AMERICA'S BIG MISTAKE The destruction of the Airbus stemmed from US hysteria about Iran says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard IN SEPTEMBER 1983 President Reagan made a bombastic...

'WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR PERESTROIKA?' Stephen Handelman reports on Soviet hopes and fears after last week's extraordinary conference Moscow 'MIKHAIL Sergeivitch! Take a rest!'...

THE PAINFUL ROAD Timothy Garton Ash sees Hungary's prospects growing gloomier as it sets about reform WHAT is socialism? Answer: the longest and most painful road from...

AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM Charles Glass goes to a reunion of his classmates of '68 -------- . . . there is nothing authentic in the youth subculture except its youthful...

What's yours? I DON'T know what the stock market is coming to. A girl clerk at Phillips and Drew has poisoned a broker by lacing his pint of milk with Tippex. I never touch...

Life at 10 per cent TEN per cent it is. The big banks moved their base lending rates back into double figures after a hint which has now lost all pretence of subtlety, and this...

1828 and all that THE old ones are the best, I thought, considering what was on City and Suburban minds when The Spectator first appeared in its present incarnation. Top of the...

LETTER FROM PRISON An open letter to the United Kingdom parliamentary mission to Iran Evin Prison, Teheran ear Mission: The news of your visit to Teheran has filled me with...

Dominic Elwes Sir: Alastair Forbes in his review of Brian Masters's book on Aspinall, (18 June), which has taken some time to reach me here, mentions my reporting on the Lucan...

Mr Powell has twisted the historical re- cord. 'The making of modern postrevolutionary Russia', far from being 'the outcome of its triumph over the German invasion', was the...

LE TTER S Russian mythology Sir: Enoch Powell's account of his latest pilgrimage to Holy Russia, ('Rebirth of a nation', 25 June) which he was pleased to find alive and well,...

Before Munich Sir: It may well be true, as suggested by William Deedes ('My Munich', 4 June) that Baldwin would have lost the 1935 election on a programme of rearmament, and...

Paisley kiss Sir: What an innocent we have dwelling in West Kilbride (Letters, 11 June). He lived in Paisley for years and has never been kissed. Christian Orr Ewing 12 St...

PS off Sir: The writers of junk mail ('Pipped at the postscript', 18 June) use the devices described (accurately) by Ian Samuel because they work. This is true even when one is...

Incontinent Sir: I belong to a family of avid Spectator readers, so avid, indeed, that they refuse to subscribe! 'Why?' I hear your marketing people ask in despair, as they try...

Little things Sir: In reply to. Mr van den Haag's query (Letters, 28 May) about the feminist position on Mr Johnson's redundancy: 'an erect male penis' is too small a thing to...

Vive le metro Sir: La difference in style between the Paris Metro and the London Underground was demonstrated by the reply of a female ticket collector to my uncle when he had...

Below stairs Sir: As a new reader of The Spectator I am Unfamiliar with Auberon Waugh's writing. Is he serious, humorous or mad? After reading 'A second shot at solving the...

THE CHAMPAGNE OF JOURNALISM The press: Paul Johnson insists that there is a place and a future for the weeklies THE political and literary weekly, appealing to a select...

Belfast '88 Secretly, I'd love another go at the ex-wife, one nose-crunching blow to put me at the forefront of her mind, not recreations of her cunt. So, I'm no better than...

Literary Editors remember Anthony Hartley To be flung into the literary editorship of a weekly would be the dream of every out-of-work ex-student. This was what happened to me...

Karl Miller Robert Kee was my predecessor as literary editor of The Sp)ectator. Robert, and Rory McEwen, who was drawing for the paper at the time, suggested that I might he...

Robert Kee I can't remember at all how I got the post. Under the young Ian Gilmour The Spectator had just developed a brilliant new happy-go-lucky streak (Bernard Levin. Brian...

David Rees During my time on The Spectator, 1963-67, there were two changes of editorship and one change of ownership. But despite all the comment and speculation which these...

Ronald Bryden Karl Miller moved to the Statesman early in 1961, recommending me as his successor. By Easter, I was in his tiny office, gazing over the sooty gardens of Gower...

Hilary Spurling The only advice given me by my predecessor was that all invitations to publishers' parties should go straight into the waste bin. He said no word about any of...

Robert Conquest My office at 99 Gower Street was a little cell, smaller even than the one where W. J. Turner had allegedly seduced female contributors (on an implausibly...

David Pryce-Jones Through Arthur Koestler, I came to know Lain Hamilton. At that time, I had been at the Eichmann trial, and when I reviewed Hannah Arendt's rather specious...

I Maurice Cowling I have three memories of being literary editor of The Spectator. The first is of the outrage caused to the publishers of novels when I had the brilliant idea...

Peter Ackroyd I was about to entrust myself to the mercies of the street when George Gale, then editor of The Spectator, offered me the post of literary editor. I was 23 years...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Among those who wrote for The Spectator books and arts pages in the late 1970s was (for a time) the late Hans Keller. He sometimes mentioned his theory of...

Patrick Marnham Lunch played a central role, I seem to remember that, frequently in an Italian restaurant. I was literary editor twice. Once in 1981 and again, after an...

1 Christopher Hudson In late 1970, pleading a dentist's appointment, I left Faber & Faber in Russell Square and walked round the corner to iGower Street to apply for the post...

Mark Amory Being literary editor here has taught me little about books, except that a great number are written about Ireland, Israel, nuclear warfare and Marilyn Monroe. What...

; Ferdinand Mount Those Cambridge savants like Dr George Steiner who are always proclaiming the Death of the Book ought to try a spell in the literary editor's chair. Outside,...

A. N. Wilson Being Lit Ed gave me the chance to commission work from writers I admired. The names of Angus Wilson, Caroline Blackwood, Sara Maitland, John Stewart Collis, Peter...

The primrose path of dalliance Anita Brookner LEADER OF THE BAND by Fay Weldon Hodder & Stoughton, £10.95, pp. 196 J ack Stubbs plays the trumpet and lives in a van behind...

Theatre Too Clever by Half (Old Vic) Greek (Wyndham's) - Comic distortion Christopher Edwards The Old Vic season under the artistic direction of Jonathan Miller continues...

Cinema September (CPG', Odeon Haymarket) Hidden City ('15', Metro Rupert Street) Moody Woody Hilary Mantel It is Vermont, late summer; an electrical storm is brewing, for...

High life Midnight pumpkin Taki Oy veh, what a week. It's been the roughest I've had since my four-night orgy of celebration following Mrs Thatcher's victory back in 1979...

Home life I remember it well Alice Thomas Ellis I'm losing my grip: I just mixed the stuffing for the pork with a teaspoon instead of a fork. I've never done that before in...

Is t AM a I Summer is a-goin' out w~~~~~~ 1! i 1: L. 'ERE we go again, rain, rain rain; the skies are dark and dismal, thunder and lightning rend the air, every paper has...

SPECTATOR WINE CLUB To mark Tie Spectator's 160th birthday the editor (or someone) has decided to accompany this offer with a Special Prize worth £160. I suggested it should go...