O ne of Britain's most famous Angli- cans, Mr John Selwyn Gummer, preached a sermon. He said that church leaders 'can no more pontificate on econ- omics than the Pope could...

Kinnock's Cop Out Book A s we know, Mr Neil Kinnock has such a full diary that he cannot manage to appear at any of the current NUM rallies. There are unbreakable dates with...

havin g to cut its television spendin g at once to keep within its bud g et for this year, the Corporation's steadfast refusal even to look at the possibility of carryin g...

a table in a bar near Olympic studios when a g roup of musicians took the other chairs. They were many and talkin g; I was brooding when a voice pushed throu g h my reflections,...

the last half-century the Guardian has had no Moscow correspondent. Since the depar- tur e of the great and g ood Malcolm Mug- gerid ge , the Guardian's reporting of Soviet...

son's notion that p ublications should be subject to VAT, the last people who should be preachin g about the importance of puttin g a low price on knowled g e are the...

T he An g lo-Irish Inter g overnmental Council summit, which finished on Monday, was as non-committal as it is Possible for such thin g s to be. Mrs Thatcher and Dr Fitz g erald...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £17.25 £17.25 f20.50 £26.50 One year: £34.50 £34.50 £41.00 E53.00 Name ..... ....... .. Address ......... ............ .......... US...

Right Reverend Pilgers Auberon Waugh perhaps it was only when Mr Scargill 1 started appealing to Church leaders to take his side that most people realised he was beaten. The...

Twenty-five or so years ago the political- -1- ly ambitious, or merely politically in- terested, Jew joined the Labour Party. There were naturally exceptions, who tended to be...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Managua U p in the mountains of Nicaragua peasants have been busy stockpiling sharp rocks and making bows and arrows in preparation for the Yang ui...

Charles Glass D'you think you'll bring the Sixth Fleet in?' Roger asked boldly, but Grant took the question in his stride. 7 doubt it,' he said with every appearance of...

Richard West Paris T he Paris newspapers know when they are on to a good thing like 'the Monster of the 18th Arrondissement', or 'moon maniac', who has so far killed nine...

Bohdan Nahaylo D uring the long-standing rift in Sino- Soviet relations, Peking has taunted the infuriated Moscow in more ways than one. The Chinese have not only assailed the...

'Town' was on Thursday greatly dis- appointed. The action brought by Miss • E. M. Finney, bearing the theatrical .name of Fortescue, against Lord Gar- moyle, eldest son of Earl...

Richard Bassett Vienna N ovember 1984 is likely to go down in Central European chronicles as the month in which Austria finally woke up to the unpleasant reality that even a...

Peter Paterson O f course, the drift back to work of the striking miners might have acceler- ated by the end of this week into the 'surge' predicted by the National Coal Board,...

Opening time I t was Reggie Maudling's ambition as Home Secretary to make the pubs open normally on Sundays. The secret was simple, he would say: 'All I need to do is to...

A business which can make a £1,198 million profit on total costs of £45 million is one that we should all be in. That (I was saying last week) is the banknote business, as...

A demo in the sacred Square Mile — whatever next? Answer, no doubt: another one. They have become quite familiar: miners marching through with bands and banners, or occasional...

S eoul is the singular choice for the ....,bankers' trade fair — officially, the International Monetary Fund meetings — next year. Already bankers are bobbing to and fro, on...

Semantic seams Sir: Where there are coal reserves which are very costly to mine the reason for this being so is invariably geological. The grotesquely uneconomic and the...

Sir: In Another voice (3 November), AO - eron Waugh highlighted my plight, and what must be the plight of numerous other students, who have had their doctoral theses rejected...

Sir: In your Notes (27 October), you refer to 'minor concessions' at Unesco. As these include a no-growth budget, concentrati on of programmes and over a hundred con' crete...

S ir: Auberon Waugh ends his review Tryin g to be funny' (Books, 10 Novem- ber) by thanking God for the Daily Tele- r aPh, to which may I add the Spectator. Roth, after all,...

Sir: Regarding the correspondence about Sibelius, Finn or Swede (10 November), I should like to make the following points. It is an occasional Swedish practice to adopt a...

Sir: What on earth possessed you (10 Nov- ember) to let Jeffrey Bernard loiter in America? Taki on his own is like horse- radish without the roast beef. J. E. Hok Middle Old...

Sir: In his review of John Martin Robin- son's book The Latest Country Houses Gavin Stamp is 'pleased' to repeat untrue and damaging statements made about Stratton Park by the...

Sir: It has taken me 11 years to arrive at a private position of faith and some certainty about religion in general and Christianity in particular. It is therefore...

Sir: Should Mr Watkins's hypothetical traitor ever be named (Diary, 17 Novem- ber), whether or not he has by then done the dastardly treachery he intends, will Auberon Waugh...

