Saatchi's life T he Scottish people voted by 74 per cent to 26 per cent in favour of a Scottish parliament, and by 63.5 per cent to 36.5 per cent in favour of that parliament...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Fax 071-242 0603 TORY SPORRAN NEEDED D oes Scotland need the Tories? The general election left them...

Mr Blair may be about to take a vital personnel decision BRUCE ANDERSON 4 0 h, a Queen may love her subjects in her heart, and yet be dog-wearied of 'em in body and mind.'...

DEREK DRAPER W hen Tony Blair spoke of socialism I never realised quite how social the new Labour life would be. All I seem to have done all week is go to parties, so apologies...

Why I would have supported Pinochet, but still think there's something wrong with his country MATTHEW PARRIS he Plaza de Armas, Santiago's main square, is as pleasant a place...

Cristina Odone reports on how the showiest form of Christianity is sweeping what is traditionally Britain's least showy class `THE EVENTS of the past remarkable weeks', the...

Mark Steyn on how the United States has used its ultimate weapon against the President's accuser IT HAS been a quiet summer for Presi- dent Clinton. In May, his lawyers'...

William Cash on why Hollywood has so easily come to terms with the other death in Paris Los Angeles SHUFFLING out of the funeral here in 1994 of the highly regarded president of...

Edward Heathcoat Amory says that amid the ostentatious mourning there is a Britain that as yet fears to speak up LIKE pro-democracy activists under com- munism or a persecuted...

Dodi Fayed's defenders say he disliked speed. say the opposite LAST Thursday's Times carried a long piece by Barbara Broccoli, the daughter of the James Bond film-maker, Cubby...

`THEY drove him around in a whiskum snivel,' Lord David Cecil recorded of Cowper. Mr Tom Hartman the publish- er implored me to help in elucidating that compound noun. I was no...

Charlotte Edwardes asks who the glossies will rely on now for their covers - and suggests an answer PRINCESS, saviour, saint and — ultimate- ly — cover girl. In death, as in...

Shiva Naipaul was one of the most gifted and accomplished writers of our time. After his death in 1985 at the age of 40, The Spectator established an annual prize in his memory....

Leo McKinstry on educational researchers who look for everything except how to improve education THE professional body representing edu- cational researchers, the British...

SOMETIMES, though not very often, I wish my patients were the upstanding, God-fearing, law-abiding, hard-working people I tell them they ought to be. I hold myself up as what...

I WANT to go back to a famous victory of four months ago. It was not that of Tony Blair at the polls but df Jonathan Aitken in the law courts. Eh? Surely it was the Guardian...

Blair's government will ultimately fail unless he rescues the family PAUL JOHNSON T he undermining of the institution of marriage and the weakening of the family system stand...

NOW that he has his opposite numbers' attention, Mr Brown will remind them that they have unfinished business. It is some- thing that fell off the edge two years ago, when their...

THE exporters themselves have at last declared an armistice. It was overdue. There are no feuds like the feuds between rival promoters of good causes, and the good cause of...

WHAT takes Mr Brown to Bangkok? Why, a meeting of the Asem finance ministers. And what is Asem? It is the Asia Europe Meeting, which has now spawned any num- ber of sub-meetings...

CITY grandees flying out to Hong Kong will be looking forward to receiving their stiff cards with gilded crests. As I wrote from Washington, when the IMF and World Bank met...

IN THIS column last week I caused the River Tweed to run north-westwards. It just goes to show what English nationalist fervour can do.

Gordon Brown heads out into tiger country with a prescription for mange CHRISTOPHER FILDES T his is the week when the world's finance ministers get the chance to meet Gordon...

Sir: Michael Cole writes, (Letters, 13 September), `Dodi was no more of a play- boy than Mr Glover.' According to my Collins dictionary, a playboy is 'a man, esp. one of private...

safety? We all know that you can be killed even in a Mercedes if you crash it fast enough. Am I the only reader who by now is irritated by this sort of overreaction to the...

