M r Michael Heseltine, MP for Henley and a former defence secretary, formally challenged Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister `to avoid the calamity of a Labour govern- ment,' having...

27124; Fax: 071-242 0603 THE EGO HAS LANDED S ir Geoffrey Howe and Mr Michael Heseltine were never the closest of Cabinet colleagues. So the embittered former De- puty Prime...

Save 18% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK [7 £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...

N of since the Irish Ambassador to the United Nations ambled into the bar of World Opinion in Third Avenue and offered to fight any man in the room has any British politician...

Only a taste of real poverty will bring us to our senses AUBERON WAUGH I t has now been admitted that poverty is widespread in the Soviet Union. According to a report in this...

Europe was seldom the real issue. But, Noel Malcolm argues, what needs doing in Europe would not best be done by Heseltinians FROM the moment Sir Geoffrey Howe had sat down...

Murray Sayle muses at the enthronement of Emperor Akihito Tokyo A BRAND-NEW Rolls-Royce two-door convertible, black, white leather seats, one careful owner — like so much else...

Stephen Handelman on the Soviet black economy and its alternatives Moscow THERE are moments when I am con- vinced the real economists in the Soviet Union are located just down...

Michael Heath

John Simpson on the uses of not getting to talk to Saddam Hussein Baghdad BY THE waters of Babylon we sat down and ordered a large, unappetising lunch. It was Saturday. My...

James Buchan is reminded by Saddam Hussein of the frustrations of Gulf journalism AS I watched Trevor MacDonald inter- view Saddam Hussein on Sunday, I fell into a melancholy...

Anna Pasternak on the strange life of the Russian writer, who was born 100 years ago I FIND it almost impossible to escape a sense of déjà vu when I meet new people, as I wait...

James Hanson argues that Britain is right to press for a hard ecu THE debate on Economic and Monetary Union in the EEC is at a crucial stage. It is crucial that we in the...

AFRICA has grown darker this week. Mr Stanley has been compelled by opinion to formulate his charges against his Rear-Guard, and they prove to be of the most frightful kind. He...

Ian Buruma talks to Peregrine Worsthorne about Britishness THERE is much about Peregrine Wors- thorne that reminds me of the Kelloggs Cornflakes packet, the one with the Spit-...

Patrick Leigh Fermor remembers the writer, who died last week ABOUT 40 years ago I heard Larry Durrell describing someone as `a man who pumped the oxygen back into the air'. It...

I AM often surprised by the number of people who reveal later in life that they wanted to be doctors. Instead of express- ing gratitude and relief at their lucky escape, a...

The media: Paul Johnson thinks Murdoch should be allowed to get on with it THERE is much angry huffing and puffing on the Left at the masterful manner in which Rupert Murdoch...

Sterling and the banks go down with a fever of discredit CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he man who got it right is Nicholas Luard, the only Chelsea Nationalist candi- date for whom I...

Sir: While reading the many reviews of Sir Denis Forman's book Son of Adam, in- cluding The Spectator's (Books, 10 Novem- ber), and in reading the book itself, I have been...

Sir: May I appeal for help, through your columns, for a very talented young Ruma- nian violinist, who is currently stranded in London with a place on the Advanced Solo Studies...

Sir: In the forgotten Fifties, John Glashan's 'The Eye of the Needle' was my Bible. On the back (from memory) was a painting of Glashan 'done by a chimpan- zee' and the short...

Sir: I have been shown two copies of Spectators, in one of which (Letters, 27 October) Alastair Forbes wrote about one of my wife's aunts in the 1920s, and in the next admitted...

Sir: It would be churlish indeed for me to take any sort of general issue with Brian Masters's benignly witty review (Books, 3 November) of The Faber Book of Blue Verse which I...

Sir: In your letters page (2 June) you published a letter from Tim Heald and Simon Brett asking for books to be sent to me. The response was exceptional, but unfortunately most...

Sir: There is a problem with the leadership election scenario sketched by Alan Wat- kins in his diary last week (10 November); he got one basic fact wrong. There are 372...

The defence of the gift James Buchan VLADIMIR NABOKOV: THE RUSSIAN YEARS by Brian Boyd Chatto & Windus, £20, pp. 607 P ersons tending to pessimism about our turbulent...

David Pryce-Jones SHADE THOSE LAURELS by Cyril Connolly and Peter Levi Bellew, £12.95, pp. 180 S hade Those Laurels has a greenhouse effect all its own. Under its warmth and...

Bryan Robertson NOTHING IF NOT CRITICAL: SELECTED ESSAYS ON ART AND ARTISTS by Robert Hughes CollinslHarvill, £16, pp. 429 FRANK AUERBACH: A MONOGRAPH by Robert Hughes...

Alan Judd AN IMMODEST VIOLET by Joan Hardwick Deutsch, £14.99, pp. 205 V iolet Hunt (1862-1948) was 'a fashionable and faintly vicious blue stock- ing', authoress of 29 books...

John Jolliffe GORBACHEV, GLASNOST AND THE GOSPEL by Michael Bourdeaux Hodder & Stoughton, £13.95, £8.99, pp. 226 D ostoevsky once wrote that the voca- tion of the Russian...

Bay- ley, Richard Ingrams, Ferdinand Mount and many others nominate their books of the year.

James Knox THE AMERICAN COUNTRY HOUSE 1870-1940 by Clive Aslet Yale, f22.50, pp. 300 THE ARCHITECT AND THE AMERICAN HOUSE 1890-1940 by Mark Alan Hewitt Yale, £35, pp. 310...

Christopher Hawtree RONALD SEARLE by Russell Davies Sinclair - Stevenson, £18, pp. 191 I nventor of those incorrigible St Tri- nian's girls, Ronald Searle is here the subject...

Fiction: Falling, by Colin Thubron, Penguin, £4.99 London Fields, by Martin Amis, Penguin. £4.99 Restoration, by Rose Tremain, Sceptre, £4.99 The Fly in the Ointment, by Alice...

Caroline Moore A LOT TO ASK by Hazel Holt Macmillan, £14.99, pp. 308 H azel Holt has the essential qualifica- tion for a biographer of Barbara Pym: an appreciative eye for a...

Music Epoch-making A t the beginning of the current academic year the students of the Paris Conservatoire (or CNSM) moved into new premises at La Villette in the north-east...

Der Ring des Nibelungen (BBC 2) Flavourless soup Rupert Christiansen I set off to witness the English National Opera's exhumation of Delius's Fennimore and Gerda with my...

Solomon J. Solomon (Ben Uri Art Gallery, till 20 November) Dry response Giles Auty A week ago I happened, by chance, to attend a private view at a small art gallery not far...

Uncle Vanya (Theatre Royal Bristol) The Seagull (Swan Stratford) Vodka and daydreams Christopher Edwards T he Bristol Old Vic goes from strength to strength. Earlier in the...

Once on This Island (Booth Theatre) Oh, Kay! (Richard Rodgers Theatre) A tale of two musicals Douglas Colby T he new Caribbean musical Once on This Island is small in scale...