A t their annual conference the TUC put off making a decision on no-strike deals, thereby avoiding a major internal confrontation. Mr Arthur Scargill, the NUM leader, failed in...

SUMMIT PROSPECTS T he British government, in common with several others in Western Europe, is at present bracing itself for a possible announcement that a Reagan-Gorbachev...

How Mr Fred Jarvis won the Great Insult Handicap FERDINAND MOUNT y favourite amendment at this year's TUC came from the Union of Communication Workers, or as we used to call...

CRAIG BROWN efore the beginning of the party conference season, journalists were told to deliver passport photographs of themselves to all the different party organisations....

Will A. N. Cabdriver drive Graham Greene to a last terrible practical joke? AUBERON WAUGH S ceptical at first, I am beginning to accept the reality of Mr Gorbachev's glas-...

Michael Trend questions the efficiency of an aristocratic quango, the British Tourist Authority THE TOURIST in Britain today is hideously obvious: that at least is how it...

Charles Glass muses on the Charles Glass muses on the travel book and journalism interrupted by his kidnap Levanto, Liguria DESPITE my love for this Ligurian coast, called...

LATE on the night of Friday week, the discussion on the Irish prison vote gave rise to one of those scenes in the House of Commons which now occur once or twice in the week. Mr...

Michael Woodiwiss on a dangerous weapon in the war against drugs GRADUALLY more and more British people are being obliged to give samples of their urine to be tested for...

The Israeli aircraft industry hopes to save face by joining US fighter projects, writes Edmund Owen Jerusalem IT'S BEEN a long, hot summer, and political protest has taken to...

Louis Heren remembers Sir William Haley's aloof editorship of the Times LITTLE was known about Sir William Haley in Printing House Square when he was appointed editor of the...

Tom Pocock remembers the life of Fleet Street 40 years ago LIFE in Fleet Street is becoming in- creasingly like that Victorian narrative painting, 'The Last Day in the Old...

The media: Paul Johnson identifies the real test of Hussey's new BBC WRITING in the Guardian, the former editor of the Listener, Russell Twisk, argues that the TV...

A live-in relationship with the snake JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE S pare a thought, if you will, this weekend, for Mr Robin Leigh-Pemberton. Governor Leigh-Pemberton is the soul of...

NIGEL Lawson thinks of mass share own- ership as part of the Government's central theme of popular capitalism. The City (I was saying last week) too easily thinks of it as...

I SHARE with the Governor of the Bank of England a distaste for the concept of putting a bank in play. This piece of market cant implies amassing shares in a company, suggesting...

The docks' scenic trains lose their drivers and the banks won't trade! CHRISTOPHER FILDES I have taken to travelling on Reg Ward's scenic tramline. More politely called the...

BARCLAYS' new chairman John Quinton has been telling the US House of Repre- sentatives about regulating the securities markets. I hope they enjoyed his style. He explained how...

Sir: Your television critic says that in the Did You See? discussion that followed the showing of Brimstone and Treacle, Mr Alasdair Milne popped up for a few moments tut made...

Sir: Mitford Goodson claims (Letters, 5 September) that 'Adolf Hitler produced up to 30,000 paintings and drawings'. Does this refer to Hitler's own prolific output (amounting...

Sir: Since Mr Inglis (Letters, 5 September) has appealed to me, may I be allowed to rule that he is wrong on one point, right on another. Mr Welch rightly found it self-...

Sir: Lord Monson (Letters, 5 September) defines 'integration' for Ulster as the har- monisation of its laws, administration, institutions and customs with our own. Now, it may...

Sir: As my letters seem only to illicit evasion, malice and crude personal attacks and my questions about the numerous poor in this country go unanswered I shall cease them...

Sir: The idea that Rudolf Hess and the Duke of Hamilton didn't know each other was questioned at the time of the Hess landing. Chips Channon writes in his diary for 13 May...

Sir: With all the complaints about British Telecom, no one has yet pointed out that if one dials the Speaking Clock now, an unctuous male voice tells you 'The time, sponsored by...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £ (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES 12 Months...

