T here was rioting in Northern Ireland after the Royal Ulster Constabulary reversed its prohibition of a march by Orangemen at Portadown down Garvaghy Road, which passes through...

Ulster's Cup of Troubles is running over - and it is not yet full BRUCE ANDERSON A five o clock last Thursday, I arrived at Ballymoney Orange Hall, to meet the local lodge...

ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR A couple of weeks ago,' practically every national newspaper reported as fact that the Princess of Wales would continue to be called Her Royal Highness...

Sarah Whitebloom on how the financial pages enable PR people to sell investors such success stories as Robert Maxwell IF YOU really want to know what is going on in business...

Michael Heath

IT is a cliche that life sometimes imitates art. But things have come to a pretty pass when even the National Health Ser- vice begins to imitate art — especially when the...

MY HUSBAND had just written a learned paper on Addison's disease or something unpleasant, and decided to show it to a journalist friend of his to see if the English was all...

. . . and earn up to £500 an hour. Nigel Farndale on how you too could be a St John of Fawsley AT THE time of the abdication, the gen- tlemen of the press could more or less...

The former leader of the TGWU has been made a Spanish citizen. Simon Courtauld asked him what he did in the civil war FOR Jack Jones, former general secre- tary of the...

Confrontation at Drumcree was not unexpected, says Clifford Smyth. The nationalists wanted it to happen and London ignored all warnings ON 3 May this year, I addressed the Car-...

Stripping Diana of her title is mean and may prove to be foolish PAUL JOHNSON F riday 12 July 1996, when the formal announcement of the Prince of Wales's divorce was made,...

Housey, housey here come Rupert and Samantha, giving me the feelbad factor CHRISTOPHER FILDES I suppose that the Blairs must be trading up. The Halifax Building Society says...

1906 as dying with their drawn salaries in their hands, but he was echoing Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit who speaks of Henry Gowan as .. a com- missioner of nothing in...

Sir: Jan Morris's article ('Long live Karl the Good', 29 June) is, in my opinion, below the standard of The Spectator. In Germany, only charwomen pay attention to royal...

prime minister attract such scathing contempt as Paul Johnson expressed for John Major? Let us hope the idealistic Tony Blair, if and when he tries to lead us into the promised...

Sir: It is tendentious of Bruce Anderson to equate Orangemen marching through Catholic estates in Northern Ireland with Londoners putting up with the traffic dis- ruption caused...

Finkelstein's fan Sir: Peter Oborne is a stimulating and inge- nious commentator but, in his profile of Danny Finkelstein ('Ex-Labour, ex-SDP and now excessive?', 13 July) he...

Sir: Paul Johnson claims that no major post-war event like nationalisation or decolonisation was contained in an elec- toral manifesto (And another thing, 13 July). Not so. In...

Sir: It is somewhat disingenuous of Peter Phillips to use (and surely reprehensible of The Spectator to allow him to use) his music column to attack the existence of the BBC...

Sir: I wonder whether Sir Peregrine Worsthorne (`The real Irish nationalism', 22 June) would care to reply to the fol- lowing quotation from Lord Carson, taken from Leave to...

Sir: Alan Watkins tells us Philip Hope-Wal- lace pronounced the t in Montrachet. But was he right to do so? There may be a mas- culine substantive trachet in the patois, so as...

Sir: Poor darling Rupert (Arts, 6 July). How he has suffered for his pleasure! He complains that, as your opera critic, he was seated in row H of the Covent Garden stalls `bang...

Sir: I am not in the habit of biting my tongue, but I must say during the recent speculation about my age (Letters, 29 June, 6 July and 13 July) the poor fleshy organ has been...

Sir: A small conference took place at Culzean Castle the other day attended by a number of Scottish companies both large and small and a representative from Lloyd's of London....

Sir: Peter Stothard is correct when he specu- lates (Letters, 29 June) that I have not yet joined the ranks of 'the great and good'. However, I did derive some benefit from the...

Sir: To A.R. Evans's daft idea (Letters, 15 June) of pictures. at the head of articles by your major contributors, a resounding no. I've seen most of them in other British...

Sir: A few days ago I greatly enjoyed a perfor- mance of Yevgeny Onegin at Glyndebourne. This cannot be said about the dinner served in the Wallop restaurants. I can but agree...

Hutton turned out to be brutal with a stake, but Jaspan should forget about high-minded Hugo STEPHEN GLOVER Mr Jaspan's unleashing of three articles last week on an...

Could it be that David Mellor is not as unpopular as is reported? PETRONELLA WYATT D avid Mellor is in trouble in Putney or so we are told. One Sunday newspaper mentioned a...

