A 12-week-old Boeing 737 broke into pieces as it attempted to make an emergen- cy landing at the East Midlands Airport. The aircraft was flying from London to Belfast and the...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 A QUESTION OF POWER Harold Wilson's corporatist state has, thankfully, faded...

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Mr Lawson's not-so-vital statistics NOEL MALCOLM A news item caught my eye last week when it surfaced briefly on the BBC, before relapsing into obscurity. The Gov- ernment, it...

ANTHONY HOWARD hat is Mrs Thatcher's single greatest achievement as a national leader? I sup- pose most people would say something like restoring faith in Britain, taming the...

How much should the public pay to know who's bonking whom? AU BERON WAUG H T rawling the Sunday newspapers for a ,ubject to write about, through the familiar routine of...

East-West developments strengthen WE should recognise that the French Revolution has ended, the leading French historian Francois Furet remarked a few years ago, to shock and...

Emperor Hirohito finally proved he was legacy he has left to his son Tokyo ALL flesh, we know, is grass. Just the same, right up to the end it seemed possible that the frail...

Con Coughlin visits the site of Colonel Gaddafi's chemical warfare plant Tripoli THE last time Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya picked a fight with Washington, he ended up on...

Robert Cottrell examines the hormone trade war between Europe and the United States IN LIFE, as in dictionaries, agriculture is a near neighbour of absurdity. Who can explain,...

Michael Trend investigates the Christians who are out for Jewish converts 'CHRISTMAS would be impossible with- out the Jewish people', proclaimed a full- page advertisement...

The press: Paul Johnson thinks that morally wrathful writers cut foolish figures NOTHING provides more wry amusement than the spectacle of writers running round in indignant...

A coup that puts a price of £7 billion on Arnold Weinstock's head CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he most powerful British industrialist of our time now faces a coup d'etat. The assaults...

Sir: Re Auberon Waugh's complaints (Another voice, 17 December), another for your list of ridiculous statements (from Det Chief Supt McFadden, head of Surrey CID, after the...

Sir: L. K. Lawler is right (Letters, 17 December): in the classical tongues on the one hand, quantity rules, but it's stress that you work to in writing in English. (Mostly —...

A right mess Sir: Anthony Barnett writes ('Why Britain is no democracy', 17 December) that I ought to 're-sit my GCSE' for having stated that parts of our constitution can be...

Sir: P. J. Kavanagh's vivid description of the sudden arrival of a flock of mixed finches (Life and letters, 10 December) intrigued me; much the same has happened here (North...

Sir: I am a subscriber to the London Review of Books. In order to get away from Paul Foot I have also become a subscriber to The Spectator. Whom do I now find in The Spectator...

Sir: Myles Harris must do more than repeat misleading clichés (`Out of the body', 10 December). Certainly, Einstein never accepted the uncertainty principle but it's wrong to...

RICHARD WEST W hile most well-read people have at least heard of Olive Schreiner, Laurens Van der Post, Nadine Gordimer and Roy Campbell, not one in a hundred knows even the...

A very civil service Ferdinand Mount WHITEHALL by Peter Hennessy Seeker & Warburg, £20, pp. 851 0 n one of these mild mornings, the bell will ring at some unostentatious...

Michael M. Thomas PEOPLE LIKE US by Dominick Dunne Sidgwick & Jackson, f12.95, pp.403 I t is difficult to judge what a British reader will make of this novel of New York...

J. Enoch Powell THE OXFORD GUIDE TO HERALDRY by Thomas Woodcock and John Martin Robinson OUP, f17.50, pp. 256 A mateur heraldry is a dangerous addiction. It comes about in this...

Charles Glass CHILDREN OF BETHANY: THE STORY OF A PALESTINIAN FAMILY by Said K. Aburish I. B. Tauris, f14.95, pp.243 M ost of the foreign correspondents who have frequented...

Giles Auty THEORIA: ART AND THE ABSENCE OF GRACE by Peter Fuller Chatto & Windus, f15, pp. 234 THE STATE OF THE ART by Arthur C. Danto Prentice Hall Press, New York, f14.95,...

The girls who walk my New York street With fancy sneakers on their feet Will rarely talk or smile or blink And sometimes hardly seem to think: They stride to work for twenty...

David Nokes EDMUND BURKE, HIS LIFE AND OPINIONS by Stanley Ayling John Murray, £17.95, pp.316 T he age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has...

Non - fiction Behind the Wall by Colin Thubron, Pen- guin, £4.99 Soho in the Fifties by Daniel Farson, Michael Joseph, £8.95 Dispatches by Michael Herr, Picador, £3.95 The...

Exhibitions 1 In the Dutch manner Mary Keen The Anglo Dutch Garden Exhibition (Christie's, till 3 February) T he study of garden history is still new enough to be...

Die Fledermaus (Covent Garden) Cox to the rescue Rodney Manes J ohn Cox is certainly earning his appointment as production director at the Royal Opera, having masterminded...

Dead Ringers ('18', Odeon Leicester Square) Twin horrors Hilary Mantel D avid Cronenberg is known as a director of horror films. Rabid and Shivers are part of his oeuvre; The...

Michael Rothenstein: Signals (Redfern Gallery, till 8 February) Eric Fischl (Waddington Galleries, till 28 January) Auerbach, Bacon, Kitaj (Marlborough Fine Art, till 10...

A new Mozart myth Peter Phillips T he question of whether Mozart would have made a fart sound divine, recently raised by Jeffrey Bernard, acquired a new relevancy over the New...

Pentecost (Lyric Studio) Strangers (Old Red Lion) Up to snuff Christopher Edwards S tewart Parker died, aged 47, just some two months before this London production of his...

Fame and fortune Taki have started to write for a new Amer- ican monthly called Fame, a glossy that pays the kind of moolah the late Christina Onassis's husband would consider...

Shopping around Wendy Cope A t a drinks party during the festive season, a small girl told me about an interesting invention she had seen on television. It is a soft brick...

Boxing day Alice Thomas Ellis I was sitting on Glasgow station when somebody remarked aloud, `Och, this is disgusting.' I turned my head and saw an old lady regarding a meat...

Big bad Woolf Jeffrey Bernard A strange thing happened last Thurs- day evening. When I got home and closed the front door behind me, I had a sudden pain in my chest as though...

with and we can continue in our usual modes of life without wondering which day of the week it is. We have about a month to go before a very early Lent this year, Ash Wednesday...

Hastings battles Raymond Keene A s, write, Jon Speelman, Nigel Short and Victor Korchnoi are locked in a bitter struggle for first place in the Foreign and Colonial Tournament...

Domestic bliss Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1556 you were asked for a sickeningly sentimental and unreal scene of family life from a contemporary novel. It proved rather...

An extract please (maximum 150) words) from a modern Black Beauty in which the narrator is not a horse but a car. Entries to 'Competition No. 1559' by 27 January.

John Sparrow, Gerrards Cross, Bucks; Myra Stokes, Bristol. IPA G 3MSS P E'C T TI7O R IR - 11LEA R B 0 U %ORGHOIOEURTAN I A CFrt TER 0 M A N r r 4!IASCAIEFIT EI S MI I 0 U L E...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 for the first three correct solutions opened on 30 January. Entries to: Crossword 891, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street,...