F ord plans to stop motor-car production at Dagenham after 70 years, directly putting an end to 3,000 jobs; Downing Street con- firmed that in the past few weeks Mr Tony Blair,...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 020-7405 1706; Fax 020-7242 0603 SOUTH AFRICA IS NEXT T he silence emanating from South Africa on the Zimbabwean...

Why we need a more humane system of criminal justice for young offenders BRUCE ANDERSON G loomy weather: gloomier news. Mur- ders in Zimbabwe vie for the headlines with a...

CRAIG BROWN I was staying in Norfolk for Easter. The Easter Sunday national newspapers were full of lengthy follow-up pieces on the life sentence given to the Norfolk farmer...

I hope I'd have the guts to shoot a nocturnal intruder BORIS JOHNSON nap. You're awake. Your ears are pricked. Was that just the loose latch on the bathroom window, shaking in...

Leo McKinstry says that Ken Livingstone will wipe the smile off the faces of those Londoners who think he's a cuddly joker with a passion for fair play and clean air WHAT a...

A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit IF you find a policeman sniffing around your allotment, the chances are that he is not after your marijuana but your...

David Lee on 'Hymn 'and Hirst or how to make a million out of a £14.99 Woolworth's toy AT last year's Contemporary Art Fair in Islington, two abstract paintings of the same...

SOUTH • AMERICA used to have banana boats; now it has adoption runs. On the plane home from South America recently, all the seats in front of me were taken by adoptive parents...

The Elian business shows how out of touch — and out of their minds — Republicans are, says Mark Steyn ACCORDING to the Wall Street Journal, Congress needs to investigate...

Dick Turral recalls his days as a village policeman at a time when common sense and the push-bike solved most problems WHEN the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin was convicted of...

John Casey made some surprising discoveries when he visited a Taleban training camp near Peshawar 'THIS is the area for sex,' said Arif, the young man who was showing me...

Michael Heath

Peter Oborne on why, all of a sudden, Alastair Campbell has turned into Mr Nice Guy AS THE biographer of Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's press secretary, I believe it...

What's wrong with cricket today is a matter of history PAUL JOHNSON T he cricket season starts with a painful scandal of financial corruption and match- fixing involving the...

The old Times would never have trampled on a recumbent figure STEPHEN GLOVER W e all know that the Times has a gen- eral animus against the Tory party and a par- ticular...

From Mr Herbert Thornton Sir: Frank Johnson (I'm a soul man', 15 April) doubts that a machine equipped with artificial intelligence can possess a soul. I should have thought...

From Mr Alastair Craig Sir: Regarding Jasper Gerard's article (Absolutely potty', 22 April), as a tea planter of many years' experience among the Tamils of south India, I have...

From Mr Gore Vidal Sir: I was delighted to read Francis Wynd- ham's appreciation of Dawn Powell's novels (Books, 15 April). Better late than never, as Dean Swift used to say....

From Mr John Carlisle Sir: Stephen Glover (Media studies, 15 April) is right — `A lot of people got Mugabe wrong in 1980! I recall a pre-Rhodesia election meeting of...

From Lord Grenfell Sir: Boris Johnson's portrayal of me (Another voice, 15 April) is good knock- about stuff designed to induce a few cack- les, but a far cty from reality....

From Mr C.D.C. Armstrong Sir: Lord Thomas of Swynnerton describes Paul Johnson's denunciation of the late Lord Annan as 'quite uncouth' (Letters, 15 April). Lord Thomas's...

not of gigolos, beauties or scholars FRANK JOHNSON O ne of the latest films is entitled Amer- ican Psycho. Before that, there was Ameri- can Beauty. Rather longer ago, there...

It is ever thus. Mandela and his Girondins have been replaced by Mugabe and his Jacobins PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE M y late father lost a fortune as a Bulawayo...

Philip Hensher SHAKESPEARE'S LANGUAGE by Frank Kermode Allen Lane, £20, pp. 320 S hakespeare's language isn't, as it turns out, really the subject of this book. Plenty of...

WES 12 months 6 months (52 issues) (26 issues) UK 0 597 D£49 Europe 0 £109 0 £55 USA 0 US$161 0 US$82 Australia 0 Aus$225 0 Aus$113 Rest of World 0 £119 £,60 Please...

John de Falbe ANIL'S GHOST by Michael Ondaatje Bloomsbury, £16.99, pp. 311 A iil is a forensic anthropologist, educated in America, who is sent by an international human...

William Scammell HEMINGWAY VS. FITZGERALD by Scott Donaldson John Murray, £25, pp. 352 T hey met in Paris in the spring of 1925. At 28 Fitzgerald was already rich and famous,...

Anne Applebaum THE FAUSTIAN BARGAIN: THE ART WORLD IN NAZI GERMANY by Jonathan Petropoulos Allen Lane, £20, pp. 395 C rooked lawyers, evil bureaucrats, fas- cist journalists:...

