U nemployment in Britain topped three million for the first time since 1933, to wails of shock, horror and anguish from all the British press. Mr Haig and Mr Gromyko met for...

Sex and Mr Fairbairn Ferdinand Mount rr he symptoms are unmistakable: the I crowded benches, the buzz, the expec- tation, the tremble of nausea in the gullet. A scene of...

L ast week I noted with some surprise the re commendation of the Catholic Com- sslon for Racial Justice that Rastafarians should be allowed to practise their distasteful forms...

L'K Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: E12.00 £13.110 £14.50 £18.50 One year: £24.00 £26.00 £29.00 £37.011 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made payable to...

The state of the churches Auberon Waugh T know nothing of Erith and Crayford, 1 Mr James Wellbeloved's constituency on the eastern fringes of London. I have never been there...

Simon Winchester I t is entirely possible to penetrate deep inside Afghanistan these days w ithout seeing a single Soviet soldier. Mr Nick Downie of ITV managed to lug F ound a...

Tom Bethel! Washington P resident Reagan does his best to placate us, but the state of the Union is jittery. The United States has experienced greater unity in its time. The...

Timothy Garton Ash Vienna . So far as Premier Stalin was con- cerned, he (Churchill) was quite sure that he meant well to the world and to Poland. He did not himself think that...

We regret that the price of the Spectator will go up, from next week, to 65p. The cost of a subscription, however, will remain unchanged until 1 April. By taking out a...

Bohdan Nahaylo T he death on Monday of Mikhail Suslov removes from the Soviet political scene the most powerful figure in the Kremlin after President Leonid Brezhnev. Regarded...

Richard West he renowned orientalist Auberon I Waugh has contributed to the Daily Mail (16 January) an inspiring article on the spiritual and to some extent the physical...

lecture delivered in Paris, reported by Wednes- day's Times, appears to have shown that the crustaceans care for light as light, much as we do, but do not show more preference...

John Stewart Collis I t was the last week of January 1965. Churchill's funeral took place on Satur- day 30 January. The Lying-in-State lasted throughout the previous fortnight....

Paranoid Paul Johnson W riting a column about the press and television is a hazardous occupation. Those who work for newspapers and net- works, while wielding their power with...

De-Thatchensed Tony Rudd T he stock market ended last week in a L state of euphoria. Interest rates had b een edging down in the money markets e ach day and the culmination...

Sir: It would never occur to anyone vi . itti charity that Richard Ingrains was be llig d anything other than ironic when he sliPP e ., into the gruesome parlance of the prim...

Sir: I have no doubt that among many people the recent prison sentence upon the editor of Bulldog (Notebook, 16 January) will produce a feeling that ... it is only the National...

The Roosevelt myth Sir: I read with interest Nicholas von Hoff- man's article about 'That damned Roosevelt' (23 January). As a person who was born after Franklin Roosevelt's...

Sir: I notice that in spite of a mildly deprecatory reader's letter of some weeks ago the expression SODPAL still appears regularly in your 'Portrait of the Week'. It is neither...

Sir: Auberon Waugh is taken to task by J. C. Q. Roberts, Director of the Great Britain-USSR Association (Letters, 16 January), over his comments on Mr Frank Giles's involvement...

J. Enoch Powell Jesus and the Constraints of History A. E. H arvey (Duckworth £7.50) T he 1980 Bampton Lectures, edited as a book, are a new essay in that 'search for the...

David Williams Disraeli's Grand Tour Benjamin Disraeli and the Holy Land 1830-31. Robert Blake. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £8.95) A s a writer Disraeli began early (twenty or so)...

Paul Ableman In the Belly of the Beast Jack Henry Abbott (Hutchinson £6.95) T hey did appalling things to Jack Henry_ A Abbott. Simple incarceration cause' him acute...

Graham Leonard T here was never a time in my childhood when books did not occupy a large place in my life. My father had a fair number, which were entirely at my disposal and 1...

Michael Hurst The Romanovs W. Bruce Lincoln (Weidenfeld and Nicholson. £10.95). R omanovs, eighteen of them, were auto- crats ruling from Moscow or S t. Petersburg from 1613...

Francis King I f a novel-reviewer is as incisive and abrasive as Peter Ackroyd, then it is an act of courage for him to publish a first novel himself. There will, of course, be...

Sauce For the Goose Peter de Vries (Gollancz £6.95) W hen Daisy Dobbin, the heroine of Peter de Vries's Sauce For the Goose, is still a teenager, her mother takes her to Grand...

A. J. Ayer writes on Anthony Quin- ton's new book; Eric Christiansen surveys the history of the Poles; P. J. Kavanagh writes on Russian poets; Humphrey Carpenter on Thurber's...

Ronald Hingley T his book contains the edited text of lec- tures on Russian literature delivered by Vladimir Nabokov at Cornell and other American universities in the 1940s and...

Harriet Waugh The Fury of Rachel Monette Pe ter Abrahams (Frederick Muller £7.50) T he landscape in which a political thriller is set is of the utmost importance to tile...

Influences Gavin Stamp have always admired the Finns from I afar: they have bravely beaten back the Soviet army on several occasions; they are, I am told, permanently drunk;...

last year from the see of Truro to that of London. He is the author of Growing into Union and has contributed to many books includin g Retreats Today and Communicating the...

Cleanish fun Rodney Milnes L'Egisto (Scottish Opera) V enetian opera, of which Cavallis V L'Egisto is a comparatively early ana l ; pie (it was premiered in 1643, just six...

Nausee Duncan Fallowell The Woman Next Door (AA, Curzon) crt all started six months ago. You might say it goes back ten years, but it actually started six months ago . ....

Façades John McEwen Tt says a lot for the energy and profes- isionalism of the artistic team of Gilbert and George, that within months of the shooting and screening of their...

No regrets Richard Ingrams Q taying with friends in London during 1...)last week's train stoppage I had reason once more not to regret my decision to watch television in black...

Bloody chic raki New York A !though there was never any question -in my mind that it would happen, it did finally longer than I thought. Radical chic has Twelve given way to...

Sweet sixteen Jeffrey Bernard. A ll week my thoughts have continually All to the business of Mr Ike Ward. Doubtless you'll remember he was the man born a slave and who has...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for an extract from the diary of a lesser person who has failed utterly to appreciate the qualities of a great mind on first...

No. 1203: Signs of seniority Set by Jaspistos: There must be other equally amusing and accurate definitions of getting old besides the traditional one of suddenly noticing that...

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T he most surprising development in the new World Chess Federation ranking li st is the relegation of Victor Korchnoi to th ird place, on 2645, behind Karpov 2720 and Timman...

A Prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 15 February. Entries o: Crossword 542, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. The...