Ghost town M rs Thatcher explained that this week's crucial letter in the Westland scan- dal, one sent on 6 January from the Solicitor-General to Mr Heseltine, had in fact been...

SURVIVING THE SEEDINESS M onday's debate on the Westland affair demonstrated one of the most impor- tant and abiding facts of British politics - the ruthlessness of the...

Why she never asked (and why he never told her) FERDINAND MOUNT W hen going over a script, the late Alfred Hitchcock would often ask 'what's happened to the McGuffin?' By this...

A n unlikely threesome were having dinner together last Thursday at the Gran Paradiso restaurant in Vauxhall: Leon Brittan, Norman Lamont and Cecil Parkin- son. Clearly, on the...

Rupert Murdoch deserves a dukedom AUBERON WAUGH N ews International's action is union- busting on the American lines. It can only lead to a more violent society,' said Mr...

Richard West on the election campaign of President and Mrs Marcos Manila SHAKESPEARE'S tragedy Macbeth has been suggested here as the key to under- standing the Philippine...

Melik Kaylan on how the Israeli spy scandal at length emerged in the United States New York LIKE a runaway Rasputin, the Israeli spy scandal has refused to die, indeed has...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for f (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES: 12 Months 6 Months UK/Eire ❑ £41.00 0...

Christopher Hitchens on American horror at the sudden death of the seven astronauts Washington CAPE Canaveral was the scene of so many non-lethal disasters in the early...

Stan Gebler Davies on the Unionist conviction that England doesn't care a damn for them Dromore, Co. Down WHEN and if Ulster has independence thrust upon it, the people will at...

The Salisbury Government has re- signed. It was understood throughout the debate of Tuesday, described be- low, that the Ministry would treat Mr Collings's success as a vote of...

Bruce Anderson on the bit-part players in the Westland drama ANDY Warhol once said that in the modern world, everyone would be famous for five minutes. One of the consequences...

David and Gareth Butler on record-breaking tenure of government office MONDAY, 3 February is a landmark for Mrs Thatcher, one that since last Monday she has seemed more...

Peter Paterson argues that the printing revolution could go too far WITH that mischievous sense of timing which has led his TUC colleagues in exasperation to want to banish...

STUDENTS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY TO ENJOY THE SPECTATOR AT LESS THAN HALF PRICE More stimulating than any lecture, funnier than the set books, The Spectator should be required...

The press: forced by Shah and Hammond IF FOREIGNERS treat Britain as a joke country, as they increasingly do, we have only our own elites to blame. Quis custod- iet ipsos...

David Howell on why Britain refuses to play Opec's game JUST before Christmas a senior Opec official told me that his colleagues were absolutely determined to make Britain...

Why the Chancellor should choke the credit boom now JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE T wenty-two years ago, at the height of the Profumo scandal, I was summoned to break bread with Cecil...

Sir: May I crave an inch or two to apologise cravenly to Nina Bawden (Letters, 18 January). I done her wrong. Not only did she read my Worm in the Rose right through; she did it...

that the setting-up of a quasi-autonomous state of Ulster, should the present agreement fail, would entail four prerequisites. Inadvertently I did not spell out the fourth,...

Sir: In the Spectator of 11 January, Pereg- rine Worsthorne properly lamented the decline of journalistic flair in economic writing. He measured the fall in quality against...

Sir: To say that my brother is mistaken when he claims (Low life, 18 January) that I don't know the difference between Red Rum and Rita Hayworth is to miss the effortless charm...

Sir: Much as I appreciated and enjoyed Gavin Stamp's comparative study of Charles Prince of Wales and the late Duke of Windsor (Princes of their own times', 18 January), might...

Sir: Thanks partly to the Anglo-Irish agreement, we know that there are likely to be at least 14 Unionists in the next Parliament. The situation in Northern Ire- land, though...

