A cargo of toxic industrial waste from Canada, due to be incinerated in Britain, was refused entry to the country by 38 ports after well-publicised campaigns against it by...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 SUMMER'S LEASE I nside the front cover of The Spectator of 25 August 1939 is...

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Not a lot that the odd £6 billion can't cure NOEL MALCOLM But I do not think that the Labour Party has picked a winner with this issue. No doubt it is in Labour's interest to...

C oming to north Cornwall for some- thing like the 42nd successive year, I am struck this summer by an unwelcome pro- liferation of signs and notices. In this age of recreation...

Trying to get the mad, broody chicken off her addled eggs AUBERON WAUGH A friend who is not normally receptive to left-wing or republican ideas suddenly exclaimed at dinner in...

A new pattern of food distribution is dividing Britain concern about the accessibility of good food EVERY SO often in the history of British food, well-heeled public figures...

Anatol Lieven on how the Afghan regime might be cracked Kabul THE scene in the airport waiting-room at Mazar-e-Sharif was like a minor hell in a Graham Greene novel. The...

Richard Lovelace is surprised by the way prisons are run BY CHANCE, I was asked whether I could manage the morning sick parade - at the local prison for a week or two. Curious...

Jonathan Bulmer reports on the expansion of poaching in the Western Isles AS SOON as the biology teacher crossed over the march they knew they had him. Niall and Angus Alick...

Teresa Gorman replies to Candida Crewe's criticisms of hormone replacement therapy I ENVY the ability of Aids to attract princesses to lay their hands upon its sufferers. It...

STUDENTS' BLUNDERS ITO 'HIE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."' SIR, After "Hominissimi iguntur," (as a rendering of "most men, therefore") all students' blunders must fall more or...

Michael Heath

we may have had enough of environmentalist excess IT MAY well be that the Green afflatus has reached its maximum point of expan- sion and is about to implode. It is one of...

A bridging finance too far, when the pump is not for priming JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE I f we go on like this', commented the local government minister, David Hunt, mournfully on the...

WHAT makes a share look expensive? When you have to pay a lot of money in proportion to what your investment can earn. Now apply the same principle to investing in countries,...

A market with two or three hundred points of fizz and bubbles CHRISTOPHER FILDES t is quite easy to produce a share certificate. You could do it yourself with a John Bull...

FOR the companies, it is an unpleasant sensation, even a shock. They have got used, in the 1980s, to making money their power to earn has recovered to levels not seen for a...

SID'S idiot nephew now in charge of the advertising account at British Gas has discovered that the letters B 0 stands for all sorts of other things. For example: `Banishing...

says we need someone to trace the intellectual genealogy of environmentalism back to the philo- sophers of the French Revolution. Surely what we need is someome to trace this...

Sir: I am indebted to Mr Waugh (Another voice, 12 August) for clarifying my mind to the point of decision I am on the side of the animals. Responsibility devolves with power. As...

now `naff to say 'common'. It always was. The word is 'vulgar'. Colin Haycraft Gerald Duckworth & Co The Old Piano Factory 43 Gloucester Crescent, London NW1

Sir: In The Spectator of 17 August 1985 you published this letter, which I thought should have settled the meaning, if not the origin, of this succinct and useful word once and...

Sir: A typical behaviour for a lager-lout is said to be an urge to bother and harass harmless people without provocation. I never thought that wine experts suffered from the...

this years ago. The first sighted use of 'naffing' and `naff off , so far as I know, was in my novel Billy Liar (1959). It was conscript talk. Ama- zingly, it seems now,...

Sir: Michael Grosvenor Myer's letter (22 July) was a moving cry from the heart of the excluded. He is correct about the way your contributors go on about your party and I might...

Sir: Since The Spectator is so given over to cricket these days might I suggest that you press upon Mr Dexter that his first duty in rebuilding the England XI might be a gentle...

Sir: John Glashan's depressingly accurate cartoon (5 August) of a too-typical British GENTS or MEN is perhaps even more to the point than some of your younger readers may have...

Sir: I was a little puzzled by Lord Bruce- Gardyne's reference to 'the devil and Mrs Pettigrew' (Letters, 15 July). I wonder if he was thinking of Hilaire Belloc's lines 'On...

Sir: I am at a loss to see the funny side of Mr Kipper Williams's cartoon about Acton Man (12 August). Paul Danon 60 Julian Avenue, Acton, London W3

Sir: If people are shirt-sleeved vegetarians (Letters, 12 August), why should they go to the Mazarin? It is not surprising that it is difficult to get a table there — the food...

Sir: I am compiling an anthology about services in the Book of Common Prayer as they are mentioned in poetry or fiction, in biography or autobiography, journals and letters....

Sir: Of course, Auberon Waugh isn't se- rious (Another voice, 22 July) when he asks, what do people expect when they go walking on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path dressed like...

