Cats on a hot tin roof A t the special SDP conference in Sheffield the proposal for a merger with the Liberals won an easy victory; the `Owenites', however, said that although...

'BYE 'BYE BLACKBOARD T he Greater London Council was abo- lished only two years ago leaving the Inner London Education Authority as a new directly elected public authority; and...

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

The firm-jawed acceptable face of soggy consensus politics NOEL MALCOLM Sheffield hope you won't be like the other journalists,' said the SDP member who had kindly offered to...

PETER LEVI I n the heady, idiotic days of the 1960s, a foolish boy I once taught was demonstrat- ing outside the door of All Souls. An old don shambled in. 'Why,' he was rudely...

The Indian Express had always been a paper of dissent. Last year it went further. Dhiren Bhagat tells the story of an Indian Cecil King Delhi RAJIV Gandhi's father was never...

original Mr Clean. V. P. Singh: finance minister (till January 1987), defence minister (till April 87) left Congress Party in July 1987 to become biggest political threat to...

anti-apartheid movement ignores injustice outside South Africa THERE is a country in Africa where the indigenous black people are ruled by a racial minority who came from the...

Czechoslovakia's new leader is no the political mechanism is stirring IN the Old Town Square in Prague there is a famous astronomical clock which tells you not only the time...

Allan Massie examines the claims of Thatcherism to a place in the Conservative tradition THE greatest Conservative minister of this century called his memoirs The Art of the...

56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 01-405 1706 Telex: 27124 )4/. f j )(dx44 : 1 tczeff) In recent years the circulation of The Spectator has grown fast. In 1984 it...

Margaret's men: a profile of Sir David English, who backed a woman for Prime Minister This is one of a series of profiles of men the Prime Minister admires. DAVID ENGLISH...

The media: Paul Johnson examines BBC coverage of the Birmingham bomb appeal THE BBC is a curious institution. It calls itself 'British', as though in some metaph- ysical way...

A JOLLY arrival from Anglia Television is The Stocks and Shares Show — a share race, with four amateur investors compet- ing to make the most (imaginary) money, helped or...

THE Chinese have invented the leaden handshake. So I see from the case of Shi Yong Jie, former head of the Shenyang Explosion-Proof Apparatus Factory. Its failure is blamed on...

Shocked by dear money? Don't say the Governor didn't tell you CHRISTOPHER FILDES A nyone in the City who thought that the Governor of the Bank of England talked for the...

THE great gladiator of the takeover arena, when I came to the City, was Philip Shelboume. He had joined the partnership of N. M. Rothschild from the commercial bar, as one of...

Sir: No doubt Mr Norman Willis will say, as you suggested (Leading article, 28 November): 'If anyone can ignore a major- ity ballot to go on strike then how can one take action...

Sir: Amid the constant barrage of near hysterical demands via the media for more cash to bolster the hard-pressed National Health Service a glimmer of truth and reality is at...

Sir: Auberon Waugh promises (Another voice, 30 January) to deliver facts, facts, facts in the finger-jabbing manner of Grad- grind or possibly Tyson. However, despite his...

Sir: Rochdale (`Misconceived experi- ments', 16 January) was the birthplace of Gracie Fields, not Oldham. W. H. J. Garland 24 Parkview Road, Croydon

Sir: In your Diary (30 January) you com- ment on Peregrine Worsthorne's front- page 'exclusive' in the Sunday Telegraph about Kingsley Amis and the joint portrait. What Amis,...

Sir: Since Taki (High life, 30 January) had no evidence to suggest that we backed down because Harrods withdrew its adver- tising from the Sunday Times, he smeared us by...

MEMORY OF PLACE SIMUKAI UTETE I COULD always spot the tourists in Zimbabwe. It was not only their clothes spun of finer stuff than our stiff cottons or those bright Hawaiian...

AN important deputation, including men like Cardinal Manning, the Bishop of Bedford, Lord Herschell, Lord Compton, and many noted philanthrop- ists and leaders of Trade...

