A ter six years the Government lifted the ban on broadcasting the voices of Sinn Fein's leaders. Sinn Fein's leader, Mr Gerry Adams, initially responded by saying noth- ing, but...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL MISS NATO 1994 cians were, with some relief, celebrating the `successful' selection of the new leader of the European...

The Gang of Four: just a fleeting boil on the Labour Party's great wobbly bottom BORIS JOHNSON A t last: after all those years, all that suffering, all the tears, the...

MARK AMORY W hen Ian Fleming wrote Atticus for the Sunday Times in the Fifties, he was offered a lot of advice by the superior liter- ary friends of his wife. Exasperated, he...

Lord Cholmondeley and Colin Stagg have more in common than their circumstances would indicate CHARLES MOORE L ast Sunday's Observer contained the following item towards the...

Prison doctor Theodore Dalrymple investigates the way in which murderers and violent criminals live happily with their consciences `AT TIMES I've felt like a battered hus-...

Richard Stengel explains why being accused of terrible crimes can be a positive social asset among America's coloured population New York AMONG the macabre jokes that made the...

Kevin Myers argues that his fellow Irishmen pretend to want union with the North but in reality are horrified by the prospect In Mountjoy gaol, one Monday morning, High upon a...

Michael Heath

Alasdair Palmer speaks to Sir Paul Condon, and a number of other angry policemen, about judges who set villains free IT SEEMED an open and shut case. The police caught two men...

I HAVE BEEN reading again with great pleasure Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Errours. His nicely modulated 17th-cen- tury prose abounds in latinate words,...

Make sure of your copy of The Spectator every week by asking your local newsagent to save or deliver it. Complete the form below and hand it to your newsagent Please...

Frank Keating talks to R.E.S. Wyatt, Jardine's henchman on the notorious `bodyline tour' and still as combative as ever THE 1994 cricket season will be logged in the game's...

In the latest in our series on the English spirit of his Suffolk roots A YELLOW sun edges above the horizon and cuts a glittering path over the still sea, to where the...

THE IRREGULARITY OF ENGLISH FIELDS. [TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."' Sir, — Mr. Austin, in his charming "Haunts of Ancient Peace — II," in the Spectator of September 15th,...

Why all of us should observe the Eleventh Commandment of Karl Popper PAUL JOHNSON p hilosophers have not been of much use to us in this century. Ideally, a philosopher ought...

NOW SEE what happens. Bang goes my idea that the police should charge Sean O'Semtex not with trying to blow up Canary Wharf but with conspiring to defraud its insurers. The...

THE OCCUPATIONAL Pensions Board is troubled (as I was saying) by what it calls inappropriate references, mostly from peo- ple who are worried about their occupa- tional...

THE AVERAGE shareholders' meeting is about as much fun as Good Friday in Athlone, the dead centre of Ireland, with the pubs shut. Tiphook's meeting promised sport, if only from...

Detective inspectors look for evidence against Colin Stagg and Ernest Saunders CHRISTOPHER FILDES I suppose that Ernest Saunders is enti- tled to the same rights at law as...

ANYONE confused by Mr Clinton's latest policy may like to know that it derives from Ronald Firbank, the fantastical novelist. Firbank, who corresponded on powder-blue postcards,...

Sir: I am not sure about Paul Johnson's analysis of women and their rights (And another thing, 10 September). He argues that God made women the moral superiors of men. When did...

Sir: I am writing in response to Michael Moran's article (lies, damn lies and lep- rechauns', 17 September) , which discussed the Irish-American population, their sym- pathies...

Sir: The Archbishop of York states publicly that experiments on apes and other pri- mates are a matter for concern because the animals could have souls and go to heaven. We...

Sir: I was immensely pleased to read in Nigella Lawson's television review (Arts, 10 September), 'It took foreigners to broke the ceasefire...' She must be the only jour- nalist...

Sir: Your correspondents' discussion (Let- ters, 17 September) of Paul Johnson's whinge (And another thing, 3 September) about Richard Dawkins overlooks how Mr Johnson...

Sir; We don't need two 'Whys' in glorious, subtle English (Letters, 10, 17 September). We get round the problem with inflection and accent, thus: a) Why (por que) does he need a...

Sir: The reason Nigel Nicolson (Long life, 27 August) has no recollection of what grade he got in his A levels or their equiva- lent seems to be that the vulgar custom of...

Sir: Sir Charles Powell tells us CA funda- mental incompatibility, 3 September) that Lady Thatcher cast M. Pompidou's present of a globe into obscurity because it called the...

12 Months 6 Months UK Li £80.00 El £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £91.00 0 £46.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$130 0 US$66.00 USA Airmail n US$175 0 US$88 Rest of Airmail 0 £111.00 0 £55.50...

Sir: Jennifer Paterson's food pieces are all very well, but are tending, I would suggest, to become over-egged with Papism. We cannot eat indulgences or attend courses in Cordon...

Sir: I am a regular reader and subscriber and would like to say how much we enjoy The Spectator keeping us in touch with the unpleasant aspects of English life. A.M. King 39...

The centralising instinct of Mr Major and friends rots democracy. Read Tocqueville if you doubt it SIMON JENKINS A colleague of Harold Macmillan told of visiting him late one...

Such a strain Victoria Glendinning Th e literary editor of this journal tells me that in his callow youth, in Taos, he was befriended by a talkative old woman Frieda Lawrence,...

While they gambled for their clothes It was amusing. Soon he lost every last stitch. When they gambled for body privileges It was exciting Even when she won his last hair, to...

John Fowles AN AMERICAN SEAFARER IN THE AGE OF SAIL by B. it Burg Yale, £20, pp. 212 W hen I first opened this odd book with its distinctly curious subtitle (The Erotic Diaries...

