A n IRA bomb outside an Army careers office in north London killed one sergeant and injured another. Police re- moved suspected terrorist guns from a car after a chase through...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 LABOUR'S PLASTIC ROSE T . he traditional role of the Opposition m...

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JONATHAN DIMBLEBY I had not intended to start here but the new editor of this magazine has played a prank on me and I must respond. After inviting me to do this Diary, Dominic...

Aesthetic plastic surgery is booming in America. Jonathan Sinclair Carey finds that many patients are quite cut up about surgeons who can't be taken at face value THIRTY...

IN his speech at Lowestoft on Saturday, Mr Gladstone capped completely his speeches of the previous day by saying that what is alleged concerning the atrocities of the...

Noel Malcolm explains why Rumanians voted to keep the communists in power Bucharest FOUR days before Rumania went to the polls, the regional headquarters of the National...

Princess Anne will find in the Soviet Union a new enthusiasm for royalty Stephen Handelman writes Moscow PRINCESS Anne's arrival in Moscow en route to Siberia — on Thursday...

James Bowman on the signals that hint at the intentions of the US President Washington TIME was when self-styled `Kremlinolog- ists' used to pore over photographs of the...

Zygmunt Zamoyski reports on the revolution and inflation in Polish life Poznan THE cost of writing to England has risen by ten times in the six months that I have been here...

David Frum reports on how anti-drugs laws make victims of innocent Americans New York THE 'war on drugs' — as Mr William Bennett's 1996 presidential campaign is known here —...

Vicki Woods on random drug-testing for schoolchildren DRUG-taking at public school is a hot topic around Sunday lunch-tables on weekend exeats this term. 'Seven boys at my...

Richard Lovelace on the spiritual poverty of the new slums I HAVE travelled quite widely, perhaps to 80 countries: except where there is famine, the worst poverty is in...

persist... LAST week I went to prison — not for correctional purposes but as an `expert', to determine whether there were ex- tenuating circumstances in a case of incestuous...

Philip Goodhart finds himself accused of trying to put deaf people in ghettoes A FEW days before the local elections I went canvassing on a housing estate a few hundred yards...

D. J. Taylor assesses the state of the comic, 50 years after George Orwell's attack on `Boys' Weeklies' COMICS are an incorrigible part of the child's view of the world, whoever...

The press: Paul Johnson on the Press Council and the Sun's vocabulary THE latest victory of the liberal fascists has been to scare the Press Council into a ruling forbidding...

London gets the Berd, but will it be a thinnifer or a fattifer? CHRISTOPHER FI LDES A n eminent central banker once ex- plained to me the difference between the International...

THE Treasury is justly proud of having coaxed the Berd to nest on our shores the first time that a major international agency has come here. Even so, Parisians living next to...

THERE are two ways of looking at the markets now — political, and financial. Mine is the financial view. The political view is on top, which is one reason why shares have had...

MY contribution to Chelsea Flower Show week is a new sequel for a classic City story Lionel de Rothschild addressing the City Horticultural Society. `No garden , however small,'...

of the United Kingdom by arguing from the particular opinion of the Northern Ireland councillor, Rhoda Paisley, whom he informs us `is against integration and regards Westmins-...

Sir: Noel Malcolm, in his EEC piece (Politics, 12 May), gives a somewhat opa- que definition of `subsidiarity'; I have always understood it to mean, `No higher authority shall...

Sir: Allan Massie's questioning of the present constitutional arrangements of the UK (`Stands Scotland Where It Did?', 12 May) hits many nails squarely on the head. Some of the...

Sir: I am not a regular reader of The Spectator but having heard comments by members of the crowd at Speakers' Corner about the article `Sixty Years on a Soap Box' in your issue...

Big fish, small pool Sir: Mr Simon Sebag-Montefiore was obviously sustained by mountainous pre- dilections when he interviewed me (`Con- servatism is not over,' 19 May), and I...

First, why nearly half a century ago, as a young Scot who came of age during the second world war, I wanted desperately to join the Indian Army, with which fine force I had the...

Sir: Where is Queen of The South (Specta - tor Sport, 12 May)? Dumfries is the Queen of The South. Dumfries is in Scotland. I am your Dumfries reader. D. A. Yerrill Cedar...

Sir: After Taki's dreadful apologia 'Some of my best friends are gay' piece, and Jeffrey Bernard's superb description of the Newmarket races (12 May), may I beg that the switch...

Sir: Those of us who pay rent have been paying rates for years. No landlord misses the opportunity to defray a rates bill through rents paid to them. Will tenants have to pay...

Sir: A somewhat belated (The Spectator takes time to reach this former out-post of Empire) comment on the 'One Hundred Years Ago' column in your issue of 21 April — the...

