transforms unlimited potential into inexorable waste. Unopened, the bottle is loaded with latent possibilities, inaccessible, heavy in the hand as a...

The kiwi and the coulis Nigella Lawson T he he Sixties belonged to the hippies, the Seventies to the punks. The Eighties, though, were the foodies' very own de- cade. Indeed,...

What to eat off Digby Anderson J ulia has gone Jap. At least she had last week: it may not last. In my experience and my stomach's expense — she has gone through most of the...

Spectator Wine Club, C/o Averys of Bristol Ltd, 7 Park Street, Bristol BS1 5NG, Tel: 0272 214141 Code No. Price No. Value Red 9735189F 1. Cotes de Saint Mont 1986 (Plaimont)...

Too good to miss for this Christmas Auberon Waugh for possible re-ordering. If my language sounds toutish and extreme, I must apolo- gise, but every one of these wines is a...

C oleridge had already walked 40-odd miles through Somerset when he first caught sight of Wordsworth's house, Race- down Lodge, a Georgian box in the valley below him. Instead...

Hugo Vickers COCO: THE LIFE AND LOVES OF GABRIELLE CHANEL by Frances Kennett Victor Gollancz, £16.95, pp.160 B ettina Ballard described Chanel as 'the only couturier who...

David Wright WAR LIKE A WASP: THE LOST DECADE OF THE FORTIES by Andrew Sinclair Hamish Hamilton, £17.95, pp.352 THE WAR DECADE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE 1940s by Andrew Sinclair...

Juliet Townsend A GUIDE TO CHURCHES IN OXFORDSHIRE by Jennifer Sherwood Robert Dugdale in association with Oxford Historic Churches Trust. £6.95 S ome years ago, (hiring the...

Richard West GOD'S DUST: A MODERN ASIAN JOURNEY by Ian Buruma Cape, £12.95, pp. 267 S ome four years ago, I read in the New York Review of Books an article on the Philippines...

Even small events that others might not notice I found hard to forget. In Auschwitz truly I had no reason to complain of boredom. If an incident affected me too deeply I could...

Lawrence Osborne THE TRICK OF IT by Michael Frayn Viking, £11.95, pp. 172 T he Academic, lonely, pathetic and grotesque figure of self-absorption, futile intellectualism and...

Kevin Sharpe THE PORCUPINE: THE LIFE OF ALGERNON SIDNEY by John Carswell John Murray, £16.95, pp,304 A n important ingredient of historical renown is a good death. Death...

Timothy Mo BILLY BATHGATE by E. L. Doctorow Macmillan, £12.95, pp. 325 ome novelists make a happy career of writing the same book a dozen times. That is, the works may have...

Sale-rooms New York number- Peter Watson A ►l this fuss about the EMS. What about the SMS — the Sotheby's Monetary System? There is no doubt about its efficiency and, given...

Wizard of the dance Deirdre McMahon I n the silent section of Fabrications Merce Cunningham appears from the side of the stage looking like a slightly de- mented wizard. He...

Dead Calm (`15', selected cinemas) Deep shock Hilary Mantel P hillip Noyce's thriller has a history. Orson Welles saw the potential of its central, stark idea, and used it in...

The Cherry Orchard (Aldwych) Backstage banter Christopher Edwards D avid Mamet's star is in the ascendant in this country, although I doubt whether this production will do...

What'd they say? Marcus Berkmann H ow can a pop star ensure that he, she or indeed it is taken seriously? It's a question that has befuddled many an ambi- tious musician. Rock...

David Salle (Waddington Galleries, till 25 November) Joseph Goldyne (Thomas Gibson, till 1 December) Patrick Symons (Browse & Darby, till 25 November) Maro Gorky (Long & Ryle,...

Derailed again Wendy Cope W atching Six O'Clock News (BBC 1) last Wednesday, I learned of British Rail's intention to increase fares by more than the rate of inflation. Once...

Star of Texas Taki ynn Wyatt, the Texas socialite who was Fergie's hostess throughout the week, is not the run-of-the-mill 'trophy' wife. Married to billionaire oilman Oscar...

Behind the scenes Jeffrey Bernard I took my daughter's mother down to the theatre one evening last week, and what an odd lot there were sitting in the stalls. I didn't go into...

Clinical attachment Zenga Longmore A sk any mother, and she'lltell you the same thing. The reason she attends the clinic every week is to have her baby checked and weighed....

Rights of passage Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1599 you were in- vited to write a poem commenting on the proposal to erect wrought iron gates and railings at one end of...

Swiss roll Raymond Keene T he Chess Olympics, held every two years, date back to the 1920s. Until 1974 this event was held according to a qualifica- tion system of...

You are invited to incorporate the follow- ing 13 words, in any order, in a plausible Piece of prose (maximum 150 words): allegro, simian, clemency, blob, rubber- neck,...

Pocket Diary. Bound in soft green leather, it offers all the facts, figures and numbers that are essential to any Spectator reader, Listings of top restaurants by Nigella...

illEN,ILN I 1H 4 AMAS DiarikR a 'r AG 25 AJ.,GAN 2 6 2 t 'o T S PAIN R N, laRR" B R A k bHERERRU S l ir1AOM S S I6 C T 6 R L AMARIN A E 7 T 0 AT A A LAPOI N...

A first prize of L20 and two further prizes of f10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word `Dictionary') for the first three , correct...