Fiat justitici, ruat caelum L ord Justice Taylor presented his re- port on the standards of safety at football grounds, a study commissioned in the wake of the Hillsborough...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 DEATH AND TAXES e question is, does this Government T h favour the family?...

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Defence policy: the blind spot leading the blind NOEL MALCOLM T he Tory Party has always done well out of the defence issue — better, perhaps, than it deserved to. Defence...

I 'm afraid Annabel's husband is going to be late,' our hostess said, 'he's working at Bush House, you know, the Overseas Service,' In fact it was about halfway through dinner...

Tim Congdon shows how the reduction of government spending is placing Britain in a virtuous circle of prosperity ONE of the geopolitical clichés of the 1980s was that the...

Timothy Garton Ash on how Eastern Europe is responding to Western political theory A RUSSIAN Jewish acquaintance of mine once described to me how, when she first arrived in...

A MURDER near Crewe has in- terested the public this week, because it seemed at first sight to be a revival of the old practice of highway-robbery by force. A well-to-do...

In Dominic Lawson's interview with Lord Rees-Mogg (20 January), he quoted a Sun leading article, 'Le Corbusier said a house was a machine for living in. Stupid git!' Mr Lawson...

Anne MeElvoy traces neo-Nazism in Germany to the door of the Communist Party East Berlin MY FRIEND Matthias stormed around his living-room in a rare rage as the evening news...

Michael Heath

Richard West weighs up the degree of anti-Islamic feeling in Europe North Nicosia, Cyprus THE Attila Line dividing the Turks and Greeks in Cyprus is coming to have a...

Anthony Daniels meets a borough librarian who decides what we should not read THE news from Eastern Europe, it seems, has not yet reached some of the People's Democratic...

Nicholas Farrell visits the town where satellite television is banned IN the war a German bomber crashed nearby. Once some lovebirds were stolen from the pet shop. Now it is...

Living donors MOST people have probably heard of a kidney being donated for transplant by a living person, usually a close relation of the recipient. In general the proce- dure...

The press: Paul Johnson reports on the new Sunday newspaper 'IT is not a had time to be launching a new newspaper,' said the Independent on Sun- day hopefully in its...

Good news at last for Mr Major JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE h e first unqualified good news for Mr John Major was a long time in coming. True, the occasion of Ford's labour force to...

Upset insides bring on a nasty case of listeria nervosa CHRISTOPHER FILDES L sider trading is to investment what listeria is to eating. If we hadn't heard of it, we wouldn't...

CASH is now king, and the increasingly numerous companies which cannot pay their bills are dead — so I was saying last week. I now find that Clausewitz and Engels said it...

THREE questions for investors. What do you think will happen to inflation this year? What do you think will happen next year? Is that good news for shares or bad news? Here is a...

NO PRIZES for guessing that today's inflation is bad for today's and tomorrow's pensioners. Those who are getting worse off year by year will take a hungrier interest in the key...

THE prescribed treatment for insider trad- ing is to bring it out. Better to treat it not as a possible infringement of some section of the criminal law, but as a possible...

Sir: Your comments on the Grand Duke Wladimir (`Exiled by Anglicans?' 20 January) are both completely incorrect and discourteous. I am not sure whether Christopher Howse, the...

Sir: I do not usually feel obliged to write letters in defence of the magazine I edit but I would like to make two points concerning Paul Johnson's extreme views about Tatter...

Hospital accountability Sir: Cynthia Kee's article ('My gangrenous leg', 9 December), describing her appalling experiences at the hands of staff in an NHS hospital raises...

Sir: Mervyn Stockwood's efforts on behalf of Rumanian priests were, as Roland Rudd guessed (Letters, 27 January), unknown to me. As Mr Rudd says, it may have been difficult for...

Sir: Alan Watkins is right about phrases changing their meanings, but what about misleading descriptions? (Diary, 2 Decem- ber). What is more permanent than a tem- porary...

Sir: As the Spectator has become a RR/ Skoda hybrid, (Letters 20 and 27 January) may I suggest you restructure the rear end by replacing Wallace Arnold with Conrad Black? Your...

Sir: The events surrounding the publica- tion of The Satanic Verses are remarkably similar to those described in Act V of Beaumarchais' comedy, The Marriage of Figaro (or, The...

Sir: In answer to Auberon Waugh's (Let- ters, 27 January) about my husband's dealings with the Sunday Times, I have to tell him that they are in no way to be compared with those...

