Bewick's Shepherd and Sheep 1986 L ittle news emerged from South Afri- ca, where the papers could print nothing about the workings of the state of emergency. A man returning...

The language is moderate, the content is not. Parliament already exercises little enough scrutiny over laws originating in Brussels. Often the details of such legisla- tion...

BRUSSELS SPROUTS n Thursday and Friday of this week Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe will be in the Hague, meeting their counter- parts from the other 11 nations of the EEC....

one pound. This increase is made necessary by the rising cost of print and production.

DEBORAH DEVONSHIRE T he first sentence of a diary given to a nine-year-old child at Christmas, written on New Year's Day and kept faithfully till at least 10 January, was `Got...

A personal response to the challenge of the libel law AUBERON WAUGH A lexander Chancellor's cri de coeur in the Sunday Telegraph this week may not have touched many hearts,...

Mrs Thatcher has chosen her team to prepare the questions which it must address THE Prime Minister last week took the unusual step of announcing that she had set up a group of...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on the most brutal guerrillas in Latin America, 350 of whom were massacred last week Ayacucho, Peru THERE is nothing glamorous about Abi- mael Guzman....

Rowlinson Carter meets a Muscovite, teaches English slang to her . . . Moscow ONE of the social adjustments brought about by Mr Gorbachev's clampdown on drinking is that...

Alastair Forbes payS tribute to Lady Diana Cooper and describes her last hours WHEN, some years ago, Diana Cooper found in her mail an invitation from her hospitable ducal...

Roy Kerridge visits the CND Festival, and finds the Peace Convoy's camp CHILDREN ran excitedly to meet me as I entered a gypsy camp in Somerset. A group of boys and girls,...

The media: Paul Johnson defends strict libel laws in a free society LIBEL is a difficult area of the law and surrounded by popular misconceptions. Even experts in the field...

Lord Salisbury on Friday week made an unusually temperate speech at Leeds, in which he endeavoured to explain his indiscreet utterance about 20 years of repression. He declared...

The apostasies of Professor 'a little of what you fancy' Budd JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE T he London Business School has many virtues. It has furnished us with Mr Nigel Lawson's...

FOR someone whose retail business has been described as making the Co-op look like Laura Ashley (City and Suburban, 13 June), John Roberts is remarkably cordial. He is managing...

FROM Lloyd's lost leader, Ian Hay Davi- son, comes a mine under the City's pro- liferating Chinese walls — the fortifications which will be supposed to stop a bank's...

Europe's Court broods over the crime of bringing business to London CHRISTOPHER FILDES E urope's supreme judges must now turn away from the too-easy task of teasing the...

TO BE Governor of a central bank is now a high-risk occupation. In Israel (as I was saying the other week) you get fired, and elsewhere you get fired at. That is apparent in...

THERE is a moral to the sad tale of RFD, which makes equipment for defence, safe- ty, and survival (those aircraft life-jackets) but could not save itself. It has fallen to a...

Sir: 'The main effort of Post Office invest- ment goes on behind the scenes in the handling and sorting of mail' (City and Suburban, 7 June). If regularity of delivery is a...

Sir: How unkind of Anthony Gilbey (Let- ters, 14 June) to visit the shortcomings of A. N. Wilson on the head of Alastair Forbes. Clearly he does not get the point of either....

Sir: Robert Knight's attack (Letters, 14 June) on Christopher Booker's review of my The Minister and the Massacres would appear to reflect the by now familiar tactic of worrying...

Sir: Your interpretation of the presumed connection between litter and civilisation (Charles Moore, Diary, 7 June) indicates that you have never visited Toronto, which is both...

Sir: The value of good deportment (De - borah Devonshire, Diary, 14 June) cannot be overestimated. I can still hear my old headmistress saying: 'Gels, sit up, never mind the...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for c (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES: 12 Months 6 Months UK/Eire 0 £41.00 0...

Come, come, ye sons of art Eric Christiansen HENRY PRINCE OF WALES AND ENGLAND'S LOST RENAISSANCE by Roy Strong Thames & Hudson, £12.95 REFLECTIONS ON THE PURITAN REVOLUTION...