Sir: The royal family is not mediagenic. The Queen watched the passage of Princess Diana's coffin last Saturday with a face ric- tal with confusion and constraint. The Prince of...

Sir: Notwithstanding the famous crash of that Mercedes in a Paris underpass, I bought a Mercedes for my wife on the Fri- day of the following week. That evening I noticed with...

Sir: The best television news is on Channel 4 at seven o'clock: each item followed by comment and discussion. It was therefore fascinating, in the week following the Princess's...

Sir: 'Akin to grave-robbers,' thunders the prosecutor. 'Failing in my duty . . . public feeling . . . custodial sentence . . . ,' intones the stipendiary magistrate as he bangs...

12 Months 6 Months UK U £93.00 U £47.00 Europe (airmail) LI £104.00 0 £52.00 USA Airspeed LI US$151 LI US$76 Rest of Airmail LI £115.00 U £58.00 World Airspeed 0 £107.00 0...

Sir: Andrew Neil's article (`The other Edin- burgh', 23 August) says more about the author than it does about its subject. His perception of Edinburgh sits in stark contrast to...

Sir: Peter Jones's powerful excoriation of the administration system by which our uni- versities are now run ('Why I'm off, 13 September) does not tell the whole story....

Sir: The Middlesex Hospital Medical School trained my grandfather, my father, two uncles, two cousins and myself. Mr J. Bernard was a patient in the Mid- dlesex Hospital many...

Sir: It was just Jeffrey Bernard's luck to die at the same time as Princess Diana, as everyone has said; but it was also strangely fitting. He was an unhappy bad boy made...

Sir: Before you are showered with letters from erudite Spectator readers, I must con- fess to falling below the rigorous intellectu- al standards of your magazine. I am afraid...

Sir: Michael Portal() is so enchanted by the precision with which the Bayreuth Festival is run that he swallows a complete 'rip-off' with touching naivety. 'Champagne, in 100 cc...

her letter in your edition of 8 February since it promoted the Schlieffen correspondence in your columns, but her views on -German noble titles which you published on 6...

Sir: Dot Wordsworth calls Lord Randolph Churchill a 'syphilitic' (Mind your lan- guage, 6 September). Although when he died in 1895 his doctor stated he had been suffering from...

Sir: Mr Woodcock-Clarke (Letters, 13 September) wonders whether the French or the British really had no inkling of the Schlieffen Plan. Winston Churchill, in The World Crisis...

Sir: A number of British and German politicians have admired the article com- mending the area around the middle of Lake Como. We laud Paul Johnson's lyric writing about the...

his article ('Why I'm off, 13 September). I too was the vic- tim of administrative anarchists and over- crowded seminars. Fortunately, and thank- fully, I just missed...

Andrew Neil and the Barclays are after the Independent. To my surprise, I hope they get it STEPHEN GLOVER S trong papers evolve, weak ones keep on relaunching themselves. On...

Great expectations disappointed Philip Hensher JACK MAGGS by Peter Carey Faber, £15.99, pp. 328 J ack Maggs is something of a disappoint- ment, but the reader's disappointment...

A choice of over 100,000 books — including those reviewed in this issue Telephone 0541 557288 Facsimile 0541 557225 E-mail: telegraph@ms.ftech.co.uk We accept payment by...

Patrick Skene Catling THE MIRACLE STRAIN by Michael Cordy Bantam, £9.99, pp. 364 R oald Dahl wrote a short story called `The Great Automatic Grammatizator' about an electronic...

Anthony Howard ONE HELL OF A GAMBLE: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali John Murray, £25, pp. 420 T he tale of the...

William Whiteley Was known as 'the Universal Provider' — and quite rightly. At short notice he once supplied A halberd, a bird-eating spider, and an ophicleide. James Michie

P. J. Kavanagh THE MAGICIAN'S WIFE by Brian Moore Bloomsbury, £15.99, pp. 215 h e country and date are specified: France, 1856. A young married woman lays down her sewing to...

Dot Wordsworth LANGUAGE IS POWER: THE STORY OF STANDARD ENGLISH AND ITS ENEMIES by John Honey Faber, £8.99, pp. 298 A couple of years ago Sir Ron Dearing, the man in charge of...

