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PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The SpectatorD issent amongst backbench MPs cut the Government's majority to 36 in a Commons vote on the revenue support grant to be paid to local authorities charged with the collection of...
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SPECTAT T OR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL
The SpectatorTelephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 NO MAN IS A CONTINENT e West used not to applaud when the T h tanks of the Soviet Army were sent in to crush revolt in some...
THE SPECTATOR
The SpectatorSUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 10% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £66.00 0 £33.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £77.00 0 £38.50 USA Airspeed 0 US $99 0 $49.50 Rest of Airmail...
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POLITICS
The SpectatorFor now we see through an SSA darkly NOEL MALCOLM 0 n April Fools' Day last year I re- ceived a letter from Mrs Margaret Hodge, the leader of Islington Council. It is always a...
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DIARY
The SpectatorFERDINAND MOUNT T he Round Table talks which are dis- cussing the future of East Germany are held in a nondescript, school-like building set in a park of spindly birches...
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SLAYING THE MAGIC DRAGON
The SpectatorThe American authorities have declared that this is at best a phony war Washington WHO said: 'Drugs threaten our stability. Drugs threaten our safety and drugs threaten the...
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NO COMMON LANGUAGE
The SpectatorStephen Handelman reports from yet another nation which is loosening the Soviet grip Kishinev TWO DAYS before Soviet troops opened fire on the citizens of Baku, I witnessed a...
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`THE ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLE'
The SpectatorThis is the full text of the first speech by Vaclav Havel as President of Czechoslovakia MY dear fellow citizens, For 40 years you heard from my prede- cessors on this day...
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SAFETY MATCH?
The SpectatorStephen Robinson finds that the careers of political activists depend on the South African cricket tour Johannesburgh THREE hours before Mike Gatting and his team touched down...
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ILL DESIRED IN CYPRUS
The SpectatorRichard West finds similarities between the divisions of the Mediterranean island and those of Ireland North Nicosia THE harrier which divides the city of Nicosia and extends...
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BEYOND THE GRAVE
The SpectatorSousa Jamba is constantly reminded of his dead father every time he types MY SISTER Natalia, whom I had not seen for 13 years, came to visit me in London last year. Top on her...
Subscriptions
The SpectatorWE apologise to any subscribers or donors of subscriptions who have suffered delays in renewal of their subscriptions or delivery of their gifts. The Spectator changed its...
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BELOW THE LAW
The SpectatorIt is a short walk from Edinburgh's Court of Session to the Laughing Duck. Rory Knight Bruce reports IF YOU sit down to dinner at the best window table in the Pompadour...
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SCENES FROM SCIENCE
The SpectatorWhat's bad for you? FROM time to time the word goes round that regular doses of aspirin are bad for you. Now comes the British Medical Journal with the publication of a paper...
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EMMA, FERGIE AND JIMMY
The Spectatoran outbreak of privacy-intrusion in a monthly glossy INTRUSION into privacy, the worst single failing of the British press, is not alas confined to the tabloids. As I have com-...
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Closed shop
The SpectatorI HAVE a new candidate for my Golden Mile Award for businesses conducted with- out the customer in mind. The Award takes its name from Blackpool, where hungry attenders at a...
Nap selection
The SpectatorMY FROG under the table at Chevening was right. Budget Day is booked for 20 March, so as not to interfere with the Cheltenham races, which are run in the previous week. Our new...
CITY AND SUBURBAN
The SpectatorCash is king, the squeeze is on and John Major is a Norland Nanny CHRISTOPHER FILDES T his is it. The squeeze is on. Companies are caught in the vice, and it is tightening on...
Bashing the mule
The SpectatorTHE first step in handling a Missouri mule, You may recall, is to attract your mule's attention, which you do by hitting it over the head as often as necessary with a length of...
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LETTERS Crossing the street
The SpectatorSir: When I told Peregrine Worsthorne in his office last 19 September that I was stepping aside as Chief Executive to make room for Conrad Black, he said: 'I am very, very sad....
Sir; The indictment of Andrew Knight by Peregrine Worsthorne (20
The SpectatorJanuary) is in- complete. Knight's most damaging act against the Sunday Telegraph was to take –or allow to be taken — the colour magazine from it when it was fighting neck and...
