A nyone who thinks of Mrs Thatcher as a woman of unmitigatedly high prin- ciples has to explain her recent appointment of a Minister of Children's Play. But one could almost...

Major public issues Colin Welch 'y ou can tell how socialist a country is by the number of things it forbids.' 'Some sense in that,' affirmed one of the retired majors with...

rr e Soviet Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens seems to have taken the place of the May Pole in British life. Strange peo- ple of all ages go there on May Day to pay homage,...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £15.50 IR£17.75 £18.50 £24.50 One year: £31.00 1 R£35.50 £37.00 £49.00 Cheques to be made payable to the Spectator and sent to...

Shirley's achievement Auberon Waugh M any middle-aged men nowadays must dream of revenging themselves on the young. It is not just that the young are so ignorant and rude....

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington 6 ow long', the senator from the H lo State of Delaware asked his col- leagues, 'are we to listen to the cries of outraged humanity that every...

Patrick Marnham Nebaj, Guatemala A ccording to a recent article by Anthony Lewis, the influential American com- mentator, nothing has changed in Guatemala. In March Mr Lewis...

Christopher Hitchens rr he 'peace mission' undertaken by Secretary of State George Shultz would not be necessary if American policy in the Near East showed any sign of...

Richard West New Orleans, Louisiana A Slidell, a town a few miles north of here, named after one of the state's most crooked politicians, a Dixieland band boarded the train and...

David Carlton W hatever the outcome of this week's local elections, the Tories have little cause for complacency about an eventual general election in June or later. The most...

Roy Kerridge fight years ago, when roaming through .L the Highlands of Scotland, I was given a lift by an amiable lorry driver who regaled me with lore and legend as he drove...

Byron Rogers T hey are one of the few races on earth never to have known statehood. One moment they were happily fighting each other, oblivious to the fact that they were being...

Room for improvement Paul Johnson T he Government's White Paper on cable systems sensibly follows the main recommendations of the Hunt Report, which was (by present-day...

Egypt has probably been delivered from a serious danger by the victory which Colonel Hicks, in command of the force the Soudan, has gained over the followers of the Mandi. He...

Sir: Sir Henry Cole (16 April) must have used Young's Analytical Concordance:1 1879, for his motto 'Whatsoever thy ha lt findeth to do, do it with all thy migh t, T n clesiastes...

Sir: Who can say why the Deutsche Grain- mophon Brahms edition has put A.S; Henry's nose out of joint (Letters , I° April), unless to manufacture another non- issue for his...

Sir: In his fascinating article (16 April) Walter Kendall describes how Leon Trot- sky, as a Balkans war correspondent, stayed at the Moskva Hotel in Belgrade. This is still the...

Sir: 'Edward Mortimer must surely wish that the ground would open up every time he recalls the article in which he greeted the coming to power of Khomeini with Charles James...

Sir: A. N. Wilson (9 April) makes the ludicrous statement: 'In 1649, only one voice of protest, in the whole of England, was raised against the decapitation of Charles I; and...

Sir: As another Englishman from the Home Counties who knows Cwmllynfell (MY wife's grandfather: Phil Jenkins — iron - monger between the wars), may I take issue with Peter...

Ark covenanted Sir: The late Dr Hugh Plommer was held in the warmest affection by all his colleagues in the Faculty of Classics in Cambridge, so a tribute to him (9 April) is...

Sneering at Mr Veneering Arthur Marshall Names Basil Cottle (Thames and Hudson £9.50) S ome readers may happily remember the publication a few years ago of a book called...

Frank Longford Julia de Beausobre: A Russian Christian in the West Constance Babington Smith (Darton, Longman and Todd £9.95) C onstance Babington Smith has written sensitive,...

James Cameron A History of the Modern World Paul Johnson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £16.50) and such,' they say, 'has not been seen since the beginning of the world'. So when was...

Anthony Blond The Jewish Community in British Politics Geoffrey Alderman (OUP £17.50) w hitechapel, at the turn of the century, had 1500 Jewish voters out of an elec- torate of...

Brian Masters To be a Redgrave Deirdre Redgrave (Robson Books £7.95) I is an awesome reflection on the vision 1. of some publishers that the author of this book was apparently...

Francis King Fools of Fortune William Trevor (Bodley Head £7.50) rr he cover of this novel reproduces a detail from a painting 'The Two Travellers' by Jack B. Yeats. Yeats was,...

Simon Courtauld A Stranger in Spain H.V. Morton (Methuen £5.95) D riving north last month from Andalusia to Estremadura, I stopped for the night in Zafra at the Parador de...

Mary Kenny Romantic Love and Society: Its Place in the Modern World Jacqueline Sarsby (Pelican £2.95) The Child-Lovers: A Study of Paedophiles in Society Glenn D. Wilson and...

Duncan Fallowell T he Hon. Henry Mountsavage, a rather aimless traveller in the East between the wars, on Laos: 'The only country which manages to be both landlocked and sub-...

James Hughes-Onslow Animal Liberation: Towards an End to Man's Inhumanity to Animals Peter Singer (Thorson £4.95) This book has been hailed as the anti" vivisectionist and...

That's no lady... Peter Ackroyd Tootsie (PG', selected cinemas) D ustin Hoffman is an actor who likes to `feel' each role he plays, to 'get inside' each character; he is less...

Beyond belief Giles Gordon The White Glove (Lyric Studio, Hammersmith) The Roaring Girl (Barbican) The Taming of the Shrew (Barbican) f you've ever itched to up-end the sam...

JOHN GUNTHER: 'Inside USA' and his short book on writing the 'Inside' books. N.P. Lloyd, 58 Hampstead Way, London NW11 7XX. FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS: 'James Tarrant, Adventurer',...

Group psychology Rodney Milnes The Carmelites (Covent Garden) Katya Kabanova (Opera North, Manchester) I tend to divide acquaintances into those who can and those who cannot...

Surfeit Maureen Owen T here is no doubt, as the late Gwyn Thomas noted in his diaries, that the Welsh people have been 'deeply wounded in their minds'. The austere, forbidding...

Speechless Taki Lexington, Kentucky L ate April is a time when the lawns and gardens of Kentucky are painted with the real life pastels of a Southern spring - time. This is...

Royal wit Richard Ingrams Elollowing the undignified but very amus- ing departure of Jay, Rippon and Ford from TV-am it remains to be seen whether the company can survive at...

Forty-six minutes P. J. Kavanagh M y two neighbour columnists give the low-down — and high-down — on their lives, and this Mr Postscript feels he ought to give the low-down on...

Finders keepers Jeffrey Bernard T here's something slightly obscene about the American obsession with litigation, but then, with a handful of exceptions like Lincoln, W.C....

No. 1268: Dial-a-Prayer Set by Jaspistos: British Telecom is about to offer the public this service but is said to be still searching for a formula that cannot possibly give...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were invited to write a poem entitled On First Looking Into the Telephone Directory. A good, big entry, with an impressive variety of angles of...

Soviet supreme Raymond Keene K arpov has narrowly won the 50th anniversary Soviet Championship which ran in Moscow from 3 to 28 April. In spite of a slow start, the world...

Inscribes by Ix A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 23 May. Entries to: Crossword 606, The Spectator, 56 Doughty s reel, London WC1N...

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P resident Reagan appointed a former Democratic Senator, Richard Stone, to be his special envoy for Central America, hoping at the same time that Congress would approve the...