THE SPEGL'I7OR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WCIN 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0003 MRS THATCHER AND FRIEND I am a great fan of Mr...

P O L I T I C S Mr Hattersley has a few screws loose in his Upper Chamber NOEL MALCOLM 'A constitutional crisis was looming last nlit IThe appearance of this phrasc in...

Chairman on board PRIDE of the British & Commonwealth fleet were the Union Castle liners which at four o'clock every Thursday, sailed from Southampton to Cape Town, bearing...

Not all bull? TAURUS is the Stock Exchange's bright idea which, as I have said for as many years as I can remember, has been two years away for as many years as anybody can...

Information underload TIlE life assurance companies' long struggle, meant to stop their customers finding out too much about what they are paying for is waged against Sir...

CI TY AND SUBURBAN B & C falls into the gulf of debt at the markets' feet CHRISTOPHER FILDES I A good rule in life is: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. A better rule is: If...

Cardinal priorities Sir: A. N. Wilson was very much closer to the late unlamented Cardinal T. 0 Fiaich than your correspondent J. O' Byrne (Letters, 2 June). While it took the...

L E T T E R S Survival of the fittest? Sir: Good for Alison Davis (Letters, 19 May). It is timely that someone who is disabled indicates her pleasure in the fact that she was...

Dressing up and down Sir: Robin Simon's attempt to judge bishops by their garb ('Definitely not unfrocked', 2 June) contains so many inaccuracies that an article somewhat...

Family factors Sir: Richard Lovelace is right to ascribe 'the spiritual poverty of the new slums' to cultural factors ('The lower depths', 26 May). Like him I fear for the...

Defense de traduire Sir: The proliferation of infelicitous French idiom in The Spectator unsettles me. Is it all in honour of 1992's approach, or merely virulent affectation?...

Punch-drunk Sir: I have been reading The Spectalor | since I gave up the New Statesman aroufl0 1965 and in the main and in general have found its facts impeccably accurate. I...

Sir: It seems queer (begging the PreSs I Council's pardon) that Paul Johnson in all his travels has never heard working-class people talk of spoofs' or 'poofters'. As for...

Raith no Wraith Sir: Your Lowestoft reader asserts that no such place as Raith is to be found on a map (Letters, 2 June). What map do they use in Lowestoft? Raith House, in...

Curtain up Sir: Paul Johnson says 'the Iron Curtain has come down' (The press, 19 May). That is what Churchill said on 12 May 1945. 'An iron curtain is drawn down ....' It is...

Sir: 'I shoulda stood in bed' was uttered not by Rocky Graziano - as Taki suggestl with all the authority of a man who cant tell a drag act from a dame - but by Casey Stengel....

The Huntingdonshire Eclogues XXIV At Gimber's End, there's to be no more truck with sugar-beet. Where a last few elms hang on, and the temporary sign Says SLOW, JCBs clear...

Baldness be my friend John Whitworth MAY WEEK WAS IN JUNE by Clive James Cape, £12. 95, pp. 249 Nobody writes like Clive James; he has invented a style and whatever the...

Where have all the flowers gone? Nicholas Coleridge LAURA ASHLEY: A LIFE BY DESIGN by Anne Sebba Weidenfeld & Nicolson, fl5, pp. 240 The oddest fact in this biography of...

Bitterness is her theme Gabriele Annan LANTERN SLIDES by Edna O'Brien Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12, pp. 256 This is Edna O'Brien's first collection of stories for eight years,...

Pop music No sweat Marcus Berkmann After my intemperate attack a couple of months ago on the mere notion of seeing the Rolling Stones live on their current Hand Over All Your...

Jazz Still playing like an angel Martin Gayford O nce upon a time, when the idiom itself was newly hatched, jazz appeared to be a young man's music. Nowadays, however, having...

Television Designer violence Wendy Cope If you're reading your Spectator at breakfast time, I suggest you leave this column until later. The first part of it is going to warn...

Low life Gathering gloom Jeffrey Bernard I am writing to you on the morning of Derby Day and a pretty damp and miserable morning it is. I switched this wretched typewriter on...

Free the Spirit So polite he could almost have been The villain in a Charlotte Bronte novelIf only he knew what we were about to do! A school bell rings shrilly in the distance...

SPECTATOR SPORT Cheering for Ireland Frank Keating England v. the Repubic of Ireland Sounds more like a case before the European Court than a pipe-opener in the World Cup....