`Is it true we're bringing the country to its knees, mother?' MR JOHN MAJOR, the Prime Minister, said that Sinn Fein might be admitted as a democratic party to peace talks...

Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 LOSING OUR VOICE I n these days of small budgets and large interest groups, it often seems as if there are no longer any...

Mr Major rushes in where Lloyd George feared to tread SIMON HEFFER I t is not usual for the Prime Minister's speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet to be preceded by a full...

STEPHEN FRY S ix times a year, if I can manage it, I take a sleeper from Euston to Scotland in order to discharge my duties as Rector of the University of Dundee. Only Scottish...

This, I feel, is what Elsa is trying to tell us AUBERON WAUGH I f I promise to refrain from writing about America for the next three articles, I hope readers will bear with me...

Clive James says the Prince and Princess of Wales are like the Hurricane and the Spitfire: better for Britain on the same side A HIDDEN camera is far enough. Inter- cepted...

The assassination of President Kennedy signalled the decline of the world's last great empire, argues John Simpson THE ENGLISH language marks the pro- cess of national decay...

Martin Vander Weyer discovers the joys of the American pastime of handling an assortment of deadly weapons Duchess County GUNS ARE to American country houses what croquet...

OROR How 51 trips . . . The to save yourself to the library or over £35 on Spectator If you're with fellow how difficult down. Now searches rooms by For as can have to you...

Alasdair Palmer reveals how some women use fictitious allegations of child abuse to wreck their ex-husbands' lives THE MOST reliable prediction you can make about a couple...

A READER, Mr Harold Braham, writes from Spain quoting a sentence in The Spectator by Sir David English: 'The entertaining of ministers by the press has now reached such...

John Casey on the strange new rules of correct behaviour by which our teachers are judged A COUPLE of years ago Cambridge like all universities in the kingdom — was...

ALL THINGS considered, it is surpris- ing how many people still believe that organisations such as the Health Service and Social Services exist to bring comfort to the...

George Lucas wonders why the BBC is celebrating the birthday of someone it killed 23 NOVEMBER, 1963 and the day after President Kennedy's assassination, the BBC launched Dr...

NEW ZEALAND has carried Women's Suffrage in a rather extreme form, almost any woman of full age, even if a mere visitor to the island, would have a vote, — and has carried it...

Ian Hargreaves on the debate within the BBC about how the Queen Mother should be obituarised ACCORDING to the Daily Mirror, eaves- dropper to the royal household, the Queen...

Time for women to get together and give the fashion frogs a bloody nose PAUL JOHNSON W henever I am tempted to despair about the state of the world, I remind Myself that...

THE GREAT and good cause of the day is independence for the Bank of England. It makes a fine rallying-cry, and this week a troop of the greatest and best, captained by the...

QUESTION POSED by Sir Alastair Mor- ton, chairman of Eurotunnel: how do you make God laugh? Answer: tell Him your plans. Now the Government is planning on Sir Alastair. Kenneth...

FLAPPING AND squawking, the Boston Chicken flies high over Wall Street. Why did it cross the road? Because every specu- lator and small share buyer was rushing after it and...

MY RACING correspondent, Captain Threadneedle, writes: Eat your heart out, Lord Vestey. Cheltenham has missed its chance to stage the Captain Threadneedle Selling Hurdle, and...

Lions led by donkeys their CBI's generals send the troops over the top CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he Confederation of British Industry has gone over the top on the Stray, Harro-...

Sir: Your contributor, Mr J. Enoch Powell (`The trick of that voice', 30 October), finds that only a group of writers could account for the 'notorious and phenomenal polY -...

Sir: Neither Alasdair Palmer CA clean break with fairness', 13 November), nor anyone else, should be surprised that the Child Support Agency is seeking to over- turn the 'clean...

Sir: No one could quarrel with Mark Urban's thesis (`No room for the mad squads', 12 November) that British soldiers must comply with the Geneva Convention on the rules of war,...

