North Sea dumping R umours began to circulate that a group of cabinet ministers had met to discuss asking Mrs Thatcher to stand down before the next election. Though the story...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 A TORY TAX I t is obvious why socialists oppose the poll tax it is also...

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 £46.50 World Airspeed 0...

Mid-term in Mid-Staffordshire: a closer-run thing than they think NOEL MALCOLM Lichfield veryone is going to be so confused at the election,' a young politician told me in...

ANTHONY HOWARD I n the run-up to the Mid-Staffordshire by-election next week, the Labour party owes a special vote of thanks to those who enabled it to keep its nerve in darker...

The old communist rulers even looked different from their replacements. Timothy Garton Ash on the new leaders typified by Vaclav Havel ORWELL once wrote that at 50 everyone...

John Hands sees on the horizon independence for the Ukraine, a greater threat than Lithuanian nationalism ON SUNDAY an extraordinary plenum of the Central Committee of the...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard sees evidence of outrages against civilians Quilali, Nicaragua ONE of the first things a political tourist learns in Nicaragua is that the late...

Michael Heath

John Ralston Saul on the horrors of the Burmese government Bangkok IT ISN'T very clear what difference there is between the Khmer Rouge and the government of Burma. The Khmer...

The release of hostages is rumoured. Charles Glass wonders what, if anything, the rumours mean Damascus THE rumours began percolating through to London and Washington about a...

Sandra Barwick reports on how many Scots are paying their poll tax DO THE men of Lothian still see the sun rise over the Firth of Forth? Does rain still fall in Fort William?...

IN THE letter from Denise Carlo (3 March) a sentence about the Norfolk Friends of the Earth and the changes to the All should have read, 'Our alternative received much support...

This is the third in our Lent series on English spiritual writers. THE name of William Weston (1550- 1615) does not now rank very highly in the popular history of the religious...

Anita Brookner remembers the writer, who died this week THE news of Rosamond Lehmann's death came as a shock, although she was 89, an age at which death can be expected, or, in...

The media: Paul Johnson on some notable recent scoops TO SCOOP, says the OED, 'in journalistic use', is `To "cut out" a rival reporter or editor, or his paper, by obtaining...

The pound in trouble but losing track of the deutschmark JOCK BRUCE-GA RDYNE In order to maximise the tax advantage of their investment income under the new system, our...

ONE change already booked for Budget day must puncture house inflation. That is Nigel Lawson's most chivalrous legacy separate taxation for married women. Few of them, I...

Budget prospect: the Tory sheep look up and are not fed CHRISTOPHER FI LDES T he Tories' fortunes fall as mortgage rates rise. The two go together, the cor- relation is...

HOUSE inflation is the scourge that was taken for a blessing. House price's went bucketing along through the 1980s — rising faster than the Retail Price Index, and faster than...

THE inspectors into House of Fraser find a striking phrase for Tiny Rowland. They describe him as his own worst enemy. Well, now — the field must be a large one, the event...

THE dust starts to settle over House of Fraser, and leaves the spectators in two camps — three if you count Nicholas Ridley. The first and larger camp believes that somebody...

Sir: Marjorie Thompson, Vice-Chairman of CND, does not deny (Letters, 3 March) that the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe and the USSR used the word `peace' as a propaganda...

to lunch, if I can prove my statement that Vaclav Havel in his recent book 'records what it is like for a persecuted dissident to deal with naïve Western socialists — nuc- lear...

Women in work WHAT are the prospects for a woman getting a job at the top in Parliament, the law, the civil service, the universi- ties, the media, business, the unions? Still,...

Sir: In Low life (10 March), Jeffrey Ber- nard had smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and champagne. How low can one get? Cal Mc Crystal The Independent on Sunday, 40 City Road,...

Sir: I was delighted to have my recent book, I Have Sind: Charles Napier in India, reviewed in The Spectator (3 March) but it did not take me 17 years to write, as your reviewer...

Sir: With reference to Charles Moore's Diary (10 February) in which he quotes the Muslim critic of Salman Rushdie, Tariq Modood, 'We should not succumb to libertarianism . which...

Sir: My Sunday Telegraph colleague, Mr Martyn Harris, complains (Diary, 3 March) about 'a full-scale demo outside the Telegraph offices' after a 'very mild piece... about the...

Defying the universe Frances Partridge LETTERS OF LEONARD WOOLF edited by Frederic Spotts Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £30, pp.616 T he pleasure to be got from this care- fully...

