`Look out Nigel! Here it comes again.' A s the inflation rate reached eight per cent the Prime Minister implied that this was due to the Chancellor of the Exche- quer's policy...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 DENG'S YOKE W hy have the Chinese revolted, why now, and what exactly do...

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The real issue for Yoruba tribesmen in the European election NOEL MALCOLM I t may be rash to claim to have identified the key issues of an election campaign after only the...

SOUSA JAMBA T he first thing I did last year when I got the largest amount of money I had ever had was to buy a car. I wanted some concrete evidence of my wealth; and — let the...

The Chinese authorities underestimated the importance accelerated the sickness at the heart of the system Peking NEAR the Wuxing Ting Teahouse in old Shanghai, there are dozens...

Giles Mathews finds Chinese opposition growing in an unexpected place New York THE Chinese Democratic Party presented itself to the world on the afternoon of 8 May, at a...

Timothy Garton Ash on one and a half billion people falling between two stools ONE day, someone will write a marvellous history book. It will explain why commun- ism gave up...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reviews the dubious career of Speaker Jim Wright Washington PEOPLE who work on Capitol Hill have known for years that the most powerful staffer in...

Michael Heath

How to save yourself 51 trips to the library . . . or almost £30 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it...

Robert Haupt looks at the ailing finances of Alan Bond THE inhabitants of the Australian south- west are probably the most isolated settlers of the Western world, and at any...

Michael Trend meets part of a wave of refugees EVERY evening for the past two weeks a party of some 30 or so young Kurdish men, none of whom speaks English, have knock- ed on...

THE Negro Question is hardly less to the fore in the old Slave States than the Irish Question is in Great Britain. It meets you everywhere — the newspap- ers are always...

James Bowman explains how GCSE is driving teachers out of the profession THE Commons Select Committee on Education was split down the middle, reported the Times recently....

Rose Macaulay reflects on the bombing of her flat, in an article first published in 1941 IT HAPPENED to me last May to lose my home with all contents in a night of that...

Book of World War II, edited by Fiona Glass and Philip Marsden - Smedley (Grafton, (16.95), published this week.

The media: Paul Johnson looks critically at Labour's new proposals THE Labour Party's policy review, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change, which was published last week, is a...

The pound tells ministers what to do and worse things happen at sea CHRISTOPHER FILDES been out in a Force 12 sterling crisis, like us old hands, you'll know that this is an...

THE reappearance of Kerry Packer prompts a question which has been wor- rying me for some time: who, in Australia, is there left to look after the sheep? Surely every...

I SUPPOSE it is not Kerry Packer's fault that he appears to be photographed wear- ing a stocking-mask. His is not a face I would like to see looming up at me — and least of all...

MOST bankers (Ogden Nash said) dwell in marble halls/Which they do to encourage deposits and discourage withdralls. Barc- lays' ancestral halls in Lombard Street, a massive...

Observer's Honour', insists that the Observer should be 'taken out of Rowland's hands' while admitting in pas - sing that he welcomed Rowland's buying the Observer eight years...

Ailing audit Sir: I am much gratified by Terence Kealey's article 'Audit of Barnett' (13 May), but it seems from his text that while he has read The Audit of War he may not...

Sir: For more than four years now — ever since we first published evidence to show that the Egyptian Fayed brothers could not have bought the House of Fraser with their own...

evidence which exposes the fallacy in the argument — too often put forward by the DES — that the universities' liberal concept of education denigrates science and, even more,...

Sir: In attacking Alexandra Artley's article `From rad to worse' (6 May) Mr Preece (BNF PR Department) indulges (Letters, 20 May) in the usual tired form of defen- sive...

Sir: Congratulations on a very reasoned leader about the attitude of the British Government towards the Hong Kong Chinese (13 May). Regretfully reason and racism do not mix,...

Sir: Surely the oracle, Ali Forbes (Books, 6 May), knows that Suni (one 'n') Agnelli's book of early memoirs is called 'We Always Wore Sailor Suits'? Nick Haslam The Hunting...