Sir: I would be the last to expect anyone as
The Spectatorexalted as my friend Peregrine Worsthorne to Comment on vulgar tittle-tattle. But it would reassure those of us who wish to a Yinpathise with him in his outrage over Andrew...
Purple pimpernel
The SpectatorSir: Noel Malcolm criticises Dr Mervyn Stockwood, the former Bishop of South- wark (`Another Rumania', 20 January) for awarding Nicolae Ceausescu the ultimate accolade in...
SPECTATORS FOR POLAND
The SpectatorCharles Moore writes: We have had a breakthrough. A Mr Geoffrey Carr has shown extraordinary generosity and taken up our invitation to contribute 100 subscriptions. In return,...
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Sir: I have a short and positive response to the
The Spectatorsuggestion put forward by a Mr Steven Rawson, that one Craig Brown should replace the columnist who writes Wallace Arnold. You would lose my subscription! Not because I am a fan...
Lady Readings
The SpectatorSir: Veronica Gillespie, in her moving article on the Kindertransport (`Blooms- bury House days', 6 January), refers to the chairman of 'The Care of Children from Germany' as...
Arnold v Brown
The SpectatorSir: Steven Rawson (Letters, 13 January) has got it absolutely right: Wallace Arnold is really boring and unfunny. I would love to have Craig Brown writing there — his stuff in...
Blow's job
The SpectatorSir: I was perplexed by Simon Blow's schoolmistressy review of my book To Noto (13 January) in which he is at great pains to explain how silly I am for not doing it his way....
Palin drone
The SpectatorSir: In Ferdinand Mount's column CA decade and its books', 23 December, 1989) I find myself cited as an example of 'the grimmest development of the 1980's. . . . the...
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Waking up to Jamaica with a jerk
The SpectatorJohn Diamond IN NEGRIL, when you're thirsty you reach up from your beach lounger, pull a coconut from the palm which shades you from the 90° heat, slice its top off with an old...
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One hundred years ago
The SpectatorIT WOULD be difficult to conceive a better illustration of the depths of race- hatred which still exist in Europe than the "settlement" just arrived at in Bohemia. In that...
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TAYLOR'S PORT COMPETITION
The SpectatorPORTUGUESE TRAVEL QUIZ SET BY ROSS CLARK A TRIO of ports from Taylors is on offer to the 12 winners of this Portuguese Travel Quiz. In addition, the first correct entry opened...
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TRAVEL SPECIAL
The SpectatorInto the Andes Peru ardua ad astra James Tickell My neighbour turned out to be the chief water engineer for Lima, who explained that the plane had been sitting on the tarmac...
TAYLOR'S PORT COMPETITION
The SpectatorEntry form Fill in your answers below and send the form, or a photocopy of it, to Taylor's Port Competition, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL, by 16 February....
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BOOKS
The SpectatorCandide goes to Africa Colin Welch DUST IN A DARK CONTINENT by Robin Page R obin Page first hit the headlines when, as a civil servant in the social security department, he...
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The power of impotence and private means
The SpectatorPatrick Reade ONE MAN'S MEDICINE by Archibald L. Cochrane with Max Blythe The Memoir ClubIBMJ, £14.95, pp.283 M edicine is a strait-jacket devised by the profession and...
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Reagan: American Icon by Robert Metzger, reviewed last week by
The SpectatorJohn McEwen, is published in England by the University of Pennsylvania Press, £35.95, k25.95 .
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Under a cloud
The SpectatorJonathan Guinness RICHARD ALDINGTON by Charles Doyle Macmillan, £19.95, pp.400 T . S. Eliot wrote in the early Sixties, after Richard Aldington's death and not long before...
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The appeal of other people's awful families
The SpectatorAnita Brookner THE OTHER SIDE he House of Atreus, which gets a couple of mentions in Mary Gordon's family saga, has nothing on the Macnamar- as, all world-class grumblers and...
Hiding his light in the African bush
The SpectatorJoseph Hone FILOSOFA'S REPUBLIC by Thursday Msigwa Pickwick Books, £11.95, £5.95, pp.123 H ere is a droll piece of Africana, a spoof, a bonne-bouche, a succession of...
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On Breaking Down the Berlin Wall
The Spectator`The new meat is eaten with the old forks.' Bertolt Brecht (New Ages) And they Who never knew The fat meat of freedom, The strong beer of liberty, Are filled With bright...