Francis King THE QUIET WOMAN by Christopher Priest Bloomsbury, £13.99, pp. 216 I nside this book lie coiled the scenarios for at least half-a-dozen novels and short stories...

Speak Thou, Boy A' shall not tread on me! I'll run away till I'm bigger, but then I'll fight. Dead now, and three years junior to me, Young Charleson. Though your trade, like...

J. Enoch Powell THE GLADSTONE DIARIES VOLUME X edited by H. C. G. Matthew OUP, f60, pp.479 VOLUME XI edited by H. C. G. Matthew OUP, £60, pp.702 T he monumental enterprise...

Mark Archer ARMAND HAMMER: THE UNTOLD STORY by Steve Weinberg Ebury Press, f16.95, pp. 501 A rmand Hammer made his first for- tune selling tincture of ginger. Puzzled by the...

In the end he did not leave us but we rowed away downstream. My little daughter crouched in the stern and kept on asking. All day was dark but that was when the clouds began to...

Patrick Skene Catling BIMBO fter the intellectual strain, the emo- tional wear arid tear and the rightful triumph at the box office of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, Keith...

Paul Foot DEATH ON THE ROCK AND OTHER STORIES by Roger Bolton W. H. Allen, .112.95,pp.320 C an Mrs Thatcher really sob? A more unlikely proposition was never mooted, and Roger...

Anabel Ricketts THE BUILDING OF CASTLE HOWARD by Charles Saumarez-Smith Faber, f17.99, pp. 221 C ountry houses are big business these days and it is a struggle not to be...

Alan Angell `SWEET WAIST OF AMERICA': JOURNEYS AROUND GUATEMALA by Anthony Daniels Hutchinson, £14.95, pp. 249 I n the closing pages of this book, the author asks, rather...

Who needs them? Martin Fagg O ne journalist I know wears white cotton gloves while reading his review copies. They thus remain clean enough for subsequent flogging off to our...

alone, Sits with me — and how intimate we've grown! He talks, but what he says he never hears, He is unfeeling, but he dries my tears. He has one back, he has a hundred faces...

Exhibitions 1 A kind of humility Christopher Howse Cardinal Newman 1801-1890 (National Portrait Gallery, till 20 May) 0 ne of the oddest privileges I have ever been granted...

The Fabulous Baker Boys (`15', Odeon Haymarket) Trop Belle Pour Toil (`18', selected cinemas) Leading ladies Hilary Mantel F rank (Beau Bridges) is the rounder Fabulous Baker...

Saint Oscar (Hampstead) Wilde ideas Christopher Edwards W hat, if anything, is Oscar Wilde being canonised for in the title to this play (the first venture into the theatre...

MURDER is the great crime of the United States, as the following table, taken by the Times from the Chicago Tribune, sufficiently shows:– Year Legal Murders Executions...

Japan tips the balance Peter Watson T wo surprises — shocks in a way — in the past two weeks. The first came from.Al Taubman, chairman of Sotheby's, over a drink at the Kuim...

The art of landscape Ursula Buchan L andscape gardening, according to my usually trustworthy Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is 'the art of laying out grounds so as to...

Alison Watt (The Scottish Gallery, London, till 31 March) Eliot Hodgkin 1905-1987: Painter and Collector (Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, till 10 April) Oddly enough Giles Auty I n...

Not amused Wendy Cope W hen I am discussing children's books, I often find myself saying that there is no upper age limit for anything that's really good. If it's true of...

The tooth party Zenga Longmore `May the child grow to be an electrical engineer and perform great wonders for '1 turned the clock back on this one.' Africa,' he announced....

War record Taki 'd like to say a few words about a great American hero, the Hollywood director Oliver Stone. If he gets an Oscar for his film Born on the Fourth of July, Janet...

that. The menu, devised by Nick Gill, who earned his reputation at Hamble- ton Hall; plays with the tapas idea — lots of little portions (each priced at £2.95) which arrive all...

back in the driving seat next week.

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY Arthur's answer Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1616 you were in- vited to continue, 'in a Tennysonian man- ner', from a...

Noblesse oblige Raymond Keene I mentioned last week that The Spectator sponsored this year's match between the House of Lords and the House of Com- mons. There was a...

kinds); 7A,14 synonym* 15,41 (two basic ingredients); 25,40 (compounds). Winners Wilfrid Miron, Southwell, Notts (£20); Janet de Rhe-Philipe, Warminster, Wilts; J.W. Fidler,...

This is the first time I've asked for these. Please supply a maximum of four. The last word of the first line should be the title of a work of art (book, play, painting,...

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...

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...