Isabel Colegate THE SHOOTING PARTY by Anton Chekhov Andre Deutsch, 1'8.95 T he count, wearing a many-coloured dressing-gown and a straw hat, is walking in the garden with the...

Anita Brookner THE MOTHER'S RECOMPENSE by Edith Wharton Virago, £3.95 HUDSON RIVER BRACKETED by Edith Wharton Virago, f4.95 E dith Wharton, great lady of Amer- ican...

William Boyd MARCHING OVER AFRICA by Frank Emery Hodder & Stoughton, £12.95 Q ueen Victoria certainly kept her armies busy. There were the big wars Crimea, the Indian...

Christopher Hawtree THE GOLDEN GATE by Vikram Seth Faber, f9.95 M uch the most obvious way of giving an account of this novel would be to venture some verse of one's own. Of...

Martin Butlin THE PAINTINGS OF BENJAMIN WEST by Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley Yale University Press, £50 0 ne of the most common criticisms of avant-garde artists in the...

James Lees-Milne THE ENGLISH HOUSE, 1860-1914 THE FLOWERING OF ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE by Gavin Stamp and Andre Goulancourt Faber & Faber, f25 I am glad to possess this...

Exhibitions Cecil Beaton (Barbican Art Gallery till 20 July) The flavour of Cecil Simon Blow A friend of mine once asked Cecil Beaton, rather cheekily, whether he thought...

King David (`PC', Odeon Haymarket) Lamentations, not Revelations Peter Ackroyd R eligious epics are not considered a vital ingredient of the cinema these days, but here is...

Transformation scene Rodney Milnes S hock horror sensation: booing at Glyndebourne! One scarcely knew where to look. Wise old heads gathered in the bar afterwards wondering...

Victor Willing: Retrospective Exhibition 1952-1985 (Whitechapel till 20 July) The horror of order Alistair Hicks an's attempt at imposing order on chaos is revealed in all...

Early days Ferdinand Mount Even at this centenary Wimbledon, there is still little sign that lawn tennis has acquired the same mythopoeic qualities as cricket or golf. One...

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Regent's Park) When We Are Married (Whitehall) A talent to amuse Christopher Edwards I n this revival of Toby Robertson's 1985 production the...

Black and white Noel Malcolm S emper aliquid novi Africa affert — or, as we might translate it, there's always something on the news about South Africa. On last week's...

All squared up Ursula Buchan I s it, I wonder, a fascist tendency, a fatal weakness for the smack of strong govern- ment, a reprehensible craving for a Neue Ordnung even,...

Man v. monitor Alexander Chancellor W ho needs referees or umpires any more? Television cameras do their job much better and make fools of them in the process. Millions of...

Loss of a friend Taki T he Ancient Greeks, in their infinite wisdom, knew a thing or two about pain, grief, and the loss of loved ones. Unlike today's godless urban biomasses,...

Furs and furbelows Alice Thomas Ellis I t occurred to me the other day that the inside of my wardrobe very much resem- bles the inside of my head; that is, it is crammed with...

I have not yet given any of Kasparov's wins against Miles from their match. This week I make amends by publishing their amazing 6th game with variations shown to me personally...

I n Competition No. 1426 you were asked for a police report on some 'incident' in the flat-footed style of, for example, a chief constable's recent pronouncement on the hippy...

Strawberry fare FIRST of all I hope none of you paid any attention to the unfortunate error (allowed to slip through by my dear non-cook editor) in my rice salad receipt last...

a sonnet entitled 'On Receiving a Prospectus of the Snowdon Summit Railway and Hotel.' You are invited to submit verses in any verse form (maximum 16 lines) on hearing of any...

L 1 1 "A M TE 2 f ISSUE O SE'NACRE X T S TACK HO A R 0 . — E A N L U 2 t M E I T' I I N I T YIA T ITC_ El 0IT A R A 3 t A L S U JP1 3 1.1A AI SI _E_ E N H O R I T A • A...

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