'We're feeding them Edwina Currie.' TWO front-bench opposition members, Clare Short and Andrew Bennett, resigned in protest at Labour's abstention from voting on anti-IRA...

SPECTATOR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 UNION OR DIVISION inn Fein means 'ourselves alone'. The motto...

Charter 88: a political programme on stilts NOEL MALCOLM T hose fun-loving Russians are at it again. With the news that Mr Gorbachev is planning to investigate human rights...

CHARLES MOORE n Monday, I happened to be driving for quite a long time, and so I listened to the car radio. Every news bulletin and large chunks of the Jimmy Young Show...

When public opinion has eventually to confront the horrible truth AUBERON WAUGH M r Stewart Steven, editor of the Mail on Sunday, is a jovial sort of person. He has been...

Myles Harris investigates the 'out-of-body' experiences that challenge the clear divisions of conventional science I WAS ten when I first heard about the shabby way Pope Urban...

CLOSED CATHEDRALS [TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR] SIR,—May I be permitted, as holding office in a Cathedral Chapter, to say a word on the vexed subject of charges made to...

Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 /49.50 0 £26.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £60.50 0 £31.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $99 0 US$50 Rest of Airmail 0 £77.00 0 £40.00 World Airspeed 0...

The Argentine army does not want to take over, despite appearances, writes Gary Mead Buenos Aires SATURDAY 10 December is a momen- tous day in Argentina's history, but now for...

Robert Cottrell looks at the thin prospects for Western business in China 'DESPITE all kinds of political upheavals, crises, pressures, wars and dangers to her personal...

ON the Van der Grinten [map] projec- tion . . . the Soviet Union is 223 per cent larger than in reality. . