Big Bang resident Samora Machel of Mozambi- que, and senior members of his govern- Ment, were killed when their aircraft crashed into a remote hillside just within South...

DO YOU TRUST THE BBC? T he BBC's decision to apologise for its Panorama programme, 'Maggie's Militant Tendency', and to drop its defence of the programme in a libel action in...

THE destruction by Bengali Muslims with chain-saws of the panelled and galleried interior of a former chapel of 1743 in Spitalfields, a remarkable Georgian district elsewhere...

How Mrs Thatcher makes the rich pay more taxes FERDINAND MOUNT M y nomination for Own Goal of the Year goes to Mr Frank Field, the independent-minded Labour MP for Birkenhead....

31 October

PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE I t is David Selbourne, it seems to me, who has behaved badly, not Ruskin Col- lege. Ruskin College is funded by the trade union movement and its students...

Poor journalists, torn between the claims of bossiness and business AUBERON WAUGH M r Humphrey Brooke, the 72-year- old former Secretary of the Royal Academy, is to be found...

Since Chernobyl, fear of nuclear power has grown. But how real are the dangers? And can Britain afford THE week after Chernobyl, I went to the tiny, overcrowded, poor and...

death of a ruler who bankrupted his country Johannesburg AMONG the wreckage of the plane in which Samora Machel was killed, South African rescue workers discovered a Portu-...

Christopher Hitchens surveys the American government's addiction to falsehood Washington THE straightest man in the Reagan admi- nistration is undoubtedly Mr George Shultz. He...

Profile: the Bishop of London, embattled traditionalist BY THE time this profile appears, Dr Graham Leonard, Bishop of London, may be in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He will not, however,...

William Deedes examines what the principal actors did during the Suez crisis IN a whopping political crisis like Suez, which ran for the last six months of 1956, the silliest...

had thought at the end of October 1956 that the summer-long crisis over Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal was virtually over. After all, the barman at the Semiramis...

The Suez crisis meant different things to a schoolboy, a BBC correspondent and a midshipman IN THE fateful autumn I was aged 13 and three-quarters, and was in form 2b of a...

the only truly brave utterance of my life. Like most brave acts, it was not of course at all consciously brave at the time, just completely spontaneous. We were riding — at...

The Spectator and the Sunday Telegraph are looking for promis- ing young writers. So if you are imaginative, resourceful and under 25, here is a unique oppor- tunity to write an...

THE City, like an American academy, has the knack of declaring something to be an immemorial tradition with effect from Tuesday of last week. The historic trading floor (on...

THE best eve-of-battle course for our troops, and certainly the best tonic for their nerves, was to be found in (of all places) Florence. There, last week, the financial...

Now, boys, light the blue touch-paper and stand close CHRISTOPHER FILDES M y friend the stockjobber closed his book, turned his back on his pitch, and walked with me off the...

Sir: I was most interested in Paul Johnson's feature 'An Iron Duke for the BBC' in the Spectator (10 October) in which he com- mented on the implications of Mr Duke Hussey...

Sir: This observation, quoted by Dr G. Gordon CouIton in his Mediaeval Panor- ama, was made in 1366 and is contained in the records of the Halmote Rolls of Durham: Football was...

Sir: Charlie Chaplin never carried an umbrella in any of his films; why should he need one in Leicester Square? Christopher Webb 27 Park Road, East Molesey, Surrey

Sir: I was interested to read in the 13 September issue your quotation of a report of British Association proceedings of Sep.tember 1886. Dr Michael Foster described the...

Sir: Let no printer's errors mar Grosart's memory now that P. J. Kavanagh and I have laboured to restore it (Letters, 13 September). Grosart edited and published not 30 but over...

Sir: A propos Ferdinand Mount on infla- tion: Germany once had a political head who placed sound money above all else. His name was Heinrich Bruning, Reich Chancellor 1930-1932....

Sir: Rebuking you for publishing an article with 'so many errors' as mine on the Archaeopteryx ructions, Adrian Berry (4 October) claims that my principal mistake 'is to assume...

