'Thank goodness there's no life on board.' wo Iraqi diplomats sought political asylum in Britain; both had reached the ends of their careers. One had been ambas- sador to...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO P op videos, violent crime, law suits and junk food: much of what we import from across the Atlantic is of...

12 Months 6 Months UK O £77.00 El £39.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £88.00 0 £44.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$125 ID US$63.00 USA Airmail D US$175 0 US$88 Rest of Airmail El £111.00 0 £55.50...

The Howard League for Personal Advancement gets austere ANDREW GIMSON T he belief that our prisons are, in the words of the Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, 'too lax', is...

0 n Monday I stopped at the petrol sta- tion on the A339 at ICingsclere specifically because I thought you got free glasses there. You don't get glasses, I was disap- pointed to...

Rape: between the female whinge and the male cringe AUBER ON WAUGH My heart had been bleeding for Angus Diggle all week, and then this account of rancorous English academics...

Nicholas Coleridge analyses a new social phenomenon — the nanny who is better off than her employer The manner, however, reminded me of thrust- ing young business exec-...

Charles Glass argues that many Serbs are doing their best to help the Bosnian Muslims, none more so than black-marketeers Sarajevo HE WAS like most of the Serbian soldiers...

THE VANITY OF SPARROWS Sir, — Permit me to ask those bird-lov- ing correspondents of yours, whose let- ters I have read with great interest in the Spectator, whether they have...

William Dalrymple visits the site of India's most lethal religious dispute, and meets one side of the argument Bodh Gaya, Bihar RELIGIOUS DISPUTES are to India in the Nineties...

DOWN TO fundamentals this week, I'm afraid. Mr Thorbjoern Berntsen, the Norwegian environment minister, famously called Mr John Gummer, his British counterpart, a drittsekk....

DIARY 1994 £12 Plain £13 Initialled T he Spectator 1994 Diary, bound in soft leather, will shortly be available. With a new layout and a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday,...

Ross Clark visits the deserted remains of Britain's top-secret atomic weapons testing ground THERE IS a distinct thrill in being where one is not really supposed to be; a...

Adam Nicolson explains why he can never take seriously men who wear bow ties WHAT IS wrong with bow ties? Why do you automatically suspect someone who is wearing one? I have a...

Dr Theodore Dalrymple suggests a way in which the NHS can save lives and £50 million a year WHAT IS the commonest single cause of emergency medical (as compared to surgi- cal)...

How know-nothing Major made the Tories the Stupid Party again PAUL JOHNSON Such a battle is inevitable, sooner rather than later. Major cannot continue to lead the party for...

AT LLOYD'S of London, the best news for years — which is not saying much — is the rush to put money in. The merchant banks are now scrambling to come up with new schemes, and...

Muddled signals and conflicting movements make for railway accidents CHRISTOPHER FILDES L 'merick Junction was so designed that all trains from all directions had to come in...

I RECALL my surprise when a friend of mine at Oxford said that he was going to work for Barclays Bank. He wanted, so he said, a job he could combine with hunting. I now see that...

I DO NOT believe that what the railways need now is franchising, or unbundling, or reorganising or restructuring. What they need is running. That is a full time job, not just...

THEO WAIGEL, Germany's finance min- ister, has been laying down the law on mon- etary union for Europe. If Frankfurt doesn't get the central bank, he says, the whole thing is...

Sir: Roderick Smart's kindly meant sub- terfuge does not serve his pupils well ('Cut- ting the old school tie', 21 August). Getting into university is a crooked enough business...

Sir: A BBC bureaucrat, Mr Drummond, writing to you last week (Letters, 21 August), refers twice to the 'hysteria' of my articles. What he means is that he does not agree with...

powers of some of our greatest thinkers. Unfortunately it is the ingenuity displayed by schoolmasters such as Mr Smart that confuses the situa- tion. His clever stratagems have...

Sir: Damian Thompson bases his vision of the future Church of England (`Many mort- gaged mansions', 7 August) on a number of false assumptions. 'Appeals to present generosity,'...

Sir: Until I read Paul Johnson's piece (And another thing, 14 August) of apoplectic nonsense on Bosnia I had no idea that I was either a Greenham woman, a professor of peace...

Sir: The answer to Christopher Howse's perplexity over the Westminster epigram (Books, 14 August) is that it is not about politicians at all but about lawyers, who in those days...

Izetbegovic's Islamic Declaration in order to help settle the dispute between Sir Alfred Sherman and Mr Noel Malcolm: 'There can be no peace or co-existence between the Islamic...

Sir: As my Spectator of 31 July went astray in the post, I first learnt of Jaspistos' sur- prising ignorance of the identity of the orig- inal Fanny Adams when I read Alastair...

Sir: While I agree with everything Noel Malcolm says about Bosnia (Letters, 14 August), it is difficult to believe that the Serbs have no more formidable an advo- cate than Sir...

Sir: Why, when Britain brews some of the finest beers in the world, are they becoming virtually impossible to find in a growing number of bars and clubs in London and, I...

Sir: In John Grigg's review of Professor Simpson (Books, 14 August) he hardly mentions that careful research enabled Professor Simpson to discover the role played by MI5 in the...

Sir: Simon Heffer's article on David Hunt, Secretary of State for Employment (Poli- tics, 14 August), failed to mention the one thing which many of us will never forget about...

