B ritain froze. London had its coldest day since records began in 1940, the Isles of Scilly their worst snowfalls since 1910. In the face of opposition pressure, the Gov-...

LABOUR'S LOSING STREAK T he Labour Party is to concentrate on e mployment in the campaign for the next General Election. No doubt it is sensible and right to do so, and...

AS THE case of Prince Edward shows, the Feat difficulty for the Royal family today 1 ,s that it attracts just as much public Ea seination as ever but is no longer well P r...

THE exhibition of concern for the plight of the old and cold in Parliament this week has been contemptible. Mr Neil Kinnock `I had no idea you could get Aids from volcanoes.'...

How far can you go against Tories and the City? PETER RIDDELL T here is more than a whiff of scandal in the City, and the Labour Party scents a good political issue. Recent...

W ile I have never departed from the belief that it is right and proper that the rich should subsidise the poor via taxation, I cannot for the life of me see why the town s...

Planning the dirtiest election campaign for many years AUBERON WAUGH 0 ne of the more enjoyable prospects for the year ahead is the promise, faithfully set down whenever a...

Afrikaners today show the same resolution as their Boer ancestors at the end of the 19th century. Richard West explains why they are making a stand against the world Pretoria...

John Zametica reveals Eden's preparations for war against Israel and Egypt THE assorted pundits in the Public Record Office at Kew, examining the government papers released...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that no new evidence is emerging to damage the President over the Iragua' affair Washington FEW in Washington think Ronald Reagan can revive his...

D OES Sir John Lubbock see proof, un questioned proof we mean, that the black races of Africa have progressed — 1- , exce.s.L, of course, under conquest th roughout the history...

Allan Massie on an ineffectual appeal to the North-South divide MR Donald Dewar, Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, has always reminded me of a hen. He has a...

Max Hastings remembers the humiliation of failing as a soldier MOST of us reading of the trials and doubts of Prince Edward about his future in the Royal Marines, felt very...

the charge that journalists knock Labour's leader COMPLAINTS by Neil Kinnock and his circle about the way the press treats him have so far received less publicity than Norman...

Floating currencies need not cause a sinking feeling JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE S tanding up for floating currencies these days is a bit like promoting the weed or sexual promiscuity....

Break Guinness up management by merger is not good for you CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he saddest achievement of Ernest Saunders is that under his leadership Guin- ness has acquired...

Sir: Fiat justitia, ruat caelum. But, as you argue under the heading 'Explosive Jus- tice' (10 January), failure to right known wrongs is also politically damaging. When I...

Sir: Me and my mates was dead choked at Wendy Cope's implication (Television, 10 January) that Arsenal supporters were unlikely to be Spectator readers. Folded in half...

Sir: I was asked by a friend in Manchester to read the 3 January issue of the Spectator as there was a 'bad' article on Islam in it by Ray Honeyford (Muslims in the swim')....

Sir: Ferdinand Mount's blueprint for 'rural revolution' (`The new Song of the Land, 10 January) could logically be taken a little further. If taxpayers' subsidisation of agri -...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £ (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES 12 Months...

Six of the best Roy Jenkins THE WISE MEN by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas Faber & Faber, £15.95 T his book is based on an excellent conception. It seeks to describe the...

Jan Morris THE FATAL SHORE by Robert Hughes Collins Harvill, f15.00 R are though they are (still only 15 million of them), and from a habitat mercifully remote, in the world...

Hilary Rubinstein VICTOR GOLLANCZ by Ruth Dudley Edwards Gollancz, £20.00 T his meticulously researched biogra- phy is of formidable length — almost 800 pages if you include...

Norbert Lynton NEW LIGHT ON OLD MASTERS by E. H. Gombrich Phaidon, L19.95 G ombrich — Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich, but one name signals the phe- nomenon, like Concorde or...

Francis King JANE AUSTEN by Tony Tanner Macmillan, f20.00 0 f the two 19th-century writers whom I frequently reread, Robert Browning is the most and Jane Austen the least in...

Jon Halliday CAMBODIAN WITNESS 6y Someth May, edited and with an introduction by James Fenton Faber & Faber, f9.95 S ometh May was a young Cambodian living in the capital,...

Alan Bell SACHEVERELL SITWELL'S ENGLAND edited by Michael Raeburn Orbis, fI5.00 S ir Sacheverell Sitwell has travelled so widely and written so much, in prose and verse, over...

Coming in to Land (National: Lyttelton) Bopha: (National: Cottesloe) Something missing Christopher Edwards T here is an oddly disconnected quality a bout Stephen Poliakoffs...

Heavy- Peter Ackroyd I t is generally agreed that the death of Andrey Tarkovsky has brought to an un- happy and unanticipated end a great Rus- sian sensibility, one which...

Here yesterday Noel Malcolm W hen John Timpson was asked why he was leaving the Today programme after so many years, he said that he thought he ought to get out while he was...

Best dressed Wendy Cope At this time of year there is a great A t to be said for being a television critic. T he onset of the nasty weather coincided, in inY case, with the...

Divided loyalties Taki aymundo de Larrain is a Chilean charmer, a multi-millionaire philanthro- pist, a successful ballet director, a dubious marquis, and a widower who is...

Lost cause Alice Thomas Ellis A long time ago when I was too young to know better I went beagling on a snowy day and got stuck with a girl whose name , as far as I remember,...

Mein Kampf Jeffrey Bernard I have just had to bale out of Berlin where I have been attempting a magazine piece on the wretched place. We should have waited until the spring....

a I CAN never understand why sliced cold tongue is so expensive to buy in shops. Bought raw it is incredibly good value with very little waste. You just boil it, skin it, coil...

Blood on the sand Raymond Keene T his year's Hastings tournament was transformed by the generosity of Kevin Pakenham and the board of Foreign and Colonial in raising fees and...

Disprover(b)s Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1454 you were in- vited to supply a narrative poem disproving a proverb. A multiplicity of reasons — the mind- numbing cold, the...

Recently the Times Information Service listed some of last year's silliest titles. They included Board Meetings in the Bath, How to Boil an Egg: Simple Cookery for One, Knit...

of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £12.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first three correct solutions opened on 2 February....

ACROSS: 1 PEPSI-COLA 6 Marriage contracts 15 Rastafarian 16 Gofar 17 Fractious 18 Letting 19 Infatuated 20 Rear axle 22 Hesperiidae 25 Fiend 26 Entombed 28 Alodium 30 Midsts 31...