Sir: Have you noticed, as I have, the incredible difference between Mr Ronald 'moral outrage'. . . pitcher of spit' Spark of Rottingdean (Letters, 11 October) and old Ronny...

The purr of escaping cats Peter Levi THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY 1971-1980 edited by Lord Blake and C. S. Nicholls O. U.P, £60 N o one is really qualified to review...

Nigel Dempster INSIDE PRIVATE EYE by Peter McKay 4th Estate, £9.95 I n a decade a new generation will be puzzled as their elders reminisce about the great years of Private...

Anita Brookner The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings, 1968-1985 by Germaine Greer Picador, f9.95 G ermaine Greer is like Delacroix's Liberty, whom she...

Christopher Booker THE HARVEST OF SORROW: SOVIET COLLECTIVISATION AND THE TERROR FAMINE by Robert Conquest Hutchinson, £16.95 F or the past 40 years we have lived with the...

David Caute WRITING AGAINST: A BIOGRAPHY OF SARTRE by Ronald Hayman Weidenfeld & Nicolson, .04.95 W riting a full-scale biography worthy of Sartre is a prodigious undertaking:...

Ludovic Kennedy TRIAL AND ERROR by Robert Kee Hamish Hamilton, £10.95 S everal years ago I was invited by a BBC Television producer to read the papers relating to the trial...

Jonathan Raban SAILING WITH MR BELLOC by Dermod MacCarthy CollinslHarvill, £12.00 A . N. Wilson's biography of Hilaire Belloc was excellent, I thought, in all respects but one:...

Robert O'Brien enjoys himself at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature C heltenham is a wonderful circus for the writer as performing flea. Still under the genial presiding...

Fashion Wet and dry John Thackara T his autumn's fashion shows have com- pleted a remarkable counter-revolution in Britain's formerly innovative rag trade. Like hapless...

Frog in the throat Peter Phillips T Paris he list of great French singers is famously short. Of all the opera-loving European nations, France has failed to maintain a constant...

Ghosts (Young Vic) Largo Desolato (New Vic, Bristol) Plays of conscience Christopher Edwards T here is a fine production of Ghosts at the Young Vic. In part Ghosts is a...

Pirates ('PO' selected cinemas) Everything but the parrot Peter Ackroyd T here are costume dramas and costume dramas; some concentrate primarily upon the drama, like Marat...

Not in so many words Wendy Cope itten by a rabid skunk and fearing madness, a man chains himself to a beam in a barn to protect his familY. Then he realises that the farm is...

Youth training Noel Malcolm W ho would have thought that Top of the Form had so many friends and admir- ers? The news of its impending death has got enormous coverage in the...

Courting couple Taki I have a painful and terrible confession to make, and damn the consequences. I have finally come to the conclusion that I am an addict, and an incurable...

Unsavoury customs Jeffrey Bernard I still don't see why friends shouldn't be allowed to bet among themselves without interference from the Government, but never mind. The...

Universal aunties ' Alice Thomas Ellis W hile I was in Egypt I was offered a dish with the words 'If you're Welsh you're going to enjoy this.' This' was a glutinous green soup...

BRANDY for heroes, said Dr Johnson, but nowadays people might substitute han- govers. While more neutral spirits such as vodka and gin (or more neutral forms of these spirits —...

calls itself the 21st century café. And, in fact, this foreign body in London Wall (256 5148) seems just that. Despite the swelling angularity of the fashionably...

Sokolov's turn David Spanier A ndrei Sokolov, who now plays Kar- pov for the right to challenge the world champion next year, is a pretty good player. The question is: is he...

Danger: Men at Work Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1443 you were asked for extracts from the diary of a supersensi- tive lady who imagines that she is being 'sexually harassed'...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £12.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

You are invited to write a poem (maximum 16 lines) in honour of a film star of a bygone era. Entries to 'Competition No. 1446' by 7 November.

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