John Prescott addresses his captive audience on the car radio M r John Prescott, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, presented a White Paper...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 0171-405 1706; Fax 0171-242 0603 EXTINCT PADDY F or most citizens of advanced industri- alised societies, natural...

The Tories who want to follow the Cross of St George BRUCE ANDERSON M r Blair's recent visit to Scotland was a failure. He set out to placate the Scots, but only succeeded in...

DAVID WELCH I walked through Hyde Park the other morning and passed the big, spreading, pendulous beech tree there. It is only 20 feet high but 50 feet across and its branches...

On hearing a Mandelson overture FRANK JOHNSON M ost of us would have been surprised to learn, as a result of the 'cash for access' affair, that there is a second Mendelsohn...

ABOUT BRITAIN' Vicky Ward on why, in American bookshops, Britannia unexpectedly rules the shelves New York SIX MONTHS AGO I had lunch with a friend, a New York literary...

Sue Cameron reports from a Whitehall on the brink of war between its two great powers SIR TERRY Burns is said to have taken with him two gifts when he relinquished the...

Alan Duncan on why a released paedophile must not be driven from his constituency 'EXCUSE me, but do you mind if I leave a dangerous wild animal in your garden? It hasn't...

'I THOUGHT you said you were going to take it up and put tiles down,' said my husband annoyingly. He was talking about the carpet in the downstairs lavatory, a sanctuary for a...

Mark Steyn says Senator Kennedy's proposed law would actually make blacks attack blacks in preference to attacking whites New Hampshire A COUPLE of years back, Al Gore was in...

ON my way to the ward last week I reflected — as I often do — on the fallen state of man. Given the nature of my contact with the human race, this is scarcely surprising. Is...

Stephan Shakespeare defies the general view that state schools need more money IN THE CITY of London there is a little state primary school that has all the resources it could...

Walking among the mountains of God and listening to their voices PAUL JOHNSON Y ou can't beat mountains for turning your thoughts to God. It is a fact that those lucky enough...

HIS bank does not say so. It does not say anything much except that nothing has yet been decided. Three new directors have just come on board and the others are get- ting to...

CITY life is full of hazards as it is. At any moment I may be flattened by a scooter messenger, or bite on a bad piece of smoked salmon, or have my arm twisted or my ear bent or...

THE search is on for a new Sleazefinder- General. Sir Gordon Downey, the first man in this ghastly job (the headhunters would rather we called him the Parliamentary Ombudsman)...

OUR motorways are one of those British institutions so much envied — like Lloyd's, the BBC and the National Health Service — that nobody has dared to copy them. They are and...

THERE is talk of a caretaker who would keep NatWest's chair warm for him, but that would only make Saturday come round more often. The world of banking is in flux, its barriers...

Saturday keeps catching up with the board of the National Westminster Bank CHRISTOPHER FILDES T aking time off from his latest Savoy opera, Gilbert wrote a letter of complaint...

Sir: In spite of Alfred Sherman's cautious attempts to make it appear innocuous (Books, 11 July), Mark Mazower's book Dark Continent is a Marxist-Stalinist tract. It is also...

Sir: I know Matthew Parris (Another voice, 18 July) feels very bitter about all things British (to grow up in Eoka-era Cyprus and reach adulthood as a Rhodesian must have been a...

Sir: Mr Vines may have paid attention in his Latin lessons, even enjoyed them (Letters, 4 July). While considering myself reasonably educated, I have to admit that I and many...

your use of 'media' as a singular noun. 'The American media, says Mark Steyn, is [sic] instinctively protective . . . ' (`The rude truth', 4 July). To his credit, Mr Steyn,...

Sir: Derek Draper states (Diary, 18 July), 'Done competently and ethically, lobbying is an aid to democracy.' As the lobbyist's services are generally only available to those...

Sir: Surely Paul Johnson's 'I hold no partic- ular brief for Ms Hurley: she is a girl one occasionally chats to at parties' (And another thing, 18 July) must be one of the most...

Sir: What is this fixation The Spectator seems to have about Simon Blow and the Tennants (Books, 18 July)? After (yet another) three columns of blather last week I still don't...

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columnists in English-lan- guage journalism and some of them stoop, as he says, to personal abuse that is igno- rant, nasty, queasy-making and brutal. His 18 July column is all...

Sir: Mark Corby (`Israel as Crusader', 11 July) gives the impression that Islam has occupied Palestine since time immemorial with transient interruptions by Crusaders and now by...

A desperate joint venture Raymond Carr EVERYBODY WAS SO YOUNG by Amanda Vaill Little, Brown, £22.50, pp. 470 G erald and Sara Murphy rate an entry in the Encyclopaedia...

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12 Months 6 Months (52 issues) (26 issues) UK CI £97.00 0 £49.00 Europe CI £109.00 CI £55.00 USA CI US$161 CI US$82 Australia 0 Aus$225 0 Aus$113 Rest of World 0 £119.00 0...

Jonathan Keates LORD BYRON'S JACKAL: A LIFE OF EDWARD TRELAWNY by David Crane HatperCollins, £19.99, pp. 398 B ook reviewers are damned for ever in the celebrated definition of...

James Delingpole AMERICA - by Joe Queenan Picador, £6.99, pp. 195 I was going to say that Joe Queenan is the funniest American writer since P. J. O'Rourke but then I changed my...

BookoftheWee Lord Byron's Jackal A Life of Edward John Trelawny by David Crane Lord Byron's Jackal is not a biography in the conventional sense. It is biography and travel...

Richard Shone MISTRESS OF MONTMARTRE: A LIFE OF SUZANNE VALADON by June Rose Richard Cohen Books, £25, pp. 284 41 have never betrayed anything that I believed in,' declared...