Only a wit among lords? Robert Harris TELL THEM I'M ON MY WAY by Arnold Goodman Chapman, £20, pp.464 NOT AN ENGLISHMAN: CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD GOODMAN by David Selbourne...

Christopher Hawtree LAST WORDS by Karl Guthke Princeton University Press, £16.99, pp.224 I f one were to give full vent to prejudice, it would be to suggest that there could...

M. R. D. Foot T his book is both fascinating and appal- ing. It explains, in precise retrospect, what happened to its author, a young Dutch solicitor who was arrested by the...

I chuckle to think that a fish immersed In water needs to slake its thirst. Don't you see — your hearth is the house of God, Not the forests to whi,ch in vain you plod. Truth...

Michael Hulse PRAGUE TALES by Jan Neruda translated by Michael Henry Heim Chatto and Windus, £10.99, pp.346 J an Neruda (1834-1891) was one of the foremost Czech writers of the...

Andro Linldater FLORA MACDONALD: THE MOST LOYAL REBEL by Hugh Douglas Alan Sutton, £16.99, pp.259 F ew heroines can have exercised so immediate and constant a hold on popular...

Peter Levi THE LANGUAGE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY by John Sturrock Cambridge University Press, £35, pp.312 F or many years I have confusedly exag- gerated John Sturrock's intellectual...

ORIENT BEEF NO MATCH FOR WEST HAM MOTHERWELL AS EXPECTED AFTER CLINICAL HEARTS JOB NO ROOM FOR CHESTERFIELD AT TIGHT VILLA CLYDEBANK SWAMPED BY CLYDE STOKE TO INCREASE HEAT FOR...

Hilary Corke T here is a sense in which the word is even more important than the deed, and whatever fate comes visiting the one who suffers and records matters less than the...

Harriet Waugh DEAD MEAT by Philip Kerr Chatto and Windus, 174.99, pp.243 A PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATION by Philip Kerr Arrow, £4.95, pp.36I D ead Meat is Philip Kerr's fifth...

Carole Angier EXCURSIONS IN THE REAL WORLD by William Trevor Hutchinson, £16.99, pp.200 S ome real passion must have brought William Trevor's parents together, but that was by...

Mark Archer PAINTING AND SCULPTURE IN FRANCE 1700-1789 by Michael Levey Yale University Press, £44, pp. 318 A yone who has read Sir Michael Levey's earlier books or who saw the...

Lucy Hughes-Hallett MASAI DREAMING by Justin Cartwright Macmillan, £14.99, pp.291 A i anthropologist, female, a French Jew, is telling her 11 year-old brother about the Masai,...

Edinburgh Festival Better by the Mile Five days in the life of Festival-goer Rupert Christiansen I never actually saw the legendary car sticker which read 'Glasgow may be...

Unfamiliar pleasures Peter Phillips T here's been some wonderful music played at the Proms recently. Whether it has been outstandingly well played hasn't mattered very much to...

Hot Stuff (Cambridge) The Cenci (Lyric Hammersmith Studio) Schlocky horror show Sheridan Morley T hose of you who were with me last week may recall that I am not hugely in...

recommended by The Spectator's regular critics DANCE Vivarta, Phoenix Arts, Leicester (0533 554854) and The Place (071 387 0031), from 17 September. A two-week festival of...

Russian Painting of the Avant-Garde 1906-1934 (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, till 5 September) The Line of Tradition: Watercolours, Drawings and Prints by Scottish...

The new old Clint Mark Amory T here is an extraordinarily satisfying moment in Godfather II when (a little late in my case) you realise that young Robert de Niro is actually...

. . or over £35 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it can be to track a copy down. Now you can save...

Revenge of the towelheads Taki His parents heard abotit it and com- plained to the Palace Hotel management, which of course did nothing at all except to inform me that...

Mug shots Martyn Harris uanto?' said Giovanni incredulous- ly, `Quanto?' They seemed to be his only two words of Italian, but he made a con- vincing enough foreigner for the...

The change in Spain Nigel Nicolson M y 1959 Baedeker warned me that Spaniards attach great importance to dress. 'To walk through a town in shorts, without a jacket or in short...

; IT WAS quite the best breakfast I've had for a long time. Which is all the more sur- prising because it was in France. The way to get good breakfasts in countries such as...

CHESS SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA Choreography Raymond Keene AS THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP be- tween Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short approaches, the interest in chess is mount- ing....

plIKE MALT , Prizes and praises Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1793 you were invited to write a poem following the rhythm and rhyme- and half-rhyme scheme of Auden's — 0 where...

E j GRAHAM'S PORT W & J GRAHAM'S M PORT CROSSWORD 1124: Materialistic by Doc A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct...

You are invited to compose a dialogue in which the words of each speaker in turn contain anagrams — of single words or phrases or both mixed. Maximum 100 words. The entries, I...

4 RIL 6 LI 0 7 C 1.1 1 MAL ICOBUSIM 7 hASBAG B'ST LIMFANG A lip TTE D &N TftN T E R '11 The unclued lights are names of characters in A.A. Milne's Winnie- the-Pooh' stories....

All hail and farewell Frank Keating WHERE HAS all the chivalry gone? Why didn't Allan Border get a formal three cheers from the England team when he made his final entrance on...

Q. I leave next Sunday for Greece on a yacht. I am sailing with three men. Do I crouch on my bunk with the hair-drier to dry my knickers or is there a socially acceptable way to...