T here was a small riot in London after 20,000 people held a march against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill. Some waved banners reading, 'Kill the Bill', a slang term...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 SANCTIONS THAT WORK H istory repeats itself, wrote a now-dis- credited...

T here have been times this week when my heart has gone out to Mr Jeremy Han- ley. The newspapers have decided to trans- form him into a comic character. This may be because...

A long moan to make the point that the state juggernaut has run amok AUBERON WAUGH L ast week I received my second sum- mons of the year to appear at the West London...

Boris Johnson, with the Conservative Party in Bournemouth, senses strange echoes of the decadent last days of some defunct East European political establishment Bournemouth I...

THE Times of Wednesday gives some very curious facts as to the camel in Australia. The white men have taken over the beast, which is the East incar- nate, and which the East has...

In reverse chronological order, Tom Porteous explains why he has resigned from the UN's operation in Somalia Mogadishu, September 1994 A SEWAGE TANKER is blocking the main...

A READER, M.L. Sutton, wrote in to say that he likes to call his testicles orchids. He can call them Bill and Ben for all I care, but in his short letter he makes some sug-...

PHILOSOPHERS have long debated the moral justification of punishment well, that's the kind of thing philoso- phers do, of course. But if they find it difficult to justify...

Michael Heath

On the eve of the Queen's visit to Russia, Robert Haupt reveals the embarrassments likely to afflict two heads of state Moscow IN JULY 1918, the revolution was still a recent...

Matt Frei explains the sudden fall from grace of Silvio Berlusconi. It's all to do with money Rome SOME prime ministers fail because they are incompetent or bland, others...

Roy Greenslade meets the editor of the News of the World, not yet 30 and already established as a muck-raking great PIERS MORGAN is the twelfth News of the World editor I have...

Newspapers tirelessly commission opinion polls on the royal succession. It's a waste of our time and their money, argues Ross Clark THE YEAR is 2014, and Queen Elizabeth II's...

It's easy to mock the liberal church establishment. But the last laugh is on the Anglo-Catholics, argues Damian Thompson IT REQUIRES no great ingenuity to make the current...

Hugo Vickers meets Lady Butler, the sprightly widow of 'the best prime minister we never had' THE WIDOW of R.A. Butler — the long- time Conservative statesman and Master of...

journals. I cringed, but passed over Dot Wordsworth's solecisms on 'like' in your issue of 3 September (Mind your lan- guage). The matter was adequately settled by Bill Todd's...

Sir: Michael Moran (Ties, damn lies and leprechauns', 17 September) fails suffi- ciently to emphasise the most striking fea- ture of Irish-American activism: the sheer,...

scientific popularisation by Richard Dawkins (`The telephone exchange of life', 11 June), which I thoroughly enjoyed. I wish I could say the same about Warwick Collins's...

Sir: I don't know whether English is Mr George Mandel's first language, but this is what he wrote last week in a letter complain- ing about me: 'They is always followed by a...

Sir: As a research scientist in the field of arti- ficial intelligence for the past 25 years, I would like to reassure your contributor, War- wick Collins, that his fears are...

Sir: Your correspondent, Jane Langley, (Letters, 8 October) took my words out of context from a second-hand source in describing me as 'extreme'. In my speech at Guildford High...

Sir: I attended the hearing at which coun- sel for Lady Porter, QC Mr Anthony Scrivenor, urged the Westminster District auditor to disqualify himself from hearing the case for...

Sir: Anne Applebaum mentions that during his retirement Lloyd George won prizes for his blackcurrants at agricultural shows (`Take me to your ex-leader', 8 October), I believe,...

Sir: David Ekserdjian (Arts, 8 October) mocks my challenge to Michael Hirst's defence of the National Gallery's attribu- tion of the painting The Entombment' by likening me to...

Sir: Spare my grandson, aged five. Your brilliant front-cover cartoon (1 October) showed smiling Bambi Blair, blood drip- ping from his teeth, with Thumper Major a scavenged...

Sir: Mea culpa, though perhaps not, I should add, Culpa MAXIMA. For besides an impressive number of witnesses of all classes besides many of her Romanov rela- tions, my lifelong...

Sir: Phillip Hodson (Letters, 1 October) still seems to be groping around in the dark. The point, or rather points, at issue were not the singularity, duality or plurality of...

12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £80.00 0 £41.00 Europe (airmail) o £91.00 ❑ £46.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$130 0 US$66.00 USA Airmadl D US$175 ❑ US$88 Rest of ---- Airmail 0 £111,00 0...

It's not that Americans excuse Mr Gerry Adams's violent past. They positively worship it SIMON JENKINS . Not all Americans are stupid. Some have judgment and a sense of...

Desire shall not fail, actually Raymond Carr THE MAKING OF VICTORIAN SEXUAL ATTITUDES by Michael Mason OUP, £17.99, pp. 256 h is book enraged me. It deals with a fascinating...