Sir: Recently reading The Life of Joseph Addison by Sir Peter Smithers I came across the following opinions: It is a melancholy reflection that our Coun- try, which in time of...

Sir: Being unfamiliar with the law relating to blasphemy, I consulted the current modern textbook, Gordon on the Criminal Law of Scotland. After pointing out that the last...

CIVIL LIBERTY. Freedom is the most important thing there is. It means a guarantee that a decent, finished man or woman can live without hindrance. Civil liberty, on the other...

For a flying enemy Colin Welch GORING: A BIOGRAPHY by David Irving Macmillan, f16.95, pp. 573 W hen Goring, resplendently uni- formed and decorated, met his American captors...

who showed man as man, Not icon or pure spirit but entire, For through the flesh the best compassion ran. You taught this when you painted Joachim And Anna, Mary's parents,...

Brian Martin SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH: THE WHIG CICERO by Patrick O'Leary Aberdeen University Press, f14.90, pp. 226 A lthough few now may have heard of James Mackintosh who was...

street- Annabel Ricketts TELEPHONE BOXES by Gavin Stamp Chatto, f4.99, pp. 106 TROUGHS AND DRINKING FOUNTAINS by Philip Davies Chatto, f4.99, pp. 115 SHOP FRONTS by Alan...

Alan Powers THE PAINTINGS OF DAVID JONES by Nicolete Gray John Taylor/Lund Humphries in association with the Tate Gallery, £37.50, pp. 184 D avid Jones (1894-1974) was not...

David Wright NOT PRINCE HAMLET: LITERARY AND THEATRICAL MEMOIRS by Michael Meyer Secker & Warburg, £16.95, pp.291 N ot Prince Hamlet? Surely more than an attendant lord, this...

David Nokes WILLIAM COWPER: SELECTED LETTERS edited by James King and Charles Ryskamp OUP, £27.50, pp.268 C owper is the poet who sang of the sofa, devoting the opening section...

It cannot matter much how I grew up, Housed in this body which is now so thin A parapet for me to lean upon. Fall I must: and with me will go down The entire empire of my...

Michael Conway's guide to Edinburgh during Festival time T here are umpteen feStivals in Edin- burgh at this time of the year. The saddest is the grandaddy of them all, the...

William McTaggart (Royal Scottish Academy, till 29 October) Robin Phffipson: a Retrospective (Edinburgh College of Art, till 3 September) William Crozier (Scottish Gallery, till...

page 29 is by Lesley Banks, a prize-winner two years running in the Spectator/Adam & Com- pany Art Prize competition. Next week, Giles Auty continues his review of Scottish art...

Jam packed Martin Gayford previews some intriguing appearances at the Jazz Festival J azz is a contrary form. For a perform- ance to succeed, it must contain a leaven- ing of...

Macbeth (Inchcolm Island) The road to Meikle Seggi Richard Ingleby Stands Scotland where it did? T (Macbeth IV, 3) here is an ancient route north-west out of Edinburgh...

Look Back in Anger (Lyric) Porter's problems Christopher Edwards D readful; the most dreadful per- formance I've ever seen.' And with that remark, the indignant lady walked...

Russian jamboree Robin Holloway K ostomuksha is a new town in Soviet Karelia, 20 hours by slow train north of Leningrad through endless pine forests with occasional hamlets,...

El Dorado (`15', Cannon Haymarket) Spanish gold-rush Hilary Mantel W ot, no Batman? Warner Brothers believed, quite rightly, that their product would succeed without the...

For love of Vanessa Ursula Buchan I have a friend who lives at the foot of the Sussex Downs who counts butterflies. For five years, she or her husband (both keen gardeners)...

Title fight Taki he Palace Hotel in Lucerne overlooks the lake and is the type of place I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life in. It is a turn-of-the-century rococo...

LA lore Wendy Cope Los Angeles here is a pair of pink earrings on the screen. They are revolving slowly, twink- ling under the lights. Pink zirconia dia- mond earrings, says...

Coach to Brighton Jeffrey Bernard Cambridge Circus I take my life in my hands. This city is now being terrorised by mechanised louts. They come at you on their motorbikes on...

This is the second in a series of lithographs by Alan Powers showing the Welsh borders, accompanied by sonnets from a series by Peter Levi. SHOBDON CHURCH was rebuilt by the...

Sticky Fingers YOUR modern pop singer is essentially a b usinessman. Any cash left over after the accountants and the cocaine dealers have been paid off goes into unit trusts,...

Royal chat Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1587 you were in- vited to supply, in his or her style, an account by a famous writer of a private chat with the sovereign of the...

Adams' apple Raymond Keene M ichael Adams has proved once again how effective he has become by winning the British Championship with a late and confident surge. The...

£10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word `Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions opened on 4 September. Entries to: Crossword...

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Let us assume that, intentionally or by mistake, Bertie Wooster has read, or tried to read, a famous book and is attempting to convey its plot and flavour to a fellow member of...