The horrors of war. M r John Major was still the Prime Minister after his party won a vote on the European Community (Finance) Bill by 330 votes to 303. He had previously...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 A DASHED AWFUL MESS T he new majority leader in the US Sen- ate, Robert Dole, has done everyone on both sides of the Atlantic a service...

There are glimmerings of logic in Mr Clarke's apparently suicidal antagonism of the Right BORIS JOHNSON A s Kenneth Clarke has been frank enough to inform John Major and...

JOHN OSBORNE E ach year the longest nights of winter are heralded by the Standard Drama Awards, and every year the awards are accompanied by strident appeals for The New Play....

Like the claim to the Earldom of Selkirk, the identity of the Conservative Party is now disputed CHARLES MOORE I t is still something to be the 10th Earl of Selkirk, I...

A British mother's London-educated children are abducted by their German father The German courts approve on the grounds that the IT OUGHT to have been the perfect e mbodiment...

Janine di Giovanni argues that the Serbs' strength lies in the fact that they have six centuries of fighting experience Belgrade WILLIAM PERRY was right when, grim. faced, he...

Michael Heath

IT'S ME, JOHN! John Simpson expresses his dismay at the slide into formal respectability of Vaclav Havel, the once-raffish Czech President Prague THE CAMERAMEN rushed along...

Christopher Fildes on Kenneth Clarke 's 'Told you so' Budget — can it really be all downhill from here? THE GRAND OLD Duke of Clarke has reached the top of the hill. Sweating...

IT IS ODD that advertising folk pride themselves on their use of English. I saw in the train a couple of days ago an advertisement for the Corby Trouser Press, no doubt an...

Andrew Marr is not surprised that disaffected Tories can't find a leadership challenger Almost all the talent has left the House of Commons IT IS an oddity, as one former...

Damian Thompson investigates the growing English activities of a movement which claims to be both Jewish and Christian IT IS SATURDAY morning in the Shema Yisrael synagogue,...

I AM NOT exactly an ardent follower of Freud, but there is no doubt that he sometimes had a profound insight into the nature of things, as when he observed that, in his...

Marlyn Harris thinks it's time to take a stand against the weak and other scroungers THE STARTING POINT for this article was an argument I had years ago with a pub...

Anne Applebaum spends a day being bombarded by satellite television, and wonders if she ever left America DJ KAT is a cat — a costumed, anthropo- morphic sort of cat, that is,...

THE YOUNG Czar was married on Monday to the Princess Ala of Hesse with a ceremonial which, though restricted on account of the late Czar's recent death, was sufficiently...

Budgeting for Christmas Auberon Waugh A the Budget was being announced even as this offer was going to press, I agreed with Lay & Wheeler that prices in it would be...

c/o Lay & Wheeler Ltd 6 Culver Street, Colchester, Essex CO1 1JA Tel: (0206) 767670 Fax: (0206) 560002 Price No. Value White 1. West Peak Sauvignon Blanc 1994 12 Bois .451.00...

Setting the hobbledehoys and urchins the worst possible example PAUL JOHNSON f Britain is becoming a violent and in many ways uncivilised country, who is to blame? Most of the...

correspondence, articles and com- ments which resulted from the ill-advised and rather immature article by William Cash which had the appearance of anti- Semitism ('Kings of the...

Sir: However much they may be tempted, I hope it is many years before his children push Ludovic Kennedy off his perch (Let - ters, 26 November). He makes such a use - ful...

Sir: Digby Anderson is a joy and a delight. He's a kind of human Catherine whe el ' whizzing round and round, furiously firing off squibs in every direction, before coming to...

the Jews, can I pre - vail upon you to continue with articles on the colonisation of England by the Scots and our provision of outdoor poor relief for the southern Irish? You...

Sir: William Cash's article on Jews in Holly- wood (`Kings of the deal', 29 October) may, perhaps, have been folly spiced with innu- endo, as its detractors assert, but the cor-...

saw fit to publish from the Holly- wood political bimbocracy was not the arro- gance of these people who seek to teach us what to think from the insecurity of a moral basis that...

12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £80.00 0 £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £91.00 0 £46.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$130 0 US$66.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175 0 US$88 Rest of Airmail 0 £111.00 0 £55.50...

Sir: Simon Jenkins is wrong to be so confi- dent that there will never be road pricing in London (Centre point, 19 November). For economic and environmental reasons, it is the...

Sir: Nigel Nicolson rightly refers to Knole (A challenge to the continent', 19 Novem- ber), then adds that Kent's 'social aspira- tions were at baronet level, not ducal'. Must a...

Sir: Mr Theodoracopoulos has unfairly slurred the reputation of Lord Wyatt of Weeford by suggesting that he was elevated to the peerage for 'licking the right boots' (High life,...

Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 8 October) airily portrays the Prime Minister of Turkey in an East End sodomy house. I believe he got his story from the book The Chanak...

Sir: Is it not curious how we doctors, often decried by the public as being self-pro- claimed gods regarding decisions on life and death, are frequently given by the same s...

Sir: When the editor of the News of the World has finished preening himself on the opprobrium of Auberon Waugh, Paul Johnson and Simon Jenkins (Letters, 19 November), he can...

subject admirably (And another thing, 12 November). May I add a tiny reminder to those people currently muck- raking and destroying figures in public life? It is widely accepted...

Annual salaries of half a million pounds and above are pure anthropology SIMON JENKINS T op people's pay is, after sex, the most common object of public prurience. It is also...

A view with a tomb Jane Gardam THE BRONTES by Juliet Barker Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 1003 I was 11 when I first visited Haworth and found an ugly urban sort of place on a main...

There can be few greater combinations than those of classic, bottle-matured Port and the finest English Blue Stilton Cheese when both are in peak condition. The Spectator Port...

