The big blipper U nder pressure to uphold the value of the falling pound, the Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, raised British bank base rates by one per cent to 15 per cent. The move...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 A TRUE PEACEMAKER T he Nobel Peace Prize has had an uneven record but nobody — apart from the vicious leaders of the People's Repub- lic of...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 10% on the Cover Price! RATES. ' 12 Moiitlis 6 Months UK 0 f6i.00 0 £33.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £77.00 0 £38.50 USA Airspeed 0 US $99 0 $49.50 Rest of...

When the Tory Party needs more than something to shout about NOEL MALCOLM A Blackpool t half past five on Tuesday after- noon, I heard a strange, terrible and exhilarating...

CHARLES MOORE Blackpool h ishis is a good conference — for the organisers, in other words, a bad confer- ence. Not that there is much anger and dissent from the floor (there...

The day I nearly kissed an unknown young woman on the Tube AUBERON WAUGH L ast Tuesday, on 3 October 1989, I woke up feeling unusually pleased with myself. I cannot explain...

Timothy Garton Ash examines the Bonn government's failure to help East Germany along the road to democracy THREE months ago I sat on a verandah in East Berlin talking to the...

Anthony Daniels reports on Ceausescu's propaganda war against his own people Bucharest THERE can by now be very few readers of the international pages of our newspapers who...

Richard West sorts them out in southern Africa and Central America IN this momentous autumn, with Po- land, Hungary and perhaps East Germany close to regaining their freedom,...

Michael Heath

John Simpson explains how American television has been fooled over the Afghan war AMERICANS tend to be believers. They believe their Presidents, they believe their newspapers,...

Greenhousery THE so-called 'greenhouse effect' re- fers to a continued warming of the Earth's surface caused by the accumula- tion of carbon dioxide gas in the Earth's...

Jane Mulvagh investigates the campaign to oust the father of Indian wild life conservation WHY is Billy Arjan Singh, the 'Tiger Man' of Dudwa National Park, being prosecuted...

John Winward explains how consumers are being misled by 'environmental labelling' IT seems only a matter of months since Eric Forth, a junior minister at the Depart- ment of...

Michael Trend traces the cycle in which Tory conferences repeat themselves DURING the years that Mrs Thatcher has been Prime Minister we have become used to a four-year...

A NEW YORK correspondent of the Liverpool Daily Post relates a story which could hardly be paralleled in Europe. Two families, or rather clans, in Kentucky have for years...

W. J. West finds fresh evidence of Hollis's communist contacts THE correspondence which appeared in The Spectator recently (see Letters, 30 September and 7 October) as a...

Paul Johnson on the guidance he gets from correspondents WRITERS need readers, not just for a livelihood but as a kind of radar echo- system, to help guide them. I remember...

Mr Lawson has got us where he wants us JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE B y the time this edition of The Specta- tor is upon the newsstands Mr Lawson will have run the gauntlet of the grass...

Sir: 'Moving towards freedom' (Leader, 16 September) rightly mentions the be- nefits to Western Europe of accepting refugees from Eastern Europe. Chancel- lors Kohl and...

Sir: Jock Bruce-Gardyne, for a Treasury minister and a Scotsman, appears to have surprisingly little knowledge of financial history (The economy; 16 September). So he would not...

Sir: For several years the International Society for Human Rights alone has drawn attention to the persistent and documented reports of prolonged imprisonment and torture under...

Sir: For the last 25 years I have lived in this paradise which Taki so admires (High life, 1 April). It is true: it is hard to fault the Swiss. They do most things extremely...

Sir: I cannot speak for the RIBA, but John Harris's letter on 'ignorant architects' (23 September) would be wholly inaccurate as far as the Royal Incorporation of Architects in...

Sir: I am 88 and my sight is poor so I can no longer read The Spectator with any care, so I am not renewing my sub. But I feel I must say 'thank you' for so many happy years. I...

Sir: Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 23 September) believes that his views on the need for drugs to be 'decriminalised', as the only way to undermine the criminal industries to...

Sir: I plan to spend the coming autumn term at Churchill College, Cambridge, working on a biography of my late mother, Irene Noel of Achmetaga, Euboea, later the wife of Philip...

Sir: In a Spectator review (23 September) Francis King named darts as the 'most mindless of all games'. Not so. Years ago on the campus of the University of the South at...

Sir: I am a Spectator reader who once had the temerity to send junk mail to Lord St Germans (Letters, 28 September). I have not received back my pamphlet franked `Deceased'. Am...

Sir: Whether Mosley was an uncle or an unholy godfather of united Europe, (`Hit- ler and the European ideal' 23rd Septem- ber) he worked untiringly for 35 years, from 1945 until...

OUT OF STEP. The charge that a policy is not congruent with public opinion, as represented in the most recent poll of poll of polls. The charge is not con- cerned with the...

