At least now we can lob teargas at him.' he Lords defeated by a majority of 154 an amendment to the Human Fertilisa- tion and Embryology Bill brought by the Duke of Norfolk to...

Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 UP THE POLL TAX he great poll tax scandal continues. From Berkshire to Bolton, from Windsor to Wolverhampton, ratepayers find...

Save 10% on the Cover Price! - RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £66.00 0 £33.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £77.00 0 £38.50 USA Airspeed 0 US $99 0 $49.50 Rest of Airmail 0 £93.00 0...

When raising taxes is the unkindest cut of all NOEL MALCOLM D uring her emollient interview with Terry . Wogan three weeks ago, Mrs Thatcher made a very unusual remark. Asked...

CHARLES MOORE B ishop John Spong is not an invention of Peter Simple, but the real-life Episcopa- lian Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. Bishop Spong is the most radical of that...

Let your fingers do the pointing; denunciation is only a telephone call A deal of the officially encouraged grassing lately has had a redeem- ing music-hall humour to it. The...

Stephen Robinson speculates on the black divisions if Mandela were to die Cape Town SINCE Nelson Mandela was released last weekend attention has been focused on what a...

Christopher Lockwood finds Hong Kong far gloomier than it was 18 months ago 'HONG KONG people not brought up to be interested in politics . people are happy with the way...

Michael Heath

Richard West on the family that is the key to Nicaraguan politics THE leader of the Nicaraguan opposition, Senora Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, bears the most famous name in...

Michael Balfour wants a guarantee from the uniting Germanies of no more world dominance IT IS futile to try to stop the Germans from reuniting, even if we would much rather...

Thulium snow SNOW, as everyone knows who has tried to shovel it away from the front door, can be compacted into a remark- ably strong structural material. (During the war J. D....

Dominic Lawson is encouraged by some weird advertisements to meet the men behind Mensa ENGLISH journalism has not more strange things to offer than the 'personal' columns of...

Roy Kerridge briefly outlines what's wrong with appealing to the bewildered classes ALL this talk of politics in the papers reminds me of the last time I voted in a general...

THE extraordinary delay in the appointment of a new Bishop of Durham is very naturally attracting attention. It is supposed by some to be due to Lord Salisbury's illness, and...

forward to the end of Marxist influence in the press ONE of the most fundamental but subtle changes which will occur in the media during the 1990s will be the gradual dis-...

THE latest gloss on the European monet- ary scene reaches me from Florence, where I have an attic flat with five Portuguese young ladies in it. This temporary and businesslike...

I HOPE it is now clear to that nice Dr 1 3 45111's admirers here that he is running the German currency to suit the Germans. His fan club tends to miss that point. Thirsty for...

MY PLEA for a scholar who can date the oldest joke yet seen in the Financial Times diary has been splendidly answered by Mr Q. Gore. He writes: 'I believe it was King Philip of...

'LOOK here, Rufie', said Lord Kindersley of Lazards to Lord Bicester of Morgan Grenfell, 'is it too late to stop this business or not?' This fruity morsel of insider burble was...

Why that nice Dr Pohl wants to bid for the wallpaper CHRISTOPHER FILDES I have an East German five-mark note which I should be delighted to tender to Karl Otto Pohl of the...

could almost imagine the writer baiting his hook for an outraged letter with such tempting morsels as 'the hardly enor- mous sum of L118,000'. Dismissing the redistributive...

Sir: I have been delighted to be associated with the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, most recently as a judge, but I would not wish it to be thought that Graham Lord...

omitted one categ- ory of person on whom inheritance tax bears particularly hard. This is the unmar- ried woman who gives up her career to look after an aged parent and when the...

Sir: Your editorial 'Death and taxes' (3 February) says that the abolition of inheri- tance tax would require other changes to the tax system and goes on to recommend the...

Sir: Paul Johnson (The media, 20 January) argues that philistine publishers, and their high priests, the mustard-cutting literary editors, are now more concerned with hard-sell...

Sir: In your Taylor's Port competition (27 January) the claim is made that Taylor's is the only independently owned British firm of port shippers left. This is not true. My...

Sir: I am exceedingly bored by Andrew Neil, Peregrine Worsthorne, Paul Johnson et al who are using the pages of various publications to whinge and air their grie- vances against...

Sir: Is it possible that Taki (High life, 27 January) is unaware that he is an anti- semite? He vilifies those who complain about public statements of anti-semitism and goes on...

Sir; Mr Frost of the Monarchist League in his letter (3 February) ignores two impor- tant facts. First, unless otherwise ordered by a crowned and anointed Czar, only the...

Sir: My Mummy gets The Spectator, and I read the cartoons. Some of them I don't understand, but some I think are quite funny. I have been reading the cartoons ever since 1989,...

Peter Pan finally grew up Brian Sibley C. S. LEWIS: A BIOGRAPHY by A. N. Wilson Collins, PS, pp.334 I t is always better to read Chaucer again,' wrote C. S. Lewis, 'than to...