At every word a reputation's made Philip Hensher THE ILIAD OF HOMER translated by Alexander Pope Penguin Classics, £16, pp. 1,284 H ere, readily available for the first time...

even queerer Robert Oakeshott DINOSAUR IN A HAYSTACK by Stephen Jay Gould Cape, £18.99, pp. 480 W hen and why was the column — or More accurately the puzzle strip — 'Believe it...

John Bowen BUSTER KEATON: CUT TO THE CHASE by Marion Meade Bloomsbury, £20, pp. 440 H e was almost illiterate and partly deaf. He first appeared on stage at the age of five in...

confined Kate Grimond MY SILVER SHOES by Nell Dunn Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 207 4s he's had a rough night, poor cow,' were the final words of Nell Dunn's novel, Poor Cow,...

Blair Worden LIBERTY AGAINST THE LAW by Christopher Hill Allen Lane, f25, pp. 354 C hristopher Hill never gives up. At 84 he is as eager as ever to tell of the wicked- ness of...

INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace Little, Brown, £17.99, pp. 1,079 N o old-fashioned linear narrative this. David Foster Wallace's second novel is new-fashionably radial....

THE SPEARS OF TWILIGHT by Philippe Descola HarperCollins, £20, pp. 458 P rofessor Descola, disenchanted with the abstractions of philosophy, switched disciplines and became an...

till thou applaud the deed Colin Wilson SHE MUST HAVE KNOWN: THE TRIAL OF ROSEMARY WEST by Brian Masters Doubleday, £15.99, pp. 358 W hen Fred West hanged himself in his...

to Fanny Burney, published soon after the aged novelist's death in 1840, Macaulay takes the opportunity to rap her royal employer, Queen Charlotte, firmly over the knuckles for...

The heritage battle Martin Bailey on how the purchase of the Becket Casket has set a dangerous precedent D elight that the Becket Casket has been saved is tempered by the fact...

Lulu (Glyndebourne) More sleaze, please Michael Tanner T he setting of the first Glyndebourne production of Berg's Lulu, designed by Paul Brown, resembles the exterior of the...

Martin Guerre (Prince Edward) Musical magic and mystery Sheridan Morley F or the third time in little more than a decade, or so it would seem from all but about two of the...

Sounds good Peter Phillips M uch has been written about the gradual changes to the repertoire of classi- cal music concerts over recent years. I myself have contributed to...

The Truth about Cats and Dogs (15, selected cinemas) Postponing the sex Mark Steyn T hey must be teaching it in film school — the first rule of Nineties date movies: postpone...

Rambert Dance Company (London Coliseum) Great expectations Giannandrea Poesio R ambert Dance Company's brief sea- son has drawn flocks of enthusiastic dance- goers to the...

Terrible problems Simon Hoggart A nerican soap operas are about rich people who have terrible problems; British soaps are about poor people who have equally awful problems; and...

They must be mad Michael Vestey T his is the month of music festivals and radio is there to broadcast them. The 102nd season of the BBC Proms begins this weekend; the...

Lingfield's crucial role Robin Oakley W hen they first started racing on the all-weather sand track at Lingfield Park, the attendances were so sparse that, instead of announcing...

Men of the North Gavin Stamp A hundred years ago, on 22 July 1896, William Morris embarked on the Orient Line steamboat, the SS Garonne, at Tilbury for a cruise across the...

The other side of the coin Taki I n my high gambling circles, one man stands out as being 'the luckiest punter of them all', Henryk de Kwiatkowski. In the 15 years that I've...

Why Boris had to go Leanda de Lisle I am still looking for someone to animal- sit while we are away on holiday. My in- laws have declined to have our pets this time, arguing...

To boldly bid Andrew Robson RIXI MARKUS was undoubtedly Britain's most famous female bridge player. Born in Austria of Jewish parents she represented Austria in the Thirties...

Snowdrop fresh and all French Auberon Waugh A lother cheap offer, working out at £4.78 the bottle average price on the mixed case, this time all French. A larger, younger...

AS we live increasingly in the world of the designer restaurant and personality chef, I thought it might be instructive to go in search of the ancien regime. More than any-...

SIMPSON'S IN-TIIE•STRAND CHESS Karpov recrowned Raymond Keene AN'1'ER A BITTER struggle Anatoly Karpov has retained his Fide (World Chess Federation) championship title....

.15.1 COMPETITION Hype tripe Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1941 you were invited to provide a blurb for a book being hyped by the publisher with the challenge The Book You...

A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1969 Port for the first correct solution opened on 5 August, with two runners-up prizes of £15 (or, for UK...

Marinated in Coca-Cola Simon Barnes I WAS sitting at a cafe in Syntagma Square, mouth tingling with ouzo and head tingling with Ancient Greek bullshit. In 1896, the first...

Dear Mary.. . Q. How should you deal sensibly with increasingly recognised early morning jog- gers and walkers, both male and female? Is ;Good morning' too formal? And 'Morn-...