The BCD of everything Anita Brookner FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM by Umberto Eco, translated from the Italian by William Weaver Secker & Warburg, £14.95, pp.636 A new twist here: the...

D. J. Taylor THE BELLAROSA CONNECTION by Saul Bellow Penguin, £3.50, pp.102 o ne must go on. No. One must go further', Saul Bellow told an interviewer some years back. The...

Anthony Howard AGAINST THE TIDE DIARIES 1973-76 by Tony Benn Hutchinson, £20, pp.754 T his is by far the most important, and revealing of the three volumes of the Benn...

John Whitworth ON THE LOOK-OUT: A PARTIAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY . by C. H. Sisson Carcanet, £14.95, pp.234 T he literary construct, C. H. Sisson, is, as Spectator readers will know, a...

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 Lawson, Giles...

Francis King MARCEL PROUST: A BIOGRAPHY by George D. Painter Chatto & Windus, f20, pp. 800 MARCEL PROUST: SELECTED LETTERS VOL. II 1904-1909 edited by Philip Kolb, translated...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft BADEN-POWELL by Tim Jeal Hutchinson £18.95, pp.670 T h e whole idea of journalistic batten- ing on one's intimate relationships is re- pugnant to me',...

Great Beast Brian Inglis THE KING OF THE SHADOW REALM by John Symonds Duckworth, £25, pp.588 A n evil name, which is a drawback at first', Logan Pearsall Smith observed in...

Under the seat of the old wicker chair, Formed not of legs but a basket upside down, A little room has prospered on its own While you in sun would sprawl and read and frown....

Hugo Vickers A PARTICULAR FRIENDSHIP by Dirk Bogarde Viking, f12.95, pp.200 T he late Ginette Spanier, Directrice of Balmain and a well-known broadcaster, had this advice about...

Crafts The icing on the cake Tanya Harrod The Sugared Imagination: An Art and a Trade (Cliffe Castle, Keighley, till 3 December and touring) T he Sugared Imagination reveals...

The Royal Ballet (Covent Garden) Irresistibly dancy Deirdre McMahon A shley Page's first major work, A Broken Set of Rules, was created for the Royal Ballet in 1984, followed...

Les Meilleurs Amis (Comedie des Champs-Elysées, Paris) The return of La Feuillere Eric Shorter I t is 25 years since an English director dared to stage a new English play on...

From The Mississippi Delta (The Young Vic Studio) Paris Match (Garrick) Black talent Christopher Edwards T his is a play, with songs, by the southern black American writer...

The wrinklies return Marcus Berkmann T hese are great days for sad old rock stars. Suddenly, careers that were on the slide, or had even fallen off the end, are flourishing...

Resurrected (`15', selected cinemas) Thin red line Hilary Mantel P rivate Kevin Deakin is a stretcher- bearer at the battle for Tumbledown, the climactic action of the...

Ivon Hitchens (Serpentine Gallery, till 30 November) Patrick George (Browse & Darby, till 28 October) David Inshaw (Waddington Galleries, till 28 October) Maurice Sheppard...

Who cares? Wendy Cope A , 11 o'clock on Sunday evening I was eating a fried egg on toast and reading the children's comic that comes with the Sun- day Times. This depressed...

Something . to hide Taki LL Athens ike all men who have suffered at the hands of cunning linguist lawyers, I am praying that Count Tolstoy gets off. The crime of handing over...

Old world chivalry Zenga Longmore I t was Wednesday afternoon when the realisation hit me. I should have known all along, really. I mean it's been staring me in the face for...

A cool cucumber Jeffrey Bernard I was fascinated to read about a man called Ernest Coveley who carried out 14 raids, escaping with more than £9,000, armed only with a...

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...

Dead, stolen or strayed Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1595 you were asked for a poem elegising the death or dis- appearance of a pet. In announcing the competition, I added...

Double Dutch Raymond Keene B y the halfway stage of the two world championship semi-finals in London both Karpov and Timman, on the score at least, are justifying their...

THERE is now an alphabetical list display- ed in the Anderson house — one copy in Mrs A's kitchen, one in mine. It is headed `Banned Foods', Near the top are avoca- dos, then...

Heaven has been variously imagined, from the scenario of Mohammed to Sydney Smith's friend's 'eating pelt& de foie gras to the sound of trumpets'. You are invited to describe...

n nerrirown . TOL 11 E I NrIFI 11 A V Iry rill . . . PE gi L E I S E N T, ij u i‘ A B A W 0 O u u D R E % Iii RVINE 0 :ha G E p p T i al) L IM I T...

or a plate of sweet and sour pork or a beef chow mein. Then Japanese and Thai restaurants took over and, promoted by their success at selling health-conscious, meat-minimising,...