T hree men were sentenced to life im- prisonment for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock, who was hacked to death dur- ing the riot at Tottenham in October 1985. Only after...

THE three unnamed juveniles among the six defendants in the Blakelock case were set free by the judge in mid-trial. He thought their confessions to the crime were implausible....

GIVE RENTING HOUSE-ROOM Now that Mrs Thatcher has defeated both the wets and the reactionaries with her peculiar brand of Tory radicalism, one might have expected new measures...

Detective Inspector Falkender and the Big Fat Spider strike back FERDINAND MOUNT Harold was by now so carried away by his compulsive need for conversation that he launched on...

h e most extraordinary dates, from the Day of the Atonement to the Chinese New Year, taking in Royal Ascot along the way, are being canvassed in discussions of the election. The...

Some useful tips for those intending to visit Moscow AUBERON WAUGH hat exactly does Mrs Thatcher hope to gain by her trip to Moscow later this week? The least cynical answer...

As Mrs Thatcher goes to Moscow, Leszek Kolakowski explains why the Soviet Union's latest reformer dare not go very far GORBACHEV'S revolution: a hoax or a movement toward...

THE April number of Harper's Maga- zine contains an article of an unusual kind. It is a comparative view of the life of working men in America and in several countries of Europe...

A leading American evangelist is caught in a sexual scandal. Simon Hoggart casts the first stone Washington IT HAS been a mixed week for America's television evangelists. On...

STUDENTS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY TO ENJOY THE SPECTATOR AT LESS THAN HALF-PRICE More stimulating than any lecture, funnier than the set books, The Spectator should be required...

Emma Gilbey on an attempt to build the tallest tower in the world New York THE intention of Donald Trump, head of the Trump Organisation, is to build seven 60 -storey...

Terence Kealey challenges the idea that Britain should spend far more on research 'BRITAIN'S culture is in crisis,' Professor Denis Noble wrote the other day in the I...

How much have public attitudes changed? Have homosexuals altered their behaviour? Michael Trend reports IN . LAST week's Spectator (The Pre- judice of Aids') your correspondent...

N. W. Moore on the ways of saving the delights of Dorset for the future IN DORSET the landscape changes every feW miles. In one walk in the Isle of Purbeck you can savour the...

The Press: Paul Johnson wonders if Murdoch's empire is becoming too big WALKING down Whitefriars Lane off Fleet Street the other day, I witnessed a little scene heavy with...

Exchange rates governed by the Fourth Protocol JOCK BRUCE-GARD YNE S o now we know. When the cream of the finance ministers and the central bank- ers met in Paris last month...

City cowboys chuckle to see the marshals shooting each other CHRISTOPHER FILDES h e undergraduate came to see me and asked, as undergraduates now do, about going into the...

he first three winners of the eight-week Spectator Twin-Town Treasure Hunt will receive outstanding prizes. The first prize has been presented by Framlington. It is 2,000 units...

Sir: There I was, just beginning to hold my head up again and venture out in public after my Macmillan blunder of last Decem- ber, and now Dr Casey (Pad Times', 21 March) raises...

Sir: Ferdinand Mount castigates me (Poli- tics, 14 March) for being an 'in-one-bound- she-was-free' merchant. Would that were! I fear the road ahead is stony, full of necessary...

was admir- able until you concluded that 'Aids does not make the average homosexual a danger to the general public and so cannot justify the law's intrusion into his life.'...

Sir: 'Decent and indecent' was an excellent title for a confused editorial (14 March). You complained that officialdom has not emphasised the connection between Aids and...

'almost alone' in being at risk from Aids. It should be stressed that this statement applies only to male homosexuals; lesbians appear to be, in practice, immune. It is evident...

Sir: In his review of the Le Corbusier exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (Architecture, 14 March) Gavin Stamp names `two of Corb's most important books' published in English by...

Sir: In his article `The Big Lie which threatens to clean up the world' (Another voice, 7 March) Auberon Waugh quite rightly points out that five million children die of...

Sir: Nigella Lawson got it right (Res- taurant, 3 January) and Prue Leith got it wrong (Letters, 21 March). If the kitchen is too hot for Prue Leith she should get out, i.e....

Sir: Robert Fraser and Meriel Oliver (Let- ters, March 14 and 21) miss the point. It is true that there would be no priests, and no Christians, if Church membership were limited...

repudiation of A. N. Wilson's letter (21 March)? Even if it were admitted that divorce and remarriage is always a sin, has the Church of England ever claimed that all men...

