T he Government faced one of the worst weeks of general industrial unrest in its ten years of power; strikes by railwaymen, registered dockworkers and local govern- ment...

1706; Tekx 27124; Fax 242 0603 NUCLEAR WASTE OF MONEY W by does the Prime Minister so adore nuclear power? Her love affair with the industry certainly predates her official...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £55.00 0 £27.50 Europe (airmail) 0 £66.00 0 £33.00 USA Airspeed El US $99 CI US$50 Rest of...

A moment of choice for Mrs Thatcher between supply and demand and the Devil NOEL MALCOLM The rail strike has rather wiped the smile off the faces of those Conservatives who...

PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE A s anybody who visits the United States knows, race is even more sensitive a subject there than it is here. People go to the most extreme lengths to avoid...

Moyle and toil: the price label on our libel laws AUBERON WAU GH the account of a curious libel action brought by a resident in one of those new Docklands developments against...

Diana Geddes finds that the French have fewer freedoms than they would like to think Paris THE signatories of Charter 88 complain that the British, brought up to believe that...

Timothy Garton Ash sighs for a chink in the Berlin Wall East Berlin WHEN the telephone rang at eight in the morning, in Warsaw, the last person in the world . I expected to...

Joseph Sobran on American uncertainties over abortion and the flag New York AMERICANS take great pride in their 200-year-old constitution, as they should: it is a magnificently...

IN the article entitled 'Hong Kong finds its pride' (17 June) Ian Buruma referred to a gossip column story about a party held by a group of Jardine employees, including Mr...

Patrick Leigh Fermor is surprised to find that a familiar face is the new leader of Greece Mani IT IS always a surprise when a friend is suddenly propelled into the limelight....

Stan Gebler Davies explains why political deadlock and C. J. Haughey suit his country's character Kinsale WE HAD an election here in Eire a couple of weeks ago. I don't...

Damian Thompson on the English cardinal who tried to scupper the Tridentine rite IN THE Roman Catholic Church, as in other large organisations, the most impor- tant events...

Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd describes being obituaries editor on the Daily Telegraph OBITUARIES, once generally regarded as the dreary backwater of a newspaper, suddenly seem...

WE CALL attention to a letter pub- lished in another column on the muz- zling of dogs, and the mischief to which it leads where the muzzles are provided, as they are in nine...

Star billing for the Greens and Miss Rosy Scenario JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE I t is, when you come to think of it, one of the many bad habits bequeathed to world statesmen of the end...

Sir: I refer to Sam Whitbread's letter (8 July). Even allowing for wishful thinking and an attempt to put a gloss on the facts, his letter states three inaccuracies which should...

Sir: Auberon Waugh in his review of the Pressdram v Sutcliffe case (Another voice, 17 June) raises the question of whether a change in the law that juries fix damages in libel...

over his change of role at the Sunday Telegraph. Having known and respected him — as I still do for more years than I care to add up, but not being involved in the 'merger' of...

intended to set off a lugubrious correspondence on `How I was sacked' but his complaint that the loss of a national newspaper seems to merit more than two poached eggs will...

Sir: Mr Worsthome's description of a `sacking breakfast' (Diary, 8 July) must have distressed every true journalist who read it, except, perhaps, those who had experiences of...

Sir: May I fly off at a tangent from the letters about the preservation of musical instruments and come in to land, as heavily as possible, on the fortepiano? The fortepiano is...

Sir: My colleague William Waldegrave asks in 'Old Bristol fashion' (Cars, 1 July) what is the point of a fast foreign car. There are too few old Bristols for every- one. I had...

Sir: Even allowing for Mrs Thatcher's personal intervention, Michael Trend did indeed fight a most interesting and spirited Euro-campaign (`Blue greenhouse effect', 1 July)....

Sir: Although I cannot boast a dish, my television is wired to receive signals from France as well as Britain, so I must be among those comparatively few tritanni- ques' living...

Sir: After the Litter Crisis of 1991 (Specta- tor, 13 May), do we now face the Rottweil- er Crisis of 1989? John Kallanicos 278 Manor Avenue, Sale, Cheshire

Ronald Searle marks the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution

Study of a history man Bevis Hillier ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE: A LIFE by William H. McNeill OUP, £16.95, pp.346 A mold Toynbee was a `macrohisto- rian': he had what his American...