Sir: As the part author of Save the City. A Conservation Study of the City of London, mentioned in Gavin Stamp's stimulating article Another Vision of Britain (13 Janu- ary),...

your readers, but anyone who, when invited to be a godfather to Andrew White's baby, can write anything as funny as 'a share option on the little mite could well turn up...

Two words were accidentally transposed in the letter last week from Mr Andrew Knight. The passage should have read: 'Perry is the person I enjoyed most on the Telegraph . . . I...

RELATIONSHIP. Stereotype rejecting, personal space respecting, trusting, car- ing and equal, a relationship is a love affair designed by a committee of social workers. Nigel Burke

A genius for contempt Paul Foot HAZLITT: A LIFE FROM WINTERSLOW TO FRITH STREET by Stanley Jones OUP, B5, pp.416 B efore the television video recorder transformed our lives,...

Patrick Skene Catling DOWNSTART by Brian Inglis Chatto, £15.95, pp.298 B ernard Shaw called himself a 'down- start' when he became a clerk. Brian Inglis uses the...

David Nokes BOS WELL, THE GREAT BIOGRAPHER, 1789-1795 edited by Marlies K. Danziger and Frank Brady Heinemann, £25, pp.37I h e publication of this final volume of Boswell's...

VINELAND by Thomas Pynchon Secker & Warburg, .£14.95, pp.385 I haven't disliked a serious book so much since giving up half way through Finnegans Wake, and that was more than...

Bruce Bernard CLOSE UP by William Klein Thames & Hudson, £24, pp.176 W illiam Klein has only gained general acceptance in polite photographic circles during the last few...

William Scammell THE LONGMAN LITERARY COMPANION TO SCIENCE edited by Walter Gratzer Longman, £17.95, pp.544 HARRAP'S BOOK OF SCIENTIFIC ANECDOTES chosen and introduced by...

'Verse in the 20th cent, has largely escaped the straitjacket of traditional metrics.' The Oxford Companion to English Literature, fifth ed. Once, to a woman and a man, Poets...

Norman Stone VACLAV HAVEL, OR LIVING IN TRUTH edited by Jan Vladislav Faber, £15, £4.99 pp.3I5 N aively, I asked a Hungarian friend why the dissidents wore beards and...

Ronald Hingley SECOND NATURE: FORTY-SIX POEMS BY BORIS PASTERNAK by Andrei Navrozov Peter Owen, £13.95, pp.83 POEMS 1955-1959 with an ESSAY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Boris...

Architecture Jones the Baroque Richard Hewlings L abels are insignificant things unless they are wrong. The least consequential feature of a house is the number on its door,...

Duke Bluebeard's Castle (Scottish Opera, Glasgow) Happy families Rodney Milnes I t has been a good week for designers. In Glasgow Stefanos Lazaridis, whose con- tribution to...

A Victorian Earl in the Arctic: The Travels and Collections of the 5th Earl of Lonsdale (Museum of Mankind, till 27 July) Errant earl John Hensh all C ollections of...

Romero (15). The political education—and 1980 assassination — of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of El Salvador. Two living composers are celebrated in London this month: Robert...

The British Art Show 1990 (McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, till 11 March) Glasgow's own goal Giles Auty here are times in a critic's life when the provision by a public gallery...

Gypsy (St James Theatre) Coming up Rose Douglas Colby A s the orchestra blazes through the overture to Gypsy at the start of the current and much heralded revival, the...

Furry stories Taki hey are so pushed for humour in this town that this golden oldie is currently numero uno among the laughing classes: Animal rights zealot confronts a leggy,...

No laughing matter Wendy Cope f that's what people laugh at,' I said to my playwright friend, 'you may as well give up.' We were on our way out of the National Theatre,...

Feeling liverish Zenga Longmore political leader. If she can only manage to lend a shriller note to those gurgles, I can even see her rising to the dizzy heights of Housing...

Taking the plunger Jeffrey Bernard L ife has been lower than low over the past few days. It reached rock bottom last Saturday with an incident of such squalor that I thought I...

but Oxford has always been better served with restaurants than Cambridge. This was something for which I was always pretty grateful during my three years' stint, as who,wouldn't...

Second first Raymond Keene I n the past couple of years Dr John Nunn has been somewhat overshadowed by the glamorous exploits of Nigel Short and Jonathan Speelmati....

The rest of the story Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1610 you were in- vited to provide a story either beginning or ending with the words: 'Then the dog rolled off my face.'...

The apparent names of Beachcomber's twelve red-bearded dwarfs who g ave Mr Justice Cocklecarrot so much trouble were: Sophus Barkayo-Ton g , Amaninter Axlin g , Far j ole...

A first prize of 120 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary') for the first three correct...