I n Venice the sun is shining, the swallows are nesting, the Tiepolos are back inside the newly reopened church of Sant'Alvise, the covers have come off the Valier monu- ment in...

Nicholas Fearn C ompressed into the space of a few hundred pages, it would be surprising if every man or woman's life story did not read like a thriller or a tragedy. If one...

Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald by Scott Donaldson In Hemingway versus Fitzgerald, prize-winning biographer Scott Donaldson creates a true, multi-faceted narrative of a great...

of a needle Christopher Howse FRANCIS OF ASSISI by Adrian House Chatto, £20, pp. 336 F rancis of Assisi was always taking his clothes off. At the age of 24, having sold a...

Sylvana Tomaselli MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE by Janet Todd Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 505 W hat, might one ask, is a 'revolution- ary life'? The first 120 or so pages...

Hugh Massingberd OUT OF THE VALLEY by Ronald Blythe Viking, £16.99, pp. 304 W ormingford, a village in the pic- turesque Stour Valley, is actually situated in, ahem, Essex —...

Sam Phipps SPEAK CLEARLY INTO THE CHANDELIER by John C. Q. Roberts Curzon, £25, pp. 259 J ohn Roberts became director of the Great Britain-USSR Association (now the...

Man's vision of the universe Andrew Wordsworth on an exhibition which explores our complex relationship C hildhood memories: in a well-known passage from 'The Prelude',...

1900 (Grand Palais, Paris, till 26 June) Look back in wonder Nicholas Powell hen will they get the millennium and centennial out of their systems and leave us to get on with...

Cradle Will Rock (15, selected cinemas) Ham-fisted agitprop Mark Steyn T im Robbins's film Cradle Will Rock is the story of Marc Blitzstein's off-Broadway musical The Cradle...

Humanising Wagner Robin Holloway H ow is anything new about Wagner possible? The most voluminous composer outside music — acres of theoretical, polemical, autobiographical...

Alan Powers is disappointed by an exhibition about the development of sustainable cities P rospective mayors of London make green noises. How could they fail to do so, however...

Passion Play (Donmar Warehouse) Jump Mr Malinoff, Jump (Soho Theatre) Lips (New End) Death of the heart Sheridan Morley I f we are to have a Peter Nichols revival, and it is...

Henry IV, Part I (Swan Theatre, Stratford) The Comedy of Errors (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford) Power broking Patrick Car n egy G etting the RSC's history-plays...

Happy in my work . . . Simon Hoggart M any papers these days have a grid S - lowing how other critics reacted to new f lms, plays and books; usually there's a mask, or a tiny...

Feeling cheated Michael Vestey 0 ne of the political voices I least like waking up to is Gordon Brown's. You know he has no intention of giving a straight answer to a...

S ave the archive Gavin Stamp recently revisited the National Railway Museum at York. It is always a pleasure to see the huge steam engines, the beautifully furnished timber...

Loyalty stakes Robin Oakley Talking of joy unconfined (well, we almost did) I have not seen many better examples yet than the cheery chappie I accompanied down in the lift at...

Telling the truth Taki T h New York e pansies are out in force in the Bagel (which means there's finally closet space in this overcrowded city) and so are the cher- ry blossom...

Facing facts Jeremy Clarke I 've joined a new age dating agency. Before they fix me up with a bird, though, I've got to undergo a series of esoteric per- sonality tests, the...

Hold hard Leanda de Lisle T he Leicestershire Yeomanry didn't just take their horses with them to Ypres in 1914, they took hounds as well. There was a couple from the Quorn, a...

Foul play Andrew Robson WHETHER you refer to the technique as 'applying the pressure', 'turning the screw', 'squeezing' or whatever, the declarer of this week's hand made sure...

FULHAM has been the up-and-coming thing for about as long as Nasa. Back in the Seventies, it was tipped as the next Kensington. In the Eighties, it was still being tipped as the...

Matchless Raymond Keene CONTINUING my introduction of Vladimir Kramnik, who will challenge Garry ICasparov for his world throne in London from 7 October to 5 November, it has...

Bouts limes Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 2133 you were invited to write a poem with certain given rhyme-words in a given order. This looked deceptively simple — all those...

You are invited to write 52 words of plausi- ble prose in which the first letter of each word follows the pattern of the typewriter keyboard, from left to right. You have to go...

A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's award-winning, Late- Bottled Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 15 May, with two runners-up prizes of £20 (or,...

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Boswell to a boxer Simon Barnes THE definitive Irish joke is about the giv- ing of directions: 'If I was you, I wouldn't start from here.' James Lawton is in search of truth,...

Dear Mary. . . Q. A good friend, a respected and scholarly Clergyman, is due to give the sermon at a wedding in the summer. There is anxiety that he will speak not only in...