H.G. Wells's attempts to take over the Fabian Society and E. Nesbit's step-daughter are de- scribed in the second of two extracts from A Woman of Pas- sion, The Life of E....

What Mollie saw in Butler Alastair Forbes AUGUST AND RAB by Mollie Butler Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.95 by Mollie Butler Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.95 I t is one of the much...

John Charmley HESELTINE: THE UNAUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY by Julian Critchley Deutsch, £9.95 T hat one old Pembrochian should be reviewing the biography of another old Pembrochian...

Piers Paul Read A GOOD ENOUGH PARENT: THE GUIDE TO BRINGING UP YOUR CHILD by Bruno Bettelheim Thames & Hudson, £12.95 B runo Bettelheim, together with Erik H. Erikson, is...

Nicholas Lezard THE PLAYMAKER by Thomas Keneally Hodder & Stoughton, £10.95 0 f them fiction could make much, though history says nothing.' These are the last words of The...

ball was over . . . J. L. Carr THE BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD by Iris Murdoch Chatto & Windus, £11.95 T hese are hard times for book-writers. Booker season is here and...

Francis King CHATTERTON by Peter Ackroyd Hamish Hamilton, £10.95 B oth in its theme of the past being like a corpse which, if exhumed, can infect the present with its miasma,...

A bit windy, but then the sun was warm; And since he seemed to sleep too much (No one had come to provide stimulation), We dressed my father-in-law, too out of touch To lend us...

Victoria Glendinning THE LATE MRS DOROTHY PARKER by Leslie Frewin Sidgwick & Jackson, L14.95 D orothy Parker was 'America's wit- tiest woman'. Here is an example of her wit....

Noel Malcolm CLARENDON AND HIS FRIENDS by Richard 011ard Hamish Hamilton, T here is', as a disgruntled Whig historian observed in 1827, 'no character to which history has been...

Follies Neo-Classical rearmament Alan Powers applauds the revival by Ian Hamilton Finlay of the noble tradition of the pamphlet war in defence of follies, old and new T he...

Injudicious fidelity Rodney Milnes J oachim Herz's production of Salome for the ENO, first seen 12 years ago, was one of the earlier examples of the work of the Great Wave of...

Curtains (Hampstead) A Midsummer Night's Dream (Barbican) Problem granny Christopher Edwards S tephen Bill's new play is a combination of black comedy and discussion piece....

Good Morning, Babylon (`15', Lumiere, St Martin's Lane) Master craftsmen Hilary Mantel T he secrets of two are the secrets of God,' says the head of the Bonnano family to his...

The egg question Wendy Cope A part from switching on for the news a couple of times, I didn't watch television at all for a whole month and it was absolute bliss. I cannot...

Running for gold Taki W Athens atching the track and field events on television all last week brought back many pleasant memories. Twenty-seven years ago I was in Rome,...

STUDENTS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY TO ENJOY THE SPECTATOR AT LESS THAN HALF-PRICE More stimulating than any lecture, funnier than the set books, The Spectator should be required...

Waste not, want not Alice Thomas Ellis e are still tidying up. I say 'still' but what I mean is we start doing it and are then so overwhelmed by the Augean-stable nature of...

825: For Lorraine by Jac A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers...

Brothers in arms Raymond Keene T his week, more games from the Zag- reb Interzonal, including one of the most important games in the competition, Vic- tor Korchnoi's needle...

Whatevergoes Jaspistos I N Competition No. 1488 you were asked for a poem in the same metre and of the same length as Masefield's 'Cargoes', describing three stages of any...

Hollywood's HAVING just come back from two weeks in the Dordogne, going to a restaurant in England is a traumatic experience. The complaints of a restaurant critic — some- one...

You are invited to invent an exchange of letters between a Briton and an American in which the difference between the writ- ers' mode of expression and meaning is excruciating...

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If the Queen is coming to lunch Auberon Waugh I offered the Grand Vernaux Rouge (1) , a branded table wine from an offspring of the great Beaune houses several years ago, and...

C/o Grape Ideas, 3/5 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW Telephone: (0865) 722137 Product 1. Grand Vernaux Rouge 2. Leasingham's 1983 Bin 68 3. Haut Cates de Beaune 1985 4....