'I've got a summer sale on, so you get two questions for the price of one.' T he Department of Trade let it be known that Lord Archer figured in an investigation it was...

Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 GLORIFYING GERMANY A les ist moglichr Some might think it unfortunate that President Clinton should have stood at the...

With a display of goldilocked probity Hezza stabs a colleague in the front again BORIS JOHNSON O ne thing they agree on in the Tory party about Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine:...

L caving aside the arrogance and incom- petence, what will finally destroy this Con- servative Government is the unashamed spiwery. The MPs For Hire scandal, which has erupted...

The latest Blair of the trumpet for Christian socialism CHARLES MOORE Mr Blair is carrying on where poor Mr John Smith suddenly left off to confront the Four Last Things on a...

Martin Vander Weyer believes that the repayment of debt has gone out of fashion in modern Britain ONE OF the formative experiences of John Major's life, as everybody knows,...

In a week of elections in Ukraine and the point of foreign observers 'HAVE YOU supervised an election before?' asks the earnest international election observer, pen and...

Mr. Rhodes is going to do a very strik- ing and picturesque thing. He is going to turn the ruins of Zimbabye — those inscrutable masses of hard bare stone which stand naked in...

Anthony Daniels on the misunderstandings surrounding the recently departed dictator of North Korea HAS THERE been a dictator in the 20th century so odious that some useful...

HORROR OF THE PAST Ian Buruma visited Dresden, and was shocked by the act of perversity which smashed the accumulated beauty of centuries THE QUEEN MOTHER has always stood by...

'THE man's mad,' my husband said, tossing the book across the breakfast table. 'Don't do that, dear, you'll get mar- malade on it. Anyway he says specifical- ly on page 21 that...

of Guilt, published last week by Jonathan Cape, price £18.99. 'He's got his Grandad's smile.'

Ross Clark visits Lhasa on the Clyde and discovers a large number of Glaswegian Buddhists THINK OF Buddhism and what comes into your mind? Fat Tibetans sitting cross- legged...

Rachel Johnson observes a growing number of non-ethnic, middle-class arranged marriages LUDO and Savannah's fingers had tussled over the stickle bricks, long-lashed eyes had...

persist. . . I'M NOT against progress in principle: it's just that I'm not sure I know it when I see it. As soon I arrived at my clinic last week, a hospital clerk came into...

Why Britannia is waiting to be ravished by a man on horseback PAUL JOHNSON B ritain is a country ripe for political ravishment. It is a place where disgust for the entire...

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Clarke Kenneth the jet-setting Superchancellor takes flight CHRISTOPHER FILDES B ack from the circus at Naples, Ken- neth Clarke will be...

MR CLARKE'S job carries-with it an occu- pational health hazard: Chancellor's Itch. I have seen it all happen before. The new man bowls into the Treasury, knowing what he wants...

JUST IN time to pay for her 300th birthday party, the sporting Old Lady of Threadnee- dle Street has landed the bet of a lifetime. Fifty-odd years go she put £2.5 million into...

Insider trading is the sign of an efficient market (Gecko's Law) and we can't have that, can we? The Stock Exchange must stamp it out, with the help of a supporting cast of...

IT WOULD be easier for this Chancellor to send other ministers to meetings if he knew who they were going to be. He must expect, though, that after the reshuffle he will have to...

I AM obliged to the Liverpool Business School, which has invited me to book my place on future fraud events. Plastic, arson or employment is the choice on offer, mas- ter-minded...

Congdon's article. What the article did for me was to give intellectual respectability to my visceral Euro-scepticism. I have always felt, in a Colonel Blimpish sort of way,...

Sir:Richard Dawkins informs us that we are all only survival machines driven by our dig- ital DNA. All else is mere 'vitalism' (`The telephone exchange of life', 11June, 1994)....

Sir: Andrew Kenny has completely missed the inspirational power of the Apollo land- ings on the moon (Armstrong, Newton and God', 2 July). Whatever one's thoughts on the...

Sir: The tale told by Martyn Harris about children walking to school without shoes is not so dubious as David Williams suggests (Letters, 2 July). At the age of ten, respectably...

Sir: Tim Congdon's recent article entitled 'Time for Britain to rediscover itself' (25 June) continues his defence of plucky little England standing on its own in the world and...

Sir: Carla Powell (`She's Italian, you know', 9 July) is perfectly right, of course. We English are a down-to-earth lot. But one is, perhaps, entitled to note that the abstract...

Sir: Richard Littlejohn in his Diary (9 July) repeats the old chestnut that Simon Heifer was the inventor of 'Essex Man'. That is not so. Essex Man was discovered by me (You...

The essence of capitalism is not to promote free markets, but to rig them SIMON JENKINS W ho do you want to rule over you, lawyers or apparatchiks? Choose lawyers and you will...

A lmost the most dramatic event of the second world war was the liberation on 25 August 1944 of Paris with all its monu- ments intact and little loss of life. For the Parisians...