'1' OR SUBSCRIBE TODAY - RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £77.00 0 £39.00 Europe (airmail) .... 0 £88.00 0 £44.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$125.00 0 US$63.00 USA Airmail Ci...

Sir: The latest diatribe from Mark Almond and Christine Stone (Letters, 30 October) contains misinformation which cannot remain uncorrected. Christian Solidarity International...

Sir: Charles Moore writes that he 'cannot see why it is wrong for the Daily Mirror to spy on the Princess 'in the gym' but right for the Sunday Times to spy on the state of her...

Sir: William Cash's recent article (`One lets it all hang out', 16 October), mentions me briefly 'as old Etonian actor "Baron" Clement von Franckenstein'. The quotation marks...

The most underrated novel of the year was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Poet and Dancer (John Murray, £14.99), a bleak and fright- ening story of one of those symbiotic friendships...

The book that I most enjoyed reading this year was Michael Bloch's biography of Ribbentrop (Bantam, £14.99). His subject, both as ambassador and as foreign minis- ter, raised...

Books of the Year The best and most overrated books of the year, chosen by some of The Spectator's regular contributors Julie Burchill With terrifying predictability, my...

The Rituals of Dinner by Margaret Visser (Viking, £17.99) has gone straight into my (so far rather pitiful) collection of books on domestic history. I share with Jeff Bernard a...

The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brian (IliarperCollins, £14.99) is the 16th of his sequence of novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars, about James Aubrey RN and his friend and...

I think that Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield (Bantam, £14.99) is her best novel to date, and that means it is pretty good. My hair stood on end for about a week after finish-...

The tradition of the professional autobiog- rapher is an honourable one — Augustus Hare, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Sir Osbert Sitwell, Sir Compton Mackenzie, Christopher Isherwood...

Death Plus Ten Years by Roger Cooper (HarperCollins, £17.50) is the account of the fight put up by a strong-willed English - man to prevent his Iranian gaolers from imprisoning...

Nothing very intellectual here. My favourite book of the year was John Keegan's A History of Warfare (Hutchinson, £20). Keegan is without doubt the most thrilling military...

Surely the fact that my own name — and words — appear in Jocelyn Herbert: A Workbook (Art Books International, £30) doesn't disqualify me from choosing it as one of my best...

I prefer the Low Depravity Content of books from yesteryear so two favourites were reprints. One of the most comforting was The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford, republished...

The most entertaining tale of the year was contained within the pages of Radar at Sea: The Royal Navy in World War II by Derek Howse (Macmillan, £25). Apparently our defences...

Easily the best book I have read this year is The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion, 1400-1580 by Eamon Duffy (Yale, £29.95) which shows that popular devotion was...

Darryl Pinckney's High Cotton (Faber, £5.99) is an exuberant, maverick account of growing up in the South: 'No one sat me down and told me I was a Negro,' it begins. Shrewd,...

Cormac McCarthy's novel, All The Pretty Horses, first published in 1992, would have been my book of that year had I read it then. It is now in paperback (Pan Macmillan, £5.99)...

I have enjoyed Gesualdo Bufalino's Blind Argus (Harvill, £7.99), a marvellously inventive and exuberant Sicilian novel. The translation by Patrick Creagh is quite exceptionally...

John Murray is the only novelist I know with a direct line to Rabelais and Flann O'Brien. Radio Activity: A Cumbrian Tale in Five Emissions (Sunk Island Press, P 0 Box 74,...

Rather dismally, perhaps, the new book I admired most this year was the first trans- lation into English of Chekhov's Journey to Sakhalin (Faulkner, £12.50), an account of his...

The death of Adam Johnson in May of this year at the age of 28 was a tragic loss to lit- erature. His earlier poetry struck me as unremarkable; but in the brief period of a year...