Sir: 'Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.' This inscription below the statue of David, to which J. H. Huizinga objects (Letters 20 May), was a wry jest by...

Sir: Mr John Moore might be interested to know of Dr Johnson's rebuke to those who objected that giving alms to beggars merely enabled them to indulge in gin and tobac- co. 'Why...

The Jews of Hungary Colin Welch BATTLEFIELDS AND PLAYGROUNDS by Janos Nyiri, translated by William Brandon and the author Macmillan, £12.95, pp.536 I have an interest to...

one of us Alastair Forbes THE WHITELAW MEMOIRS by William Whitelaw Aurum Press, £14.95, pp.280 0 n the eve of the publication of this book, after several days in which its...

John Kee g an ARTICLES OF WAR: THE SPECTATOR BOOK OF WORLD WAR II edited by Fiona Glass and Philip Marsden-Smedley Grafton Books, f16.95, pp.444 T he first world war...

Francis King THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Kazuo Ishiguro Faber, f10.99, pp. 245 T he ageing butler, Stevens, who is both the central figure and the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro's...

Eric Christiansen BREAD OF DREAMS: FOOD AND FANTASY IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE by Piero Camporesi, translated by David Gentilcore Polity Press, f19.50, pp. 212 T here was a time...

Laurence Target O xford's dons have for some centuries been trying to exclude ordinary graduates from any say in the management or policy of the University. It could be because...

`Nice morning,' he'd remark. Or, if It wasn't, `Not.so nice today.' And, watching his Jack Russell sniff Our labrador, perhaps he'd say, `There's rain about.' Or, if there was...

Exhibitions 1989 Biennial Exhibition (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, till 9 July) Drugged by the dollar Giles Auty I n New York last week a local radio station...

La vie en rose Robin Holloway E mmanuel Chabrier is to be Radio Three's composer of the week on the early mornings of 5-9 June and the late nights of the week after. I can...

The Commissar (PG', Lumiere) Beyond the censor Hilary Mantel O n horseback, on foot, almost silently and through a monochrome landscape, an army is on the march. It is the...

Shaken rigid Rodney Milnes G lyndebourne's new Jenufa should do wonders for the bar takings: I needed a bloody great double brandy aferwards simply to stop myself shaking....

As You Like It (Old Vic) Bitter- Christopher Edwards L ast week this column looked back nostalgically to the days when bitter-sweet romances were the distinguished hallmark of...

La Bayadere (Royal Opera House) Lavish orientalia Deirdre McMahon L a Bayadere is in many ways the paradigm of 19th-century ballet spectacle. If one reads the libretto and...

A sibling to interact Wendy Cope A nn and Stuart in LA Law (ITV, 9 p.m. Thursday) have been trying to adopt a baby. Their colleague Arnie put them in touch with a lawyer, who...

Spite after death Taki New York 0 h, dear. Andy Warhol has suddenly struck from beyond the grave, and his 'Satanic Diaries', the oversized 807-page book that chronicles his...

If dogs could fly Alice Thomas Ellis A lfie went all limp again the other morning. There were several reasons for this. First he couldn't find the mop bucket. Then he stood...

Ice-cold in Soho Jeffrey Bernard B ill, who I was locked up with in the booze bin in 1972, came up to town all the way from Richmond today to give me a bottle of Stolichnaya...

Le yin des papes THE moment when the bottle of Château Margaux 1784, bought for a mere £305,000 by a New York wine merchant and held up by him for the press to photograph at a...

FEW restaurants give the restaurant critic unalloyed pleasure, but Sutherlands is definitely one of them. It is too late to call it a find — it has been going from strength to...

Recruiting offices Raymond Keene L ast week I previewed the Watson Farley Williams Grandmaster tournament, one of the strongest to be held in the capital in recent years. The...

B ure aucrassy Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1575 you were asked to provide an imaginary office memo con- taining bossy, superfluous or incompre- hensible instructions or...

You are invited to write an abbreviated ballade (two eight-line stanzas and a four- line envoi) in which the last line of the octets and of the envoi are either 'The Minister...

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...

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