`With one bound he was free!' B ritain unexpectedly joined the Euro- pean Exchange Rate Mechanism and in- terest rates were cut by 1 per cent, promp- ting criticisms that the...

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G ive the European federalists an inch, and they will take a kilometre. Comment- ing on Britain's entry into the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the EMS, Sir Leon Brittan claimed...

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The strength to succeed with an idea yet to be determined NOEL MALCOLM Six or even three months ago, the succession to Mrs Thatcher would have seemed a live enough issue to be...

JOHN WELLS L ord Home's gentle recollections of the Thatchers not laughing immoderately at themselves in Anyone for Denis? (`The last nice Prime Minister', 6 October) brought...

Murray Sayle examines the Japanese contribution to Mr Bush's escapade in the Gulf Tokyo IT'S only when something like this hap- pens that you find out who your real friends...

A reader received this letter from the BBC: Dear Mr Calder stephen, Your letter of 9 August has just been passed on to me so I must apologise for the delay in my reply. I...

Foreign journalists are treated sympathetically in Iraq as John Simpson reports Baghdad TO WALK into the lobby of the InterCon- tinental Hotel in Amman after coming out of...

James Bowman . finds that Americans are not blaming the President for the economic disaster Washington YOU couldn't get into the Washington Monument on Sunday. National Park...

Michael Heath

Noel Malcolm talks to the last dissident in Rumania's government, Andrei Plesu NO ONE could look less like a tightrope- walker than Andrei Plesu. A short but heavily built...

ANIMALS' TOILETTES. [TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.] Sir, — In the interesting paper on this subject which appeared in your columns on September 27th, it is well shown that,...

Ric Cooper wrote Government propaganda. Then he started to believe it . . . BORED with making commercials for lavatory paper and toothpaste, I drifted into Conservative...

persist . . . THE 19th-century poet, John Wilson, said that doctors were rather dull dogs. What he would have made of the present generation of medical students I shudder to...

Damian Thompson attempts to understand a Church of England report on growing old 'AGEING concerns the whole lifespan. It is about a process from birth to death which involves...

USER-FRIENDLY The pandering self- description of much user-patronising computer software, and many technolo- gical playthings. Nigel Burke

Last week was Oxfam Week. can begin and end at home IT WAS my wife's idea that we should respond to an appeal for help in this year's Oxfam Week collection, she who made the...

How to save yourself 51 trips to the library . . . or over £30 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it...

Shiva Naipaul was one of the most gifted and accomplished writers of our time. After his death in August 1985 at the age of 40, The Spectator set up a fund to establish an...

score-card on the new quality tabloid and its rivals AFTER two issues it is possible to make a judgment on the success of the Sunday Correspondent in transforming itself into a...

Sterling sails out across the Channel with the gangways down CHRIS I OPHER FILDES I was in Marblehead, Massachusetts, when my bet came up, and I needed to hurry home before...

Sir: Next week the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill returns to the House of Lords for further consideration. Is it too much to hope that even at this late stage the...

Sir: John Taylor believes that the claim in the Republic of Ireland's constitution for its jurisdiction over the whole island 're- flects public opinion' in the South (Letters,...

Sir: It takes three columns of pretentious and almost impenetrable tosh (The media, 6 October) for Mr Paul Johnson to bore us once again with his hobby horse about television...

'When the dialectic fal- ters', which suggested he would respond to the arguments on broadasting impartiality made the previous week by Ian Har- greaves. Mr Hargreaves was one...

but Ian Hargreaves's assertion that there is no bias in the BBC does not ring true (`Red queens on screens', 29 September). The bias is subliminal. Topics that favour the...

Sir: I would like to take issue over your leading article (29 September). Generally I would concur with the points raised, but to suggest that the CBI represents companies who...

Sir: Mr Parviz Radji claims in his letter (1 September) that my 'alleged outrage' at something he said 'is a piece of self-serving fiction'. He also writes he has never met me....

Sir: Antony Lambton (who, I presume, is the same Antony Lambton who holds the courtesy title of Viscount Lambton, having disclaimed the Earldom of Durham) is one of those...

Sir: Mr Michael Samuelson (Letters, 6 October) is surely wrong to think that removing indexation would stop inflation. Like pay rises and price increases, it is merely a...

Sir: On Saturday 22 September my wife and I paid a 'courtesy call' on the British embassy in Moscow to sign 'the book'. The Russian policeman on the gate asked to see our...

Sir: I found Anne McElvoy's article both fascinating and instructive. However, she has got her MIs mixed up. The Bundesamt fur Verfassungschutz (created by the Brit- ish, by the...

Marriage and death and division Piers Paul Read THE ROAD TO DIVORCE: ENGLAND 1530-1987 by Lawrence Stone OUP, £19.95, pp. 496 I t is now 13 years since Professor Stone...