Sir: Andrew Brown (Letters, 21 March) is right: Onan was more likely a coital interrupter than a wanker. I suspect, though, that my surnamesake is the genuine article. Patrick...

P aul Johnson has already published histories of Christianity, of the civilisations of ancient Egypt and the Holy Land, of the modern world and of the English people. If you...

Gavin Stamp RAYMOND ERITH: ARCHITECT by Lucy Archer Cygnet Press, £25.00, £14.50 paperback QUINLAN TERRY: THE REVIVAL OF ARCHITECTURE by Clive Aslet Viking, £40.00 A ll my...

Non-fiction Jerusalem by Colin Thubron, Century, £5.95 Hester Lynch Piozzi by James L. Clifford, OUP, £12.50 Edward Elgar: A Creative Life by Jerrold Northrope Moore, OUP,...

Raymond Carr THE ENGLISH: A SOCIAL HISTORY 1066-1945 by Christopher Hibbert Grafton, £20.00 I n the 1940s the Cambridge historian G. M. Trevelyan published a social history of...

Alan Bell THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD VOLUME 5: THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY edited by L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell Clarendon Press, £75.00 N early 20 years ago,...

Anita Brookner A FATAL INVERSION by Barbara Vine Viking, £10.95 I t is no secret that Barbara Vine is Ruth Rendell, whose excellent stories, part de- tective work, part...

What lives dogs lead, The enthusiasm of their heads, Tongues out, ears in business — What hopes they have and what days out! It's the owners worry me. Emblematic, don't you...

I had a waistcoat just like that long ago: white piqué with tiny pearl buttons all down the front. At that time, Mr Poyntz of the Export Department was in love with me. One...

Elizabeth Longford PUCKLER'S PROGRESS translated by Flora Brennan Collins, f15 H ow exhilarating to travel in the third decade of the 19th century. The Napoleonic wars were...

T he new English Shakespeare Com- pany, founded by Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington, and funded jointly by the Arts Council and the Allied Irish Bank, is a welcome...

The Fourth Protocol ('15', Odeon Leicester Square) Polymer villains David Austin T here is a sequence, now a well- established cliché, which originated, I believe, in the...

SEASIDE LITHOGRAPHS ALAN POWERS Alan Powers' "Views of the South Coast", eight lithographs of the Kent and Sussex seaside commissioned specially by the Spectator, and...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY — Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £ (Equivalent SUS ifc Eurocheques accepted) RATES 12...

Beneath the varnish Peter Phillips E ver since I saw the newly-cleaned and newly-hung paintings of the Carpaccio Saint Ursula series in the Accademia Gal- lery in Venice last...

Rosa by any other name Ursula Buchan T o the outside world, the line between the botanist and the horticulturist is rather fuzzily drawn, seeming more a matter of...

A good way to go Wendy Cope 0 h dear. No sooner do I announce that I identify with a particular character than she is described in the Sunday Times as 'the fun-loving,...

Ilya Glazunov (Barbican Concourse, till 20 April) Sledgehammer symbolism Giles Auty H ares are not the only animals to find March a maddener. Brain-numbing winds, towering...

Flying into trouble Taki his has as much to do with high life as, say, President Reagan has to do with Remembrance of Things Past, but it never- theless took place at 30,000...

Guinness and mash Jeffrey Bernard N ow that flat racing is with us again we born-again losers will shortly become re- acquainted with the agony of victory and the thrill of...

Paper mountain Alice Thomas Ellis I have just cleared up another pile of papers. Well, almost. Whereas they were in one teetering heap at the far end of the kitchen table, now...

AT A recent meeting of sociologists discus- sing the sociology of food, it was suggested that ladies tend to choose and prepare family meals according to their husbands' (or...

Camera, the royal photographic exhibition at the Queen's Gallery. Gavin Stamp on the threat to our national archive of architectural drawings.

The race Raymond Keene I n just over one week the SWIFT Super- tournament, brainchild of the company's chief executive, Bessel Kok, starts in Brus- sels. With a budget of...

Ungiven rhymes Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1464 you were asked for a poem in which the following words, in any order, are part of the rhyme-scheme: copy, posh, agenda, nude,...

'P R 'I 1419 N S C N F RIO E A S5 S EIBITIS . 2_ , PE I b .I RDINALFIFINTR OE INGi I 4 A . 2_4 P A 0 M CI El AT OM IIIOSEURNIErN'ORIM 3 6ATHLIErtERK IPISTRE A r c I E...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

You are invited to offer a poem beginning with the opening line, lines or sentence of one of A. A. Milne's verses for children but continuing it in an un-Milnish manner (maximum...