Nicholas Fleming TWELVE RED HERRINGS by Jeffrey Archer HamerCollins, £14.99, pp.324 Q uestion: what do the likes of the following have in common? Jackie Collins, Jacqueline...

David Nokes PRESUMPTION: A SEQUEL TO JANE AUSTEN'S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Julia Barrett Michael O'Mara Books, £9.99, pp. 238 I t is a truth universally acknowledged (among...

autumn air, They — heeding but the one the one, I — speeding at the fragile pair: Car-bonnet dipped its dark blue shine, And paused, and gave them time to flee; And (could one...

No illusions? but how else to blunder on what's worth the finding around the next corner and is no delusion?

Janet Barron SYLVIA'S LOT by Teresa Waugh Sinclair-Stevenson, £14.99, pp. 218 D ivorce, loneliness, alcoholism and suicide might not seem promising topics for a light-hearted...

David Caute IBADAN: THE PENKELEMES YEARS, A MEMOIR, 1946-1965 by Wole Soyinka Methuen, £20, pp. 383 A lthough Wole Soyinka is 60 this year he shows no sign of relinquishing his...

John Grigg THE WAGES OF GUILT by Ian Buruma Cape, £18.99, pp. 256 h e author of this interesting book is of Anglo-Dutch parentage. He was educated in Holland in the 1950s, and...

should have read: 'Faced with these questions, which are unanswered today, no wonder Huxley took to mescalin.' Alastair Forbes, in his review of 2 July, referred to the Royal...

Radek Sikorski THE STATE IS ROLLING BACK: ESSAYS IN PERSUASION by Arthur Seldon lEA1 Economic and Literary Books, 2 Lord North Street, London SW1, £15, pp. 350 I t is...

S ometime ago the late Miles Davis (born 1926) met the even more senior jazz trumpeter Adolphus `Doc' Cheatham (born 1905) on a transatlantic jet. They chatted amiably on the...

Don pulls off a cracker Rupert Christiansen I have seen 19 productions of Don Gio- vanni in my life, and Deborah Warner's at Glyndeboume is the nearest I've found to a good...

A Collier's Friday Night (Hampstead) The Seagull (National) Just about the pits Sheridan Morley A t Hampstead, A Collier's Friday Night is perhaps of more importance to...

Time to go native Ursula Buchan L ast January I planted, or to be truth- ful I caused to have planted, just over 400 trees at the outer edge of our garden; prop- erly managed,...

Impressionism to Symbolism: the Belgian Avant-Garde 1880-1900 (Royal Academy, till 2 October) Clash of cymbols Giles Auty T hat an exhibition of Belgian art from the turn of...

The sleep of reason Nigella Lawson F orget Ford Madox Ford (ne Ford Her- mann Hueffer), this is the saddest story: every night the grandmother of a friend of mine settles down...

Go Fish ('18', selected cinemas) Gypsy ('U', MGM, Shaftesbury Avenue) Crumbling dykes Mark Steyn I 'm not a lecturer in lesbian film studies or anything, but it seems to me...

Too many arses Jeffrey Bernard I am not normally a bad loser, but I struck a large losing bet on the recent Test Match and it has left me feeling distinctly sour. There is a...

Sorry, Simon you are wrong Taki I hate to disagree with Simon Jenkins, but he got it all wrong on tennis last week. Mr Jenkins correctly stated that singles ten- nis is the...

Not music to my ears Nigel Nicolson I am not a fit person to comment on the history of music, but I hazard the guess that never before has there been a greater gap in musical...

TODAY, 16 July, we have the Commemo- ration of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, whose order was founded in the 12th century by a Calabrian priest and claims to carry on...

SPINS FRII I '01D(ligi1 PTOLEMY OR COPERNICUS? Fide or the PCA? The chess world now faces a dilemma comparable to that which con- fronted 17th-century science, when Galileo...

i j ) SINGLE MALI SCOIC / II WHISKY i i SINGLE MALI SCOT ) C / H SL j 'HISEIY : COMPETITION Elsewhere, otherwhen Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1838 you were invited to write a...

PORT CROSSWORD GRAHAM'S L 1 PORT ( - 4 1168: Legal system? by Doc A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution...

You are invited to write a poem (maximum 16 lines) giving a disturbing preview of the scene which will result from the opening of the Channel Tunnel. Entries to 'Compe- tition...

'H .E RE OA' T 'OA 1 9 NITiCrA FIR I C AN 07 - 17B %CNA EDIPtIRUPAMI E irin - Ek I IIIII. I ZANER 'I .4 , 11 4ftki D 1 .SORD INI EIS1.6L..1 AEt APS I ZE . tEL_11 - 11-11EDPOL I...

WE ARE braced for great deeds again at Turnberry, or, as the locals have it, Tonnbr- rry. They also say, 'If ye can see Ailsa Craig Ifs gaunter rain; if ye canna see it, it's...

Q. I am flying out to Tuscany next week to stay with some old friends. I have just heard that another old friend of mine, whom I have rather dropped, will be on the same flight....