Helping to start a recent week on BBC Radio, Vikram Seth said of his enthralling romantic saga, A Suitable Boy (Phoenix House, £20): 'I didn't want it to be stained glass; I...

My greatest enjoyment was the Disney Aladdin — I've watched the American video three times now. It is the studio's finest and in the voice of the genie, con- tains Robin...

I don't know about me, but my ten-year-old daughter Veronica's favourite book at the moment is Nuticulus Satyrique: olim fabula Noddy and the Goblins — modo in linguam Latinam...

I liked Karl Miller's Rebecca's Vest (Hamish Hamilton, £14.99) about his early life in Scotland, Cambridge, and London. The title is a tease, and so is the book. You have to...

I greatly admired John Simpson's In the Forests of the Night (Hutchinson, £16.99), a hair-raising first-hand exposé of the ultra- murderous Shining Path movement, and t he...

Usually I just raise my eyebrows at the Booker winner, but this year I want to raise a cheer. Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Secker & Warburg, £12.99) is a very clever,...

Richard Holmes's Dr Johnson and Mr Savage (Hodder, £19.99), though perhaps written with a slightly blunt quill, is a mine of forgotten early-18th-century scurrility , manly and...

After waiting six years for a new Prawer Jhabvala novel and four for one by Iris Murdoch, a year in which both at last per- form turns out to be dominated by Vikram Seth's A...

to a friend and we will give you a full size bottle of ten year old Glenmorangie Single Highland Malt. But hurry, we have only a limited number of bottles to give away. A gift...

Julie Burchill PATRICK HAMILTON: A LIFE by Sean French Faber, £20, pp. 327 T hey say distance lends enchantment and what do you know, they're right again! Imagine, for a...

Once I watched an emerald, quaint oriental solitaire, rococo mother-to-be, stab a dirt-scuttler. Saw her poison the eyesore, jostle him to a crevice, stable him with her yellow...

Philip Marsden THE WAY TO XANADU by Caroline Alexander Weidenfeld, f15.99, pp. 194 K ubla Khan, as every schoolchild is told, is a jumble of exotic images scribbled down by...

Erica Wagner THE SEARCH by Geoff Dyer Hamish Hamilton, £14.99, pp. 160 R achel meets Walker at a party and sends him off to find her vanished husband. Straightforward:...

Fiction: Bad News by Edward St Aubyn, Minerva, £5.99 Swing Hammer Swing by Jeff Torrington, Minerva, £5.99 Dr Haggard's Disease by Patrick McGrath, Viking, £8.99 The...

Paul Bailey THE ROAD TO SAN GIOVANNI by Italo Calvino, translated by Tim Parks Cape, £12.99, pp. 150 I n the first of the five previously uncollected pieces that make up this...

The autumn leaf that's falling through your mind Has fallen through a million minds before, And will fall on through countless millions more, Like countless million others of...

Victoria Glendinning THE LAUREL AND THE IVY: THE STORY OF CHARLES STEWART PARNELL AND IRISH NATIONALISM by Robert Kee Hamish Hamilton, f20, pp. 659 C harles Stewart Parnell,...

Michael Bracewell THAT'S THE WAY I SEE IT by David Hackney Thames & Hudson, £24.95, pp. 248 T he dust-jacket of this sumptuous book depicts Hockney standing next to a self-...

William Trevor A MAN OF MEANS by P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill Porpoise Books, £3.99, pp. 89 I go off the rails,' P. G. Wodehouse once wrote, 'unless I stay all the time...

Juliet Townsend THE WILLOWS IN WINTER by William Horwood HarperCollins, £12.99, pp. 295 F rom Form IIA Frances Holland School 1950 a fervent prayer went up which Was quite...

Mary Lutyens B y chance Violet Powell and I were introduced to Jane Austen at the age of eight — she through Emma and I through Pride and Prejudice. This early experience...