Sir: Whilst agreeing with your criticism of the proposed closure of St George-in-the- East (Leader page, 11 January), you did scant justice to the full extent of the Church's...

`The most popular man in England' Asa Briggs HENRY BROUGHAM: 1778-1868 HIS PUBLIC CAREER by Robert Stewart The Bodley Head, f18 F ew 19th-century politicians were so...

Ian Waller THE QUEEN HAS BEEN PLEASED by John Walker Seeker & Warburg, £9.95 F or nearly a thousand years British monarchs have been dispensing honours to raise money, award...

Mark Amory THE PRICK OF NOON by Peter de Vries Gollancz, £8.95 P eter de Vries never stops making jokes — some of them bad, some of them not worth the elaborate setting up...

David Ekserdjian BENVENUTO CELLINI by John Pope-Hennessy Macmillan, £85 B envenuto Cellini (1500-1571) was a convicted sodomite and a triple murderer (Sir John Pope-Hennessy...

As I have told you previously my subject is what is before me, and what is before me is always the natural world, the world of paint and seasons. I am painting the world as it...

Allan Massie THE ORIGINALS by William Amos Jonathan Cape, £12.95 W illiam Amos's The Originals carries the sub-title `Who's Really Who in Fic- tion'. It represents a...

Michael Horovitz STEVIE: A BIOGRAPHY OF STEVIE SMITH by Jack Barbera and William McBrien Heinemann, £15 T he English reviewing establishment seems to have closed its ranks...

Exhibitions Reynolds (Royal Academy till 31 March) Reconsider- ing Reynolds Giles Auty S ome of the odder misapprehensions of my early childhood arose through listening to...

A Journey to London (Orange Tree, Richmond) The Oven Glove Murders (Bush) Limiting factors Christopher Edwards T he original version of A Journey to London was left...

Rocky IV (`PG' selected cinemas) In the ring, again Peter Ackroyd F or those who enjoy a `good' fight, Rocky IV begins in exactly the right spirit blood, sweat, and those...

Moses (Coliseum) Ancient and modern Rodney Mdnes 0 pera production is again, I fear, the topic of the day. The Daily Telegraph has just carried its annual attack on...

Sting (Royal Albert Hall) Fantasy man Robert Cooper I f a recent popularity poll is to be believed the 34-year-old rock singer/actor/ racehorse owner/father-of-four Sting is...

Conifer con Ursula Buchan A trick is being played on the garden- ing public. Unwitting and unconscious it may be, but the result, whatever the intention, is a delusion, and it...

Drawn out Alexander Chancellor 0 n Monday television cleared its decks for the great emergency debate. In addition to the normal extended news bulletins, there were two...

Put to rights Taki WNew York ell, two down and two to go to tie with Jeffrey Bernard. Marriages, that is. Last week the mother of my children and I decided to have an amicable...

The old school Jeffrey Bernard times wonder what all that was about. They say, some do anyhow, that if one can survive a tough school like Pangbourne it's probably pretty soft...

Pound and a pizza P. J. Kavanagh obert Graves was a friend of Rita Hayworth's and, because he was a poet and therefore dreamy, it has been sug- gested that he would not know...

B ack to the fray Alice Thomas Ellis I can't really claim that the Christmas hols in the country were uneventful, what with frost, tempest and flood — Janet had to go to the...

WE ARE having such an early Lent this year that St Valentine's day comes two days after Ash Wednesday, by which time we should all have started some fast or other unless you...

At last Raymond Keene L ast week I described the chaos cur- rently existing in the Fide world cham- pionship cycles, but I also referred to a possible compromise in the offing...

Split rhymes Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1405 you were asked to write a 'split-rhymed' poem in the manner of Lewis Carroll's couplet: 'Who would not give all else for two p/...

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A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £11.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) will be awarded for the first...

Advice from the old to the young (Polo- nius, Lord Chesterfield, Queen Victoria) is common enough in literature. Why so little the other way round? You are invited to fill the...