Barbara Trapido LONG WALK TO FREEDOM by Nelson Mandela Little, Brown, £20, pp. 630 M r Mandela is a gent. He walks tall. He imbibed democracy at the court of his foster-father,...

by asking your local newsagent to save or deliver it. Complete the form below and hand it to your newsagent Please save/deliver a copy of The Spectator for me each week until...

Richard Shone THE REVIEWS THAT CAUSED THE RUMPUS by Brian Sewell Bloomsbury, £12.99, pp. 365 W hy is this book, which is well writ- ten, provocative, topical and invariably I...

DIARY 1995 1.12 Plain £13 Initialled The Spectator 1995 Diary, bound in soft black leather, is now available. Laid out with a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the diary...

Philip Warner NOT ORDINARY MEN by John Colvin Leo Cooper, £18.95, pp. 248 CHINA DRAGONS by John Hill Blandford, £16.99, pp. 162 I n a review of the second world war, Lieutenant...

James Teacher THE COMMODORE by Patrick O'Brian HatperCollins, £14.99, pp. 288 "hose of us who smugly thought we Were keeping a rollicking good read to our- selves while the...

Julian Symons THE COLLECTED POEMS by Drummond Allison, edited and introduced by Stephen Benson available from Bishop's Stortford College, Bishop's Stortford, CM 23 2QZ,...

Non-fiction: Dr Johnson and Mr Savage by Richard Holmes, Flamingo, £6.99 Excursions in the Real World by Wilha Trevor, Penguin, £5.99 Beloved Emma by Flora Fraser, Pimlico ,...

Michael Bywater THE WALPOLE ORANGE by Frank Muir Bantam, £14.99, pp. 304 by Frank Muir Bantam, £14.99, pp. 304 Oftlim anew W hat did Frank Muir do before being Frank Muir became...

Anthony Blond THE TRAP by James Goldsmith Macmillan, £7.99, pp. 214 by James Goldsmith Macmillan, £7.99, pp. 214 murk J immy Goldsmith finished his formal education at the age...

Alan Wall .00 I t was not so long ago that to believe to witchcraft at all meant you had succumbe d to mediaeval superstition. There had never been any witchcraft, apparently,...

Like an addict in need of supplies, I buy bags and bags of them. They nuzzle each other inside the brown paper. I've a lust for them like a pregnant woman for a certain food. I...

Jazz The eternal Brownie sounds Martin Gayford W e trumpeters', Wynton Marsalis mused recently, 'have taken a lot of casual- ties over the years.' Undoubtedly, that is true....

Paula Reago: Dog Woman (Marlborough Fine Art, till 30 December Saatchi Gallery, till 26 February 1995) It's a dog's life Giles Auty I n a week in which the winner of the 1994...

La Traviata (Royal Opera House) Khovansehina (London Coliseum) The Spanish Lady (Cambridge University Opera Society) Time to get rude Rupert Christiansen S orry about the...

Give a gift subscription of The Spectator to a friend and we will give you a full size bottle of ten year old Glenmoran g ie Single Highland Malt. But hurry, we have only a...

Stairway to Heaven (King's Head) Out of the Blue (Shaftesbury) My Night with Reg (Criterion) Not About Heroes (Jermyn Street Theatre) Period pieces Sheridan Morley T wo new...

Drowned in plotlines Mark Steyn M iracle on 34th Street is the one which isn't It's A Wonderful Life — though time, television and the haze of yuletide cheer have suffused...

Blown to bits Taki My spies tell me that Big Al is not a bad shot, although recently he did shoot the peacock that was leading out the pheas- ants, which would, in a firing...

Dreaming of the past Nigella Lawson I s there a word for getting nostalgic about a particular and long-gone nostalgia? As i n, for instance 'You know, it's never been the same...

Nine weeks without a drink Jeffrey Bernard I wish I could cope half as well alone in this flat as Joanna Lumley did on her desert island. At least she had a camera crew nearby...

Sod the colonel Holly Budd T his week's lowlight was the visit by Monsieur Bertrand and his party from our French equivalent. Before privatisation we had a section dealing...

Not afraid of greatness Nigel Nicolson hung in the balance last Monday evening, a Patty was being given by Conrad Black at the other end of town to celebrate a more Joyful if...

weather still balmy as I write. So what did the powers that be arrange on the first Sunday of this season of prepara- tion for the coming of the Christ-child? They organised a...

SPAIWS FINEST CAA CHESS cADDRIiii9 SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA Moscow Raymond Keene IN 1896 BARON PIERRE de Coubertin founded the modern Olympics for physical sports, reviving the...

" ISLE OF COMPETITION JURA 51,G11 WAIT 1(0101.1115K1 Reflective Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1858 you were invited to write a poem entitled 'On Looking in a Mirror'....

CROSSWORD C1 GRAHAM'S PORT W. • J. GRAHAM'S PORT 1188: Quotation by 11/18 by Ascot A . first prize of L2.5 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 V i ntage Port for the...

Channel 4 t t G * F L 4 1 4 P 4 4 ,1 E 7 T H 0 9 1.1 TIUM 2 INSOLATIONIN E INSLUEIRCAEA EIRINA ANALITIES ENGLANDAERI And s c I 't-i El , BIV1S U B SII 2 e - C7r....

Among the 7,000 professors in this country, there is a Professor of Tourism. You are invited to provide an extract (maximum 150 words) from his inaugural lecture. Entries to...

Days of atonement Frank Keating SOUTH AFRICA'S rugby union tourists Sign off with the traditional Barbarians' farewell frolic in Dublin this Saturday after- noon. On the whole...

Q. After dinner last Saturday night, I longed for one of the Charbonnel & Walk- er chocolates I had handed to my weekend hostess on arrival. I had been vaguely fanta- sising...