Alfred Sherman UNCOMMON PEOPLE: RESISTANCE, REBELLION AND JAZZ by Eric Hobsbawm Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 360 P ofessor (Emeritus) Eric Hobsbawm was recently made a Companion of...

Carole Angier THE NOTEBOOKS OF DON RIGOBERTO by Mario Vargas Llosa Faber, £15.99, pp. 259 W hen is pornography not pornogra- phy? When it is well written, Mario Vargas Llosa...

Frederick Forsyth LEGACY L egacy is Murray Smith's fourth thriller- novel, he having come late to the novelist's game after years as a successful screen- and script-writer....

Charlotte Moore WHY MEN DON'T IRON by Anne and Bill Moir HarperCollins, £12.99, pp. 276 h is book offers scientific support for all you ever thought about the human race but...

Robert Powell-Jones WAY TO GO by Alan Spence Phoenix House, £12.99, pp. 293 B izarre funerals have been explored by Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One, Jessica Mitford in The...

Anthony Daniels MASKS: BLACKNESS, RACE AND IMAGINATION by Adam Lively Chatto, £20, pp. 295 T here may be a subject upon which it is more difficult to write dispassionately than...

Philip Manse! THE FRENCH AND THEIR REVOLUTION by Richard Cobb, edited by David Gilmour John Murray, £14.95, pp. 471 R ichard Cobb, who died in 1996, first became famous as a...

Mixing business with pleasure Robin Wight on the importance of corporate support for the arts T en days ago you could have been kid- napped (with your consent) by the radical...

Bernini Scultore (Galleria Borghese, Rome, till 20 Sept) Celebrating in style Martin Gayford T he behaviour of travellers in modern Rome closely mimics that of mediaeval pil-...

W atching American Ballet Theatre's hugely enjoyable new production of Le Corsaire at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, it was difficult to believe this was the same...

Business as usual Robin Holloway I can't resist a positive riposte to the dying fall of pessimism which closes Michael Tanner's piece a fortnight ago on the terminal (as he...

Stefan Behnisch (Bristol Architecture Centre, till 14 August, closed Mondays) High-risk strategy Alan Powers T he docks at Bristol are not a long dis- tance from the city,...

Dinner (Barbican) Oklahoma! (National) So what's new? Sheridan Morley R ight then, there's a bright golden haze on the meadow, the corn is as high as an elephant's eye, and...

The Gingerbread Man (15, selected cinemas) Multi-layered hokum Mark Steyn I happened to be in a public library in Canada when a woman came in and asked for The Gingerbread...

Roses, roses, all the way Ursula Buchan It was hard to imagine what had pos- sessed the RNRS to let us hacks loose for a couple of hours in early July and, on the strength of...

Capriccio (Glyndebourne) Missing in action Michael Tanner E very now and then I come across an opera lover who has no time for Carmen, something I find incomprehensible. Even...

Split personality Michael Vestey T he summer wine and food section in last week's Spectator was a delightful and civilised read. There was Katie Dashwood describing how thinly...

Passing the buck Edward Heathcoat Amory T he performing arts, from the high ground of opera, to lower slopes of ballet, to the modernist mean-streets of film and finally to...

Old-fashioned standards Robin Oakley R d I been invited at Lingfield the pre- vious week to judge the best-turned-out filly, it would have been easy. She had two legs, not...

Besotted again Taki hat was it that Papa called Paris in his paean to the city? Something about a moveable feast, I believe, and about being a mistress that never grows old....

A matter of counting Leanda de Lisle T here are 17 people who count in this house, and to say I am intimate with all of them is the understatement of the century. I grant you...

Long is strong Andrew Robson 'EIGHT tricks plus a long suit equals nine' is certainly an accurate motto when declar- ing 3NT. Running a long suit usually gives the defence a...

two-line head John Morgan IN the Sixties, when I was a small child, it became a tradition in our family that the first strawberries of the season were always served on my...

Cary Grant and other stars Auberon Waugh LAY & WHEELER have come up with an offer which includes three stars — numbers 3, 4 and 5. This is a very rare achievement by any of...

cio Lay & Wheeler Limited 117 Gosbecks Road, Colchester, Essex CO2 9JIT Tel: (01206) 764446 Fax: (01206) 560002 White Rio Claro Sauvignon Blanc 1997, Price No. Value...

AT THE HEIGHT of the Tory 'sleaze' scandals, when wodges of cash were flying around Westminster in brown envelopes, I had lunch with one of John Major's minis- ters. Within...

Midsummer madness Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 2043 you were invited to write an acrostic poem, key phrase 'midsummer madness', and rele- vance was requested. The World Cup,...

Marked man Raymond Keene MARK HEBDEN is my outside tip for the Smith & Williamson British Chess Cham- pionship which starts on Monday 27 July at the Riviera Centre in Torquay....

A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Six Grapes Port for the first correct solution opened on 10 August, with two runners- up prizes of £20 (or, for UK solvers, the...

R nicrormina N , ArrlenCIEld 1 1111 andm A H 11 A P ce am Ori .LYE Flori E . donned mum 13 111 ellarrEMIMMII MIR Der N Gnu T 0A 0 la drill No an II 0 T prid...T....

the pre- miere of a musical (libretto by the Norwe- gian Oystein Wilk) which features songs and dances by famous dead thinkers, including Kierkegaard, Hegel and Freud. You are...

Great expectations Simon Barnes OF COURSE we don't actually believe it, but belief is not necessary. Potential is greater, nobler, more beautiful, more exhil- arating than...

Q. I live in a very small village where peo- ple remain offended for several decades by real or perceived slights. And now I face a very serious problem indeed. An acquain-...