Sir: In his review of 'Poodle Springs' Mark Illis (19 May) writes that he believes that the join between Chandler's opening and Parker's continuation occurs around chap- ter 8....

19 May), it is not only Michael Heseltine who has been embarrassed by the much better than expected Conserva- tive election results. The BBC's On the Record programme (broadcast...

Turning caviar into bread Colin Welch THE ETHICS OF REDISTRIBUTION by Bertrand de Jouvenel Liberty Press, Indianapolis, $12, $5, pp. 99, also available at the Economists...

Each night, as he played patience she stood behind his shoulder. 'Jack on Queen', she would cry just before he spotted it himself. How was it, then, that she murdered him...

hero Anita Brookner HENRY JAMES AND EDITH WHARTON: LETTERS, 1900-1915 edited by Lyall H. Powers Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f25, pp. 412 I n 1909, overcome by a black depress-...

Anne Chisholm CHRISTINA STEAD: A LIFE OF LETTERS by Chris Williams Virago, £11.95, pp. 341 L ike her writing, Christina Stead, the Australian novelist who died aged 81 in...

Pick me up. Put me to your ear. No. The other way. Are you deaf? Now, you should be able to hear baton-taps and then the uncoiling clef of the old tunes, fury, fugue,...

John Henshall THE SUN by Frans Masereel Redstone Press, 7(a) Lawrence Terrace, London W10 5SU, boxed, £10.95, pp. 68 A the Academy of Fine Art at Ghent in Belgium in 1909, a...

Geoffrey Elton THE KING'S CARDINAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF THOMAS WOLSEY by Peter Gwyn Barrie & Jenkins, £20, pp. 666 VIP T his vastly over-inflated book raises far more...

Jonathan Cecil TO WIT: IN CELEBRATION OF COMEDY by Penelope Gilliatt Weidenfeld & NicoLcon, £17.95, pp. 304 N o book can be all bad which contains a tribute to Mrs...

Patrick Reade A JOHN VERNEY COLLECTION introduced by Craig Brown The Alastair Press, £7.95, pp. 96 S it John Verney is a man for whom self-depreciation is a part of good...

Opera Life after Stockhausen Rodney Milnes Tornrak (WNO, Cardiff) R obin Holloway ought to be writing this: he knows far more about his opera than I do. But despite a healthy...

The Wild Duck (Phoenix) Absurd Person Singular (Whitehall) On the edge of farce Christopher Edwards T he advance publicity prepared us for Sir Peter Hall's comi-tragic...

Discriminating sellers Peter Watson anhattan responded to the great art sales last week as only Manhattan can. In a florist's on Lexington Avenue an arrange- ment of irises in...

Matthew Smith 1879-1959 (Crane Kalman, till 21 July) British Painters 1910-1950 (Piccadilly Gallery, till 22 June) Of fame and fortune Giles Auty N ot being cynical by...

Chocolate box-office Hilary Mantel W hen Ivan Turgenev was 15 years old, his father wrote to him, 'Fear the love of women, fear this happiness, this poison.' After writing the...

The Royal Ballet (Covent Garden) Up angst hill Deirdre McMahon I n the retrospective of Kenneth MacMil- lan's work which has been been staged by the Royal Ballet over the...

On higher things Wendy Cope T he Sunday before last, for some reason, I watched 15 minutes of The Manageress (ITV, 9 p.m.) and thought it looked rather good. I was going to...

That was no lady Taki It all began quite innocently. There I was, happily finishing a fun evening in Tramp, when a Persian friend had the brilliant idea of keeping the action...

Pretty wobbly Jeffrey Bernard I haven't washed my face since I went into make-up yesterday to go on Derek Jameson's chat show on Sky television. It is a tremendous improvement...

Free entertainment Zenga Longmore 0 lumba returned from Nigeria with a very expensive toy for Omalara. It is a mobile alligator which snaps its jaws to the tune of...

years as a discovery takes some doing but having at last stumbled upon Chinon I feel full of the recent convert's evangelical zeal. It's true that over the years I have...

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY O vAS REGV 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY COMPETITION With a difference Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1626 you were asked for a poem beginning with De...

To enable competitors to economise on postage, entries for one or more weeks of the competition and crossword may be posted together under one cover addressed 'Competition...

Happy few Raymond Keene E ven before Kasparov and Karpov have contested their championship match in the current cycle, aspirants around the world are trying to qualify for the...

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A friend was recently invited by a pub- lisher to provide an outline of a story for children or young people. We amused ourselves by concocting various plots calculated to...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

Hadlee's hybrid Frank Keating T he first Test match I ever saw was against New Zealand. In fact, Brian Close and I made our Test match debut on the very same day, the last...