Caroline Moore CAROL by Patricia Highsmith Bloomsbury, £13.99, pp. 262 I f I had been asked to guess the date of this novel, certain passages might have Persuaded me that it...

Under the lime trees' yellow leaves and damp October sunlight, out of the wind and warm, Nature's unnaturally kind this autumn. But four young people take me for a walk To a...

Roy Jenkins THE ENTERPRISE YEARS by Lord Young Headline, f16.95, pp. 338 D avid Young (or 'Lord' Young as he apparently wishes to be known to the literary world) has been Mrs...

Michael Lewis TRUMP: SURVIVING AT THE TOP by Donald J. Trump with Charles Leerhsen Century, £14.99, pp. 236 T owards the end of Surviving at the Top the reader actually feels...

Juliet Townsend HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES by Salman Rushdie Granta, £12.99, pp. 218 I t is not often that a children's book reviewer is asked for her opinion on an entry...

Elisabeth Luard FEAST DAYS by Jennifer Paterson John Murray, £13.95, pp. 178 T alk about teaching grandmothers to suck eggs: readers of this journal need no formal introduction...

Ross Clark MY SON'S STORY by Nadine Gordimer Bloomsbury, £13.99, pp. 277 THE FOOL OF LOVE by James Lees-Milne Robinson Publishing, £10.95, pp. 170 WALTER WINCHELL by...

Anthony Flew LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN: THE DUTY OF GENIUS by Ray Monk Cape, £20, pp. 654 I n introducing his Ludwig Wittgenstein Ray Monk notes both that there have already been...

Harriet Waugh DARCY'S UTOPIA by Fay Weldon Collins, f13.95, pp. 235 F ay Weldon is curiously uneven for someone who writes so well and enticingly. It might be argued that this...

Exhibitions 1 Richard Long (Tate Gallery, till 6 January) The Broad Horizon: the National Trust's Foundation for Art (Agnew's, till 2 November) Barbara Rae: the Spanish...

Violeta Maslarova (Charlotte Lampard Gallery, 22 October - 5 November) Under a different sky John Henshall I n late December 1988, Violeta Maslar- ova, one of Bulgaria's...

Spotted biographies Peter Phillips I n my role as Arts Diary music monitor I have to read musicians' biographies. There is a strange subculture hidden in the writing of these...

The Clandestine Marriage (Theatre Royal, Bristol) Fun and dandy Christopher Edwards T his revival of Garrick and Colman's brilliant 18th-century satire is a triumph. Written...

Portrait of a writer Hilary Mantel T he term 'mini-series' makes many people feel ill, so it is better to think of Jane Campion's prize-winning film as a trilogy. Its...

Cypress gang Ursula Buchan W hen I was in America some years ago, I recall seeing a sign outside each McDonald's with the legend 'Over 10 billion burgers sold' — or words to...

Going po-mo Martyn Harris P ost-modern' is a term I have prob- lems with, and which changes its meaning every time I look it up. The Lloyds building, Vivienne Westwood frocks,...

Under fire Taki he best magazine in America, the National Review, has called it the hot talk of the town. It certainly has occupied the minds of those who know the difference...

Nag, nag, nag Jeffrey Bernard I can't say I told you so because I didn't. I was what is laughingly called on holiday, meaning that I had forgotten my lines and dried up....

Brixton spy-catchers Zenga Longmore N o one could deny that children are at their most exhausting between the ages of one and two, except, perhaps, mothers with children of...

Every one a coconut Auberon Waugh W ith very generous price reductions from Mr David Sandys-Renton of Hedley Wright, I have managed to keep the average price — that is, the...

Spectator Wine Club, do Hedley Wright & Co Ltd Country Wine Cellars, Twyford Centre London Road, Bishops Stortford, Herts CM23 3YT. Telephone: Bishops Stortford (0279) 506512....

Carry on Jaspistos 12 YEAR OLD I n Competition No. 1646 you were in- vited to leap from the springboard of this first verse of a poem by Morris Bishop: 'What is funny?' you...

Explosive Raymond Keene T he contrasts in chess style personality and politics were pointed up before the start of the New York leg of the World Championship by Kasparov's...

Flann O'Brien invented this game, which features the two characters above- mentioned. The idea is to involve them both in a long-drawn-out, po-faced but unlikely story, which is...

Title=ditto — cf. 9D/10D, suggest- ing the unclued lights which contain repeated syllables. Winners: Jack Walton, Epsom (£20); Peter Stevens, Tadworth, Surrey; Dr J. D....

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...

Steve takes the lead Frank Keating ONE autumn seven or eight years ago, I poured a succession of stiff nightcaps and, heaven.help me, began counting the christ- ian names of...