Too full of modern instances
The SpectatorJohn Gross REINVENTING SHAKESPEARE by Gary Taylor The Hagarth Press, £18, pp, 461 G ary Taylor knows a great deal about Shakespeare — which, given that he was Joint General...
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Where have all the flower paintings gone?
The SpectatorJohn McEwen FRENCH FLOWER PAINTERS OF THE 19TH CENTURY by Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier and Etienne Grafe S ome of the most admired of flower painters — Redoute, Fantin Latour —...
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A hard struggle for social evolution
The SpectatorAnthony Giddens A TREATISE ON SOCIAL THEORY, VOLUME II: SUBSTANTIVE SOCIAL THEORY by W. G. Runciman CUP, £35, £12.95, pp.512 T his book is sociology on the grand scale, in...
Tomorrow
The SpectatorI expect the sun will rise, and then set, Tomorrow, for it has never failed yet: But one never knows, and all may crack and go Before I realise that it is so. C. H. Sisson
Qwerty etc.
The SpectatorStaring it in the face — failure! Staring at the hooded typewriter. At least remove its cover. Look at the words those keys spell! Some of them you've never seen before Others...
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ARTS
The SpectatorExhibitions 1 The Orient Observed (V & A till 25 February) Travellers in antique lands Roderick Conway Morris W hen Edward Lear visited the ancient remains of Petra in 1858...
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Exhibitions 2
The SpectatorFrans HaIs (Royal Academy, till S April) Hals of fame Giles Auty T he more famed the artist, the more difficult he or she seems to me to be to write about. What more can be...
Dance
The SpectatorTwelfth International Mime Festival (Various London venues, till 3 February) Mixed mime Deirdre McMahon 0 ne of the more bizarre scenes from this year's Mime Festival didn't...
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Gardens
The SpectatorRight ho, aunts! Ursula Buchan I t was 'one of those medium-sized houses with a goodish bit of very tidy garden and a. . . shrubbery that looked as if it had just come back...
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Theatre
The SpectatorBent (Lyttelton) Diversions and Delights (Playhouse, till 3 March) Striking camp Christopher Edwards en years after Martin Sherman's play opened to such reclame at the Royal...
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Cinema
The SpectatorIn Country (`15' selected cinemas) Through a glass darkly Hilary Mantel A n adoptive child who wishes to know about his natural parents attracts sympathy and concern, but...
Television
The SpectatorUpstairs, downstairs Wendy Cope I f Spectator readers followed my recom- mendation and tuned in their thousands to the second edition of It Doesn't Have to Hurt (BBC 1,...
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Low life
The SpectatorTurfed out Jeffrey Bernard A fter 20 years of having a metal press-badge to take me racing I have just been told that the badge committee of the Racecourse Association has...
High life
The SpectatorMost unmannerly Taki ichael Thomas writes a column in the New York Observer, fortunately the smallest (4,000) circulation weekly in the Big Bagel. I say fortunately because...
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The year 2000
The SpectatorTHE European wine lake, swelled by the contributions of new members states such as Bulgaria, Rumania and the Soviet (Dis) Union, has grown to unmanageable prop- ortions. When,...
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Imperative cooking repatriation scheme
The SpectatorTHE CURRENT debate over the possible immigration of the citizens of Hong Kong has been a shameful affair. The Foreign Secretary on one side and Norman Tebbit on the other have...
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CHESS
The SpectatorWar heroes Raymond Keene I t is no secret that world champion Gary Kasparov is a great admirer of the stormy chessboard style of the former champion Alexander Alekhine. Recent...
COMPETITION
The SpectatorWicked glee Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1609 you were asked for a song of wicked glee from a postman, bus driver, plumber or other such 'opera- tive', describing the things...
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Solution to 940: 6.1 811IGLB 611 R 713 A *D r a 0 ' T
The SpectatorA L P L E L 0 07 Trtir E l E E L I D A M7 U N1 6 E WL Eft ircttrt R A 2t.r N C H. A R. N E L 1. 0 G U 2 L M T T N I A E TFLEECT 2.0.1 CIS S I c l HI I A NI I 0 E II N T R E...
CROSSWORD 943: Revolutionary by Doc
The SpectatorA 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...
No 1612: Dear Sir (dear God!)
The SpectatorFrom time to time letters of unconscious and staggering banality and tedium get printed in newspapers. You are invited to invent one such. Maximum 150 words. Entries to...