Alison Lurie WRITERS AND THEIR HOUSES edited by Kate Marsh Hamish Hamilton, £20, pp. 544 here is a programme on American television now called, with blatant simplici- ty,...

Jennifer Paterson F rom the pile of cookery books stacked beside me the one I have most cherished this year is Jane Grigson's updated Fish Book (Michael Joseph, £20). Mrs...

Dance Animal crackers T his Saturday, the Royal Ballet's Tales of Beatrix Potter — retrieved from last year's Christmas decorations box and now sharing a double bill with...

1993 Turner Prize: Exhibition of Short- listed Artists (Tate Gallery, till 28 November) Prized apart Giles Auty N o single event in the British calendar of contemporary art...

From the New World Robin Holloway F rantic yet amiable, Buenos Aires is a vast conurbation of Lego and cement sur- rounding a 19th-century European capital. Wide boulevards...

One Man (Garrick) The LA Plays (Almeida) Eurovision (Vaudeville) Bitten by Berkoff Sheridan Morley S teven Berkoff's One Man is a power- house assembly of three of his...

Aladdin (`U', Odeon Leicester Square; nationwide from 3 December) Arabia, LA Mark Steyn T hose catastrophic Euro Disney figures are not without their ironies. A company...

Palmed off Martyn Harris O liver Stone is a not-bad director when he keeps his politics in his pocket. Salvador was OK, Platoon passable, and I still say Wall Street was a...

Teddies for Tories Alistair McAlpine T he Christmas lights are up in Oxford Street. The Christmas shopping season has already started. What to give for Christmas and, of much...

All the way with JFK Taki his may sound crude, but I'm willing to bet my last devalued you-know-what that the sharks that run Hollywood and the TV studios are thanking their...

Once bloodied, twice shy Nigel Nicolson B lood sports have played little part in my life. My grandfather bequeathed to me a fine pair of Purdey guns, but I was too small to...

The unkindest cut of all Jeffrey Bernard I have been brooding about the man whose wife cut off his penis and I have been doing my brooding with my legs crossed. Thank Gad I...

I HAVE NEVER cared much for light ale — a drink which when mixed 50/50 with bitter used to be much favoured by the jellied-eel- and pie-and-liquor-eating lower classes of east...

IN OUR LAST offer of the year, for which orders must be in by 18 December to ensure pre-Christmas delivery, we return to Longford's Pierre Andre range which has proved so...

c/o Longford Wines Longford Farmhouse, Spithurst, Barcombe, Lewes, E. Sussex BN8 5ED. Tel: Barcombe(0273) 401497 White 1. Macon Villages 1992, Pierre Andre 12 Bots. Price No....

T he Spectator 1994 Diary, bound in soft burgundy leather, will shortly be available. With a new layout and a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the diary is 5" x 3"....

Ig Nobel Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1805 you were introduced to the Ig Nobel Prizes (named after Alfred's fictitious brother Ig) annual- ly awarded in Boston 'for...

Young Turks Raymond Keene WHILE NIGEL SHORT was battling for the world championship in London, two' ambitious hopefuls were garnering laurels abroad. Michael Adams won the...

al % linA t F c Ori i 1111 r i II) H 1:1 Nana la am. N CIEI A & E altallEiri A s oo 11111:I lla CID n 0 M T 0 I IldE130 Mind AVIEMEID El IS raLli A VNAR 0 II 13 Ifl 11L...

You are invited to write clerihews (max- imum three) about any well-known con- temporary figures. Entries to 'Competition No. 1808' by 2 December.

GRAHAM ' S PORT CROSSWORD C I W. & J. GRAHAM ' S PORT A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 6...

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Those were the days . . . Frank Keating ARTHUR ROWE died last week. I met him only once. One Saturday a couple of decades ago, on the walk from the tube sta- tion to Orient's...

Dear Mary.. . Q. My wife and I have been receiving a number of letters from the university-aged Children of our friends. The general tenor ,_ of them is that the supplicant is...