Celestria Noel PARTIES: A LITERARY COMPANION by Susanna Johnston, with a foreword by John Wells Macmillan, £16.99, pp. 280 Y ou can make a case for parties being what separates...

Jasper Griffin BLOND'S ROMAN EMPERORS by Anthony Blond Quartet, £17, pp. 210 A ncient Rome is dead, but it refuses to lie down. History, art, tourism, the movies: all cluster...

`Evil, be thou my good, Discord, my harmony', Roars Vitriol, 'I practise The true modernity!' But surely, Vitriol, For those who praise there should Be no such dated ciphers As...

Byron Rogers B y one of those publishing freaks two books appear at the same time (and at the same price) on the same subject: English- speaking writers in that tolerant,...

A. N. Wilson THE HUSBANDS by Christopher Logue Faber, £6.99, pp. 55 C hristoper Logue's two previous volumes, War Music and Kings were `accounts' — his word — of early episodes...

Fiction: Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories by Kingsley Amis, Penguin, £5.99 The Rationalist by Warwick Collins, Minerva, £5.99 Foxfire by Joyce Carol Oates, Picador, £6.99...

Hugo Vickers GRACE by Robert Lacey Sidgwick, £16.99, pp. 463 T his biography of Princess Grace of Monaco goes a little further than the previ- ous ones, which in their time...

SPECTATOR CARTOON EXHIBITION AT ALFRED DUNHILL 30 Duke Street St. James's, London SW1. 13th-29th October 1994. Joiy& gete.-thicoidyw .

Deborah Devonshire A MINGLED MEASURE by James Lees-Milne John Murray, £19.99, pp. 325 E veryone who enjoyed the other `Kubla Khan' diaries will fasten with joy onto this volume...

Opera Some class roars Rupert Christiansen Don Quixote (London Coliseum) II Trovatore (Grand Theatre, Leeds) D ennis Marks's 's letter to The Spectator last week so...

Whistler (Tate Gallery, till 8 January) Touch ephemeral Giles Auty W henever I consider the precise place James McNeill Whistler ought to occupy in the pantheon of painters,...

Neville's Island (Apollo) The Venetian Twins (Barbican) Ion (Barbican Pit) Water babies Sheridan Morley An y dramatist nowadays who starts out to write a situation comedy for...

Monster girths Ursula Buchan T here are several profound differences between men and women, as we all know. Women can do crochet work but cannot cut a loaf of bread straight....

Intimate awards Peter Phillips T he 1994 Gramophone Awards, held last week as usual in the Dorchester Hotel, struggled hard to throw off the memory of the 1993 edition. A year...

It's a cracker Ian Hislop W hen the trial of Colin Stagg for the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common collapsed, the man who had com- piled the psychological profile...

Call waiting Holly Budd A man with a holdall walked into my office this morning and said he'd come to install the new telephone. `I haven't asked for one' `You're on my...

Floating the girls Taki hen I read about the Melbourne brothel that's preparing a flotation on the Australian stock exchange, I immediately thought of Madame Claude, and what...

Stately splendour Nigel Nicolson Hardwick, which since 1956 has been a property of the National Trust, was inhabit- ed by the widowed Duchess of Devonshire until her death in...

On the wagon Jeffrey Bernard T he absence of last week's column was due to the fact that I had another attack of pancreatitis which I was told is now a chronic condition and...

Street is suffused with the brittlest of ironies. After all, it is a pre- requisite of most fashionable clothes that you can fit into them only if you hardly ever eat. Nicole...

1/ SOW MAU KONA ./1:510 URA COMPETITION ISLE OF i SISGLi MALT SCOTCH 4H1,10 URA Anagrams Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1851 you were invited to submit anagrams of the full...

CHESS Trouble at t'mill Raymond Keene THE CHESS WORLD is facing an upheaval almost as momentous as that which last year removed control of the world championship from the...

CROSSWORD GRAHAM'S PORT r W. • J. C 1 GRAHAM'S PORT A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 31...

A P Y 3 13 . rinin Elellielnlifi memo ran. roc I T . "A Mill R na. iiigtiA 11111r111( il u PI o o IIRII N in% m A V E • 111 E relFiflillIN ARFLOSNilAilDR EdIMPIIT...

It is 40 years on, and Anna Pasternak and James Hewitt are in tandem again, with a book describing the highlights of the life of `the Major' since 1994. You are invited to...

Leagues ahead Frank Keating LAST WEEKEND, in the five matches of English rugby union's senior club champi- onship, 17 tries were scored. In the corre- sponding seven leading...

I always get my 'Speckles' late, so your col- umn mentioning me (10 September) only came to my attention the other day as I was entertaining the fine people of Kuwait, "here I...