Ian J. Fraser MORGAN GRENFELL 1838-1988 by Kathleen Burk OUP, £20, pp.348 THE PRIDE OF LUCIFER by Dominic Hobson Hamish Hamilton, £16.99, pp.483 I n the 19th century three...

i.m. Alfred Perles 1897-1990 It was not because you met Rilke, Not because of the Henry Miller years, But the way you tapped your temperate glass Every time on the table,...

Francis King CHILDHOOD YEARS: A MEMOIR by Junichiro Tanizaki Collins, £15, pp.250 A sk a westerner to name the greatest Japanese novelist of the last 50 years and it is...

Duncan Fallowell GINSBERG by Barry Miles Viking, £20, pp.588 W ith the Beats — Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, William Bur- roughs — the process of derangement...

0 nce upon a time, in a far-off mount- ain country, there lived, quite unaware of each other, a hunter and a bear. It was late autumn, almost winter, and the hunter needed a...

Robert Oakeshott HIGHER THAN HOPE: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY OF NELSON MANDELA by Fatima Meer Hamish Hamilton, £15.99, pp. 425 I f Nelson Mandela was an Afrikaner rather than...

Richard 01lard CHARLES THE SECOND KING OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND by Ronald Hutton Clarendon Press, £19.50, pp.568 B revity, we are told, is the soul of wit. The best...

A bell is ringing nonstop in my heart. There was somewhere, somewhere I was going to go, Tense from a long time waiting — 'Where are you going, will you take me Along, up on...

Evelyn Jo11 THOMAS HEARNE AND HIS LANDSCAPE by David Morris Realaion Books, £25, pp.160 O ne of our most distinguished museum directors, now retired, is reported to have said...

Exhibitions Velazquez (Museo del Prado, Madrid, till 30 March) In the presence of genius Giles Auty F or me, one major effect of looking at Velazquez's paintings is the way...

Glittering prizes 'Peter Phillips laying of the most impressive fines- se; a performance of the highest virtuosity; one of the most important insights into the music of...

Racing Demon (Cottesloe) Turbulent priests Christopher Edwards D avid Hare's new play is a witty portrait of the Church of England that many people — both inside and outside...

Jenny Holzer (Guggenheim, till 25 February) Getting the message Kenneth Koyen T he fulfilment of Marshall McLuhan's cryptic assertion, 'The medium is the mes- sage', has been...

Far North ('12', Cannon Oxford Street) Women's trouble Hilary Mantel W hen Bertrum is tipped out of a wagon by his bolting horse, his beautiful citified daughter turns up by...

Remixed feelings Marcus Berkmann A lthough singles sales have begun to rise again — Stock, Aitken and Waterman may not contribute much to the wealth of our national culture,...

Beginner's luck Ursula Buchan Some people have a more self- deprecating attitude: `When we moved to the Old School House Grange Lodge, Herefordshire, the garden was a...

Bond junked Taki am once again happily ensconced in the Nelson Mandela suite of the Palace Hotel, feeling far better than the brave man my chambers are named after as there is...

Delayed reaction Wendy Cope W here was I on the day Nelson Mandela was released?' Jonathan Dimb- leby, , who told viewers that they might one day ask themselves that question,...

Free at last Zenga Longmore W hen Oluniba, Omalara and I called round at Boko's flat on our way to Por- tobello market last Sunday, we found Elike, Boko's eight-year-old son,...

Spectator sport Jeffrey Bernard I am looking for opponents to play Cricket against the Coach and Horses this Coming summer. They shouldn't be too good or take it too seriously...

The Dragon Inn; Ho-Ho THERE are times when only Chinese food will do. But when fear of clamping or general indolence prevent my getting in a car and going straight to Gerrard...

Some seriously good offers for serious drinkers Auberon Waugh I have never much cared for the standard taste of muscadet, which might be de- scribed as salt water and acid if...

Spectator Wine Club, do John Armit Wines Limited, 190 Kensington Park Road, London W11 2ES. Tel: (01) 727 6846 White 1. Muscadet Clos de Beauregard '87 2. Rully Margate 1987...

Dear Sir (dear God!) Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1612 you were asked for a letter of unconscious and staggering banality such as occasionally gets printed in a newspaper. I...

Regal Raymond Keene D anny King has been unobtrusively working his way up the ladder of British chess. He has always been recognised as a talented master hut last year he...

To enable competitors to economise on postage, entries for one or more weeks of the competition and crossword may be posted together under one cover addressed 'Competition...

In his commonplace book, A Beggar in Purple, Rupert Hart-Davis quotes a ten- year-old child's essay describing an animal: 'The cow . . has six sides — right, left, an upper and...

I 2A C Ot . R ,,,, Al E G 1. E S S E TIAILIA1 H OND TERVETEIC rP A I . AIM L.19.1 1 1 VE RI , 110EN0112AIE • ii R A NIEFErr '0 A E I O l t 16 F LA I A ,1 1 j. A...

A first prize of CO 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...