Sir: I enjoyed P.J. Kavanagh's report on the Cheltenham Festival of Literature (Postscript, 10 November), but I wouldn't ay that lengthy explanations of poems, as indulged in by...

The sin of pessimism Colin Welch I n Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, a New Yorker boasted: 'I've joined the war on poverty. This morning I shot a beggar.' Mrs Gandhi's...

The impeccable Neville J. Enoch Powell Neville Chamberlain David Dilks (Cambridge University Press £20) A fter the lapse of 44 years since Neville Chamberlain's death and 20...

Christiansen on Henry VIII Peter Levi on Somerset Maugham and food and wine books

Richard West Haile Selassie's War Anthony Mockler (Oxford £17.50) S oon after the fall of Prince Norodom , Sihanouk of Cambodia, I went off to Ethiopia, the only other country...

Francis King The Foreigner David Plante (Chatto. & Windus £9.95) God Knows Joseph Heller (Cape £8.95) D avid Plante's last book, Difficult Women, had a rough ride. No one...

The spell-binder Elizabeth Jennings Station Island Seamus Heaney (Faber £5.95, £2.95) E ven the vigour of language, the mas- Litery of subtle cadence and the easy engagement...

Peter Levi The Everyman Book of Light Verse Edited by Robert Robinson (Dent £12.95) S ome kinds of writing can be done at any time. The result is much the same in any mood,...

Michael Horovitz Stevie Smith: A Selection Edited by Hermione Lee (Faber £8.50, £3.50) On the Beach at Cambridge Adrian Mitchell (Allison & Busby £6.95, £3.50) N o one who...

Robin Bell Rich Craig Raine (Faber £5.95, £2.95) A ndrew Motion and Craig Raine are two young masters of the visual image who are themselves highly visible on the poetry...

Manners and morals Christopher Edwards The Way of the World (Theatre Royal, Haymarket) She Stoops to Conquer (National: Lyttelton) W hat changes took place in English manners...

Guardian man Peter Phillips T he reissue, in paperback, of Sir Neville Cardus's Autobiography this year (Hamish Hamilton £4.95) will give many people the opportunity to...

Gamesmanship Peter Ackroyd L'Amour Par Terre ('15', selected cinemas) C ometimes on Sunday evenings' (or so we are told) a small group of people tread softly into a Paris flat...

Good men Giles Auty Allan Walton (Sally Hunter & Patrick Seale till 30 November) Virginia Powell Prints (Maclean 28 November to 18 January) Terrick Williams Retrospective...

The opening sentence of Alistair Hicks's article on the Thyssen Collection in last !week's issue was wrongly punctuated. It ;should have read: :`I don't want to bribe people to...

Dining out Taki T don't know why, but everythin g about 1Princess Michael of Kent rubs me the wron g way. Perhaps it is because most of the pushy types I know – and I know too...

Perverse Alexander Chancellor I don't want to be a bore about this, but What is the point of puttin g on g ood televisio n pro g rammes – or any television Pflpgrammes, for...

Yanks Jeffrey Bernard Natchez, Mississippi A il Americans are tourists in their own auntry. The Russians can't afford to be and in the second biggest country in the world,...

Connections P. J. Kavanagh l verything connects. I was writing last iweek about the Birdlip Mirror, an Object of great beauty, two thousand years old, which was found near...

Ladykiller David Spanier w omen chess players are coming up in the world. The best are almost on equal terms with men; the second echelon is good enough to give most men a...

No. 1348: Frank James Set by Jaspistos: Hugh Kingsmill once lamented the fact that Frank Harris hadn't been helped by Henry James in the writing of his Autobiography. You are...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were given the two opening lines of Sir Henry New- bolt's 'Vital Lampada' and asked to con- tinue the cricket story in verse, but not necessarily...

'I. H BIE A E 2 g kilAFF 2A C 2 8ANG S T Ado N ila F AMIE A HO E iall E H R LIMIB LETAI OOPRANCI C I IrMATANENIALEIC NT . 'S L XII T S C OE 4 7 0 Cr TO I E A or EZI...

3 Rock's partner with ring and polo-neck (10) 4 Int France some carriage fo r prisoner (7) 5 Stinging organ brought back from abroad in cartons (5) 6 Woman's pads: doctor's...

Treasure Hunt Set by Caroline Moore The first prize is a pair of 18th century hand-coloured aquatints by Thomas and William Daniell illustrating views of India. Plus two...

the poor. Perhaps, from my hazy notion of Spec- tator readers, I should say the genteel poor but none the less genuinely poor for that. .Socialists implausibly identify poverty...

HUGH MILLER: 'My Schools, Schoolmasters'. C. Sutherland, 43 Friars Lane, Lincoln. DOUGLAS HYDE: 'Love Songs of Connacht'. R. Roe, 59 Wayletts, Basildon, Essex. C. S. FORESTER:...