David Profumo IZAAK WALTON: SELECTED WRITINGS edited by Jessica Martin Carcanet, f9.95, pp. 204 W hen he died in his 90th year Walton was known as the author of what we might...

Are you ready for Marivaux? The French Theatre Season in London is about to begin. Michael Ratcliffe reports ‘s ince this is supposed to be a working lunch,' said the...

Giulio Cesare (Royal Opera, Barbican) A rude shock Michael Tanner H andel's Giulio Cesare is the most popular of his opere serie, and usually it isn't difficult to tell why....

Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery Major impression Martin Gayford talks to John Wonnacott about his portrait of the former prime minister T here are problems about...

The future of Scottish Ballet is assured — for now — but at a cost. John Parry reports T he Scottish Arts Council's threat to cancel the funding of Scottish Ballet (Arts, 2...

Playhouse Creatures (Old Vic) The Censor (Ambassadors) The Prince of West End Avenue (Hampstead) Backstage revolution Sheridan Morley P layhouse Creatures is a wonderful...

Where's the chemistry? Mark Steyn n My Best Friend's Wedding, Julia Roberts looks fabulous in a big way — big hair, big eyes, big lips, big teeth, big nose, big everything,...

Feeling over reason Michael Vestey T he BBC, in its wisdom, has just sent me a marketed collection of broadcasts by one of its foreign correspondents, Fergal Keane, entitled...

People power James Delingpole I t's a bit of a clumsy title, The Nazis, A Warning From History (BBC 2, Wednes- day), and at first I thought it was another example of the BBC...

Leave it alone Robin Oakley V enerability does not always add charm and attraction. The American soci- ety hostess Alice Roosevelt Longworth in advanced old age used to sit on...

Jeff remembered Alexander Chancellor The following is the address delivered at the funeral of Jeffrey Bernard. Alexander Chan- cellor was the editor under whom Jeff began his...

Carry on climbing Taki Gstaad The brilliant weather — cool, sunny and crystal clear — has helped lift every- one's depression. Last week, in neighbour- ing Lenk, I managed to...

Holiday talk Leanda de Lisle h at a mean old bag I was, you must have all thought, writing about fishing the week Jeffrey Bernard died. The thing is I had sneaked off to...

Vanishing trick Andrew Robson The stakes are high at London's TGR club — occasionally they are as high as £200 a hundred. Before you rush to join them, watch the technique of...

More reasonable with age Auberon Waugh T o my amazement, I discovered that the last Spectator Wine Club offer from Berry Bros was nearly nine years ago, in 1988. It was all...

c/o Berry Bros & Rudd Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hants RG21 6YB Tel: (01256) 323566 Fax: (01256) 340106 Code White I. 89301 1996 Doornberg Steen Price No. Value (Breede...

extraordinary saint that his fellow Christians could scarcely cope with him (no pun intended). As a child he was clumsy and found it hard to learn; at 17 he wanted to become a...

SIMPSON'S IN-THE-STRAND CHESS SIMPSON'S IN-THE-STRAND Nunn pareil Raymond Keene IN IN FORMER times grandmaster Dr John Nunn established himself as one of the world's most...

I ISLE OF iU RA ;SILL 10,115(010.1115E1 COMPETITION i A 51, St Y 11.1 SC07(11 , 551551 Millennial madness Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 2000 you were invited to report,...

A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1991 Port for the first correct solution opened on 6 October, with two runners-up prizes of £20 (or, for UK...

Acceding to 'people power', I invite you to supply a report by the late Jeff Bernard written from Another Place (maximum 150 words). Entries to 'Competition No. 2003' by 2 October.

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Those heroic, farcical Scots Simon Barnes AS SCOTLAND merrily votes aye, aye, so news comes in from the football fields of Europe that they are on the point of quali- fying...

Dear Mary. . . Q. An architect friend is engaged upon the restoration of an old coach house for which he had occasion to meet a structural engi- neer on site in my absence....