Be it a girl or a great book or vista by the sea, I've found it comes to mean much less to me as the years go by, For he who loved it must be shaped afresh by memory. And this...

Paul Johnson CITIZENS: A CHRONICLE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION by Simon Schama Viking; £20, pp.948 S o far there has been a lacklustre response to the elaborate and expensive...

Allan Massie THE KING'S JAUNT by John Prebble Collins, f15, Fontana, f3.95, pp.399 J ohn Prebble has made his reputation through histories of injustice, folly, and barbarity:...

WAR THE SPECTATOR BOOK OF WORLD WAR II FIFTY YEARS after the outbreak of the Second World War comes a collection of the best contemporary writing from the pages of The...

Francis King TERMINATION ROCK by Gillian Freeman Pandora, £12.95, pp.182 T he first chapter of this novel, after a one-page introduction in the form of a letter from its...

Catherine Andreyev STALIN AND THE KIROV MURDER by Robert Conquest Hutchinson, f14.89, pp. 164 0 n 1 December 1934 the Secretary of the Central and Leningrad Party Organisa-...

Come Friday night my father's public vice Was a greyhound track. He took me there twice. Most of his life his own sad way he went, So going to the dogs with me was different....

Renford Bambrough PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF by William Charlton Sheed & Ward, £12.50, pp•244 W illiam Charlton's preface describes him as a 'professional philosopher...

Exhibitions 1 Magiciens de la Terre (Centre Georges Pompidou and La Grande Halle, La Villette, Paris, till 18 August) Gifts of the gods Giles Auty o see, in the course of a...

Treasures from Abbot Hall (Leger Galleries, till 4 August) Cumbrian oasis Celina Fox 0 ne of the dangers of living in a time of government cutbacks for the arts is the...

(Royal Court) High jinks Christopher Edwards T his column is not exactly noted for its appreciation of musical comedy, but Cole Porter's Anything Goes, revived and adapted at...

Ruthless rhymes Marcus Berkmann atching Pink Floyd at the London Arena last week (and trying not to choke on the pungent clouds of wacky baccy smoke that swiftly displaced the...

Dealers in hock Peter Watson T he auction houses are rightly nervous of accusations of hype. The bow ties of Bond Street like to be thought of as chaps, not blokes. The...

Better county than country Peter Phillips T o see Middlesex bowled out last week for 43 against Lancashire at Lords was to witness one of the least enjoyable batting collapses...

CARTOO\ BooK

Veiled protest Wendy Cope I t wasn't until after I'd finished last week's column that I got around to watch- ing the third episode of After the War (ITV, 9 p.m., Friday)....

Dawn raids Taki `D inners, soirees, erratic mil- lionaires, music, promenades, heiresses. And how!' This is the way Hart Crane described his life in the Paris of the 1920s,...

Sour grape juice Jeffrey Bernard T his last Sunday somebody pointed out to me an exciting little snippet in Richard Ingrams's otherwise unrelentingly boring column in the...

Little woman Alice Thomas Ellis P eking my way through the people lying comatose in the market the other evening I finally emerged in the ethnic supermarket and ordered the...

tIL Mere wine merchant IMO 1111111, NOT many wine merchants' celebrations are reviewed in the arts pages of national dailies, but then Robin Yapp's 20th anniversary party in...

Thoroughly decent, clean and pure Auberon Waugh S tung by my remarks about the terrify- ing threat to the market in Australian wines represented by a stronger Australian...

Spectator Wine Club, C/o Majestic Wine Warehouse, 421 New Kings Road, London SW6 4RN. (Tel: 01-736 1515) White Price Number Value Hollydene Chardonnay 1987 12 bts....

Occasional verse Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1582 you were in- vited to react poetically to the knighting of Ronald Reagan by the Queen. Proving how far-flung and...

Pot pourri Raymond Keene M ikhail Tal, the former world cham- pion, had to withdraw from the Barcelona World Cup through ill health. At the subsequent Moscow Grandmaster...

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...

' E A 6 BI ' FrISii - 1 UN P AALLELIEDT I L E a l G H SIDEL A IqE ... A L I. W NIER 16 CERI 17 ITREmA ' N' T A E El Rp E R Y MI R j7EISIININ 1 E V Ell:1LE Y 1AROTTEITLF ,.. F...

`Byzantium was the Milton Keynes of the Roman world' is the first sentence of a description of a book in a publisher's catalogue, kindly sent to me by Mr Keith Smith. You are...