America as Disneyland Ferdinand Mount REAGAN'S AMERICA: INNOCENTS AT HOME by Garry Wills Heinemann, £14.95 I t is a nice old fantasy (perhaps The Spectator has had a...

David Wright BRITISH WRITERS OF THE THIRTIES by Valentine Cunningham OUP, £30 T his book is an account of British literature in the 1930s. A literature in a history and a...

Francis King NEXT SEASON by Michael Blakemore Faber, f4.95 I n a characteristically shrewd and sharp introduction to this novel, first published in 1969 and now reissued in...

Anne Chisholm WILLA CATHER: A LITERARY LIFE by James Woodress University of Nebraska Press, £33.25 B efore she died, a famous and re- spected novelist, in 1947, Willa Cather...

John-Francis Phillimore V enetian Evenings comes some 30 years after the same author's Roman Mornings. The antithesis is a bit willed: as James Lees-Milne cheerfully admits,...

Gavin Stamp I t was always my ambition to be the legitimate heir of the Berlin classicists,' recorded Albert Speer in his diary in Spandau prison in 1955, 'and to this day it...

For Richard Whittington-Egan Encountering John Lane's ghost in Chancery Lane, I asked him whither; and he made reply: `To nab that no-good Dick Le Gallienne. He's on the drink...

Exhibitions Essential Australia Giles Auty Fred Williams: Paintings of the Pilbara (Serpentine Gallery, till 24 February) L ooking back on the Sixties and Seven- ties, I...

The Secret Life (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond) Fatal lassitude Christopher Edwards T his is the world premiere of one of Harley Granville Barker's final plays, writ- ten in...

A very fine fiddler Geoffrey Smith attended the 80th birthday concert of the great jazz violinist, Stephane Grappelli T he standing ovation from a sold-out house that capped...

Parsifal (Covent Garden) Forty years on Rodney MIInes M aybe Wagner and Cosima were right to try and restrict performances of Parsifal to Bayreuth. There is no getting away...

Temps perdu Wendy Cope A week ago on Wednesday, Stuart Bell, Labour MP for Middlesbrough, appeared on News at Ten (ITV) to com- ment on the health authority's decision to move...

The Stepfather (`18', selected cinemas) Don't disappoint dad Hilary Mantel ne of the annoying things about Fatal Attraction was hearing people say what a good little thriller...

In defence of Socrates Taki Izzy published his follies in a weekly newsletter until 1971, when heart trouble and failing eyesight forced him to stop exposing the evils of...

Room at the top Jeffrey Bernard I should have known I would end my days in an attic. It has been uphill all the way. Years ago, when I left home, my first bedsitter was in a...

Ill- Alice Thomas Ellis I don't like judges much. I haven't met many socially, because they mix only with each other, and I assure you I have not yet met one in his official...

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...

Chacun a son gout Jaspistos I N Competition No. 1508 you were invited to write quatrains in praise or dispraise of a particular edible. Ambiguity has struck again. I had in-...

Candidates Raymond Keene St John, Newfoundland Nigel Short and Jon Speelman have made history by becoming the first two British players ever to qualify for the quarter-finals...

WHEN I chose the pseudonym of Au- sonius under which to write a monthly wine column, I must admit that my knowledge of the fourth-century Roman grammarian, poet and consul was...

20D): 1A sin, 9 alters, 12 toast, 13 pant, 17 spins, 19 venting, 27 care, 30 pay, 36 bits, 39 testers. Winners: A. Hall, Goring-by-Sea (£20); Mrs M. Purdie, Cupar, Fife; Hugh...

Last summer the Independent ran a most amusing competition, which I gratefully borrow. You are invited to take a headline from a newspaper this month (please en- close cutting...

Rand and rand the garden Auberon Waugh I am sorry to offer four whites and only two reds in the chilly month of February, but I was aiming, in my second all-African offer, to...

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