Craig Raine THE LE !MRS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, VOLUME IV, 1782-1784 edited by Bruce Redford Clarendon, QS, pp. 462 'The testicle continues well,' writes Dr Johnson to his intimate...

Fiction: The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton, Penguin, £5.99 The High Flyer by Nicholas Shakespeare, Picador, £6.99 The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd, Penguin, £5.99 The Golden...

Frank Kermode CANDY IS DANDY: THE BEST OF OGDEN NASH selected by Linen Smith and Isabel Eberstadt Deutsch, £9.99, pp.407 I try to imitate him here, but he is probably quite...

David Cannadine COUNTRY HOUSE LIFE: FAMILY AND SERVANTS, 1815-1914 by Jessica Gerard Blackwell, £25, pp.384 A ccording to both John Major and Tony Blair, the big idea for the...

Alan Clark THE EXECUTIVE TART by Ginny Dougary Virago, £7.99, pp. 260 T here are many compliments of which Ms Dougary is deserving. Her resolute Political Correctness is not...

Stephen Spender JUVENILIA by W. H. Auden Faber, £25, pp. 320 A uden had some kind of inbuilt mental clock which, every moment of the day, told him what he should be doing or...

Anita Brookner VARIOUS MIRACLES by Carol Shields Fourth Estate, £9.99, pp. 243 C anadians travel well. In Paris they speak the French learned, perhaps, in Montreal, wear...

Max Egremont UMBRELLA hen a novel is said nowadays to have the characteristic of Englishness the description invariably carries at best a hint of condescension, more likely...

Julie Burchill THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE by Robert Evans Aurum, 116.95, pp. 412 I n the Twenties, Thirties, Forties and to some extent the Fifties, Hollywood was ruled by...

Dervla Murphy THE LOST HEART OF ASIA by Colin Thubron Heinemann, £16.99, pp. 375 Yes, they said, they were Yagnobski. They all spoke Sogdian in the home, young and old, and...

Moustached, beer-bellied, well able To carry a grudge with grace, He seemed like the perfect foreman - A carpenter easily assessing The grain of the men's mood, His rebuff, 'I...

John Osborne DENHOLM ELLIOTT: QUEST FOR LOVE by Susan Elliott, with Barry Turner Headline, £16.99, pp. 271 Q uite recently, I was rash enough to suggest that bisexuality was a...

Patrick Leigh Fermor I. THE GREEK STONES SPEAK `Metope with anyone?' `A mutule friend.' 'Arris? 'E's a regula guy! Won't admit him pediment.' `He'll abacus up?' `Well, he's...

DIARY 1995 £12 Plain £13 Initialled The Spectator 1995 Diary, bound in soft black leather, will shortly be available. Laid out with a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the...

Music Another European take over Peter Phillips blames the British character for the inept marketing of our music P erhaps it takes an outsider to see the wood for the trees,...

Tosca (London Coliseum) Tragic loss of direction Rupert Christiansen S ome people go crazy for Tosca, but I just find her infuriating. Can't stand the woman. Totally...

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lyric, Hammersmith) Sturm and Drang/Brighton Beach Scumbags (Riverside Studios, Hammersmith) The Hostage (Barbican) Wilde about Dorian Sheridan...

Gettysburg ('PG', selected cinemas) Colour of Night ('18', selected cinemas) Hair and muscle Mark Steyn W hen Raymond Massey played Abraham Lincoln, the joke around Broad-...

Final score Taki V itas Gerulaitis was partying like mad during his last night, and had taken pain killers for his bad back. Cocaine and pain killers are not a good...

Mertonisms for Mertonists Nigella Lawson W e don't need Danny Baker to tell us nostalgia is cool. In fact, having seen his new show last Saturday, I'm not sure we need Danny...

I am not Michael Foot Jeffrey Bernard F our or five years ago, I was sitting in the Groucho Club one afternoon wiling away the time with a vodka, when one of the few men I've...

Sissinghurst stripped Nigel Nicolson T he police advise you in their brochures never to tackle an intruder. If you hear movement below you in the mid- dle of the night, you...

L. October's three-day course for Grade 6 NHS Human Resource Facilitators on Disabled Employment Rights will be at Norton Manor, Wilts from the 16th to the 19th of that month....

Absolute crackers Auberon Waugh F or the first time in The Spectator Wine Club's 12-year existence, I have decided to make a serious effort to push some top-class fortified...

c/o County Wines, 3 Millrace Lane, Stourbridge, West Midlands DYB 1JN Tel: (0384) 441575 Fax: (0384) 373726 Price No. Value White 1. 2. Red 3. Gran Vina Sol Chardonnay 1993...

CHESS Double bill Raymond Keene AFTER HIS SETBACK in London against the computer, Kasparov immediately bounced back with a convincing demon- stration of his superiority in...

ISLE OF 11 VALI ',L0 101,510 ISLE OF i i +1‘LI: VAL:, 1 NUF A u RA Follow the van Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1848 you were invited to supply a song or a poem begin-...

You are invited to submit anagrams (maxi- mum three) of the full names of famous people, e.g. William Ewart Gladstone or Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. Entries to...

GRAHAM'S PORT CROSSWORD 1178: Rush-light by Mass A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 10 October,...

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Immortal lines Frank Keating THE FINAL surprise of September is to have unsung John Carr of Middlesex headi- ly top of the first-class batting averages. On merit too — 1,542...

Dear Mary.. . Your correspondent asks how to avoid sec- onding an unsavoury candidate for mem- bership of his club (10 September). The standard procedure is to say that you...