been slaughtered, 540,000 awaited slaughter and 419,000 carcasses awaited disposal; there had been 1,344 outbreaks. More than a million sheep and lambs, some starving in mud but...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 020-7405 1706; Fax 020-7242 0603 LAND OF THE FEE F ew spectacles have been more depressing, for parents, than the...

BRUCE ANDERSON A ccording to the latest polls, about half the public are satisfied with the way the government has handled the foot-andmouth epidemic. They must be easy to...

I arrived at Madrid airport, a traveller from an unclean land. A notice, written in English, blocked the way: Anyone arriving from the United Kingdom, because of the dangers of...

MATTHEW PAR RIS T here can hardly be a thinking person in Britain who has not, over the last few weeks, thought again about eating meat. For me the pause for reflection began...

The Tory party is not quite daft enough to start a feud a few weeks before an election; Peter (Thorne reveals that the Portillo—Clarke axis was dreamt up by a failed...

A READER from Munster (in Germany, not Ireland) with the pleasantly reduplicative name of Attwood-Wood has suddenly written to me to ask if Sir Peregrine Worsthome was...

Peter Mullen, an Anglican priest, says that memorial services have plumbed new depths of banality MEMORIAL services are not what they used to be in the City of London. Not...

Turkey's woes have been caused by a desire to be respectable in the eyes of Brussels, says Norman Stone Ankara FOR the past year and more, the IMF has regularly been in Ankara....

Mark Steyn on the humbug of the liberal campaign against George W's tax cuts New Hampshire THE search for victims of George W. Bush's '$1.6 trillion tax cut for the rich'...

THE 'triumph' of science, particularly genetics, has again raised the issue of a purely materialistic, and therefore godless, world. The argument is nothing new. In his life of...

Nigel Farage can't believe that the Conservative party is serious in its opposition to a European superstate THE day I became an MEP, a Tory friend said to me, 'You're making...

Jonathan Freedland says that traditional conservatives are increasingly disturbed by US materialism GEORGE W. Bush won't be surprised to learn that he has won few friends on...

A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit MPs' attempts to ingratiate themselves with yoof culture may have given the impression that the teenager's clumsy and...

Robert Baker says that even if the pharmaceutical companies gave their drugs away Africa would still be ravaged by Aids THE South African President, Thabo Mbeki, is right to...

And does it matter? PAUL JOHNSON M ost writers have the egotism of actors with none of the good looks or charm.' I say, I say: is that true? The author of the quote was...

From Mr Joe Haines Sir: I buy The Spectator for the quality of its writing. It is a literary oddity that reactionaries make the best writers. However, I gave up reading Bruce...

From Mr David Watkins Sir: You are mistaken (Leading article, 14 April). The discovery of Christ's body might benefit Judaism, but certainly not Islam, any more than proof that...

From Mr John R. Holiday Sir: My earliest memory (aged two) is of being bombed, so I am at least as interested as Franz Metzger (Letters, 7 April) in `no more wars within...

As the cabinet minister responsible for agricultural matters in the South African province of KwaZulu/Natal, I have to correct the statements on foot-and-mouth disease by...

From Jane Davies Sir: The photograph of the mud-spattered, exhausted winner of this year's Grand National appears to have upset Simon Barnes (Sport. 14 April). Neither jockeys...

From Mr Paul Giles Sir: John Major takes Alastair Campbell to task for describing comprehensive schools as 'bog-standard' (`Vote Labour — if you want to be ruled by lies', 7...

From Mr Bruce Leeming Sir: Tim Luckhurst ('Scotland the terrified', 14 April) makes the Englishman's typically wrong deduction from his experiences in Scotland about the...

From Mr Marshall Billot Sir: Peter Mandelson is correct ('What Hague must do now', 14 April). The Tories have not provided effective opposition, thereby enabling the Labour...

From Mr Michael McMahon Sir: The answer to the question posed at the head of Paul Johnson's column 'What would Shakespeare have said of the footand-mouth mess? (And another...

From Mrs Jennifer Miller Sir: Re Stephen Glover's 'The Countess yielded to blackmail and behaved like a chump; conspiracy theorists are in heaven' (Media studies, 7 April)....

not get any more disgusting. . . STEPHEN GI OVER M uch ink has been spilt concerning the News of the World's entrapment of the Countess of Wessex. But, so far as 1 can gather,...

Philip Hensher THE WAR AGAINST CLICHÉ by Martin Antis Cape, £20 ,pp. 352 ISBN 0224050591 C ritic' is a title of honour, heavy with implications of eminence, and not a plain...

Robert Kee THE COLDITZ STORY by P. R. Reid Cassell Military Paperbacks, £6.99, pp. 222, ISBN 0304358126 Y ou do not need to be a prisoner of war to want from time to time to...

Grey Gowrie DOWN THE HIGHWAY: THE LIFE OF BOB DYLAN by Howard Sounes Doubleday, £17.99, pp. 527, ISBN 0385601255 F ive years ago, Bob Dylan was a contender for the Nobel...

Raymond Carr PHILIP V OF SPAIN by Henry Kamen Yale, £25, pp. 283, ISBN 0300087187 K ings and queens, in those European states where they survive as heads of state, are now...

pop muse-biz Julie Burchill BLACK VINYL, WHITE POWDER by Simon Napier-Bell Ebuty Press, 116.99, pp. 390, ISBN 0091869927 h ere is something of Oscar Wilde about Simon...

Frank Johnson HALL OF MIRRORS by David Sinclair Century, £16.99, pp. 324, ISBN 0712683895 T he author intends The Hall of Mirrors as metaphor as well as place. It is the great...

Anita Brookner STRAIT IS THE GATE by Andre Gide, translated by Dorothy Bussy Penguin Modem Classics, £6.99, pp. 128, ISBN 0141185244 A ndre Gide died 50 years ago, after a...

John Fowles THE AURELIAN LEGACY by Michael A. Salmon Harley Books, Martins, Great Horkesley, Colchester, Essex CO6 4AH Tel: 01206271216, £30, pp. 432, ISBN 0946589402 THE...

Jane Gardam THE RAM IN THE WELL by June Knox-Mawer John Murray; £16.99, pp. 223, ISBN 0719555876 A t first I wondered if this was going to be just another love-song to the...

Rupert Christiansen I THOUGHT OF DAISY by Edmund Wilson University Press of Iowa, £10.95, pp. 278, ISBN 0877457697 W e all know that novelists draw on their own experience, and...

Charles Allen THE 0 1 1ER AMONG US by James Williams Tierce' S.B. Publishing, 2 Mill Wallc, Wheathampstead, Herts AL4 8 DT, Tel: 01582 832182, £26, pp. 184, ISBN 0953200221 F...

Tim Congdon DID THINGS GET BETTER? by Polly Toynbee and David Walker Penguin, £6.99, pp. 273, ISBN 0141000163 T he fashionable answer to the question 'what were the effects of...

Judith Keppel THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ALLUSIONS edited by Andrew Delahunty et al OUP, £15.99, pp. 576, ISBN 0198600313 F ascinated though I am by learning the derivations of...

Anton Chekhoi A fter we had finished the punch, our parents murmured a few words to each other and left us alone. 'Go ahead!' my father whispered to me on his way out. 'Say...

In times of crises, Harry Eyres believes we should remember this mighty poet T he condescending statement introducing Blake's illustrations to his poem 'Milton' in the recent...

Revitalising talent Gavin Stamp F ew of us, I suspect, had ever heard of Grozny before the dreadful events in Chechnya over the last decade brought it notoriety. It was...

Stuart Nicholson F rance has occupied a rather ambivalent position in jazz. Despite producing the most important non-American jazz musician in the history of the music (Django...

The cad v. the stiff Mark Steyn F or a few weeks a couple of years back, I used to come on top of Bridget Jones in the Saturday Telegraph — that's not a kinky sex act, I...

Victorian shocker Sheridan Morley A n open drain: a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty deed done publicly.' 'Unutterably offensive; an abominable piece.' A repulsive and...

Ursula Buchan I cannot be the only person for whom a 'gap year' between school and university has opened up unsuspected, but very welcome, opportunities. I don't mean my gap...

Michael Vestey I was rather pleased when Helen Boaden, the controller of Radio Four, announced that she was bringing back a children's programme, admitting that her...

Simon Hoggart S o two weeks ago I was going on about how much good stuff there is on television, and then along comes Dog Eats Dog (BBC 1). This game show combines all the...

Alan Judd F or sufferers of compulsive car buying syndrome there are few more mortifying marks of decay than the discovery that one can no longer read Exchange & Mart or...

Robin Oakley T he Americans do worry so, don't they? In Lambourn the other day an American couple were due to view a cottage for sale. But so alarmed were they by the signs...

Talu T New York he bloom having gone off her ugliness, Barbra Streisand is suddenly a very unhappy female. She can no longer crash in the Lincoln Bedroom, the draft-dodging...

Jeremy Clarke I n a couple of months time, I'm to take part in a Radio Four programme called A Good Read. All I have to do is nominate a favourite book then discuss it on air....

Simon Barnes I WILL not be running the London Marathon this year. That makes it the 21st London Marathon in a row that I have managed not to run; a 100 per cent record. It's...

and surely unhealthy practice of reading newspapers in the lavatory? Some of my office colleagues retire to the cubicle for an inordinate amount of time with the office...

against a new social problem. Conversation with some of the most glamorous men I know has become frustrating since, most having been Shooting Hoorays in their youth, a lot of...

D.M.C.C., Notfolk A. No, I can suggest a traditional one. All you need is a length of wood, a length of rope and a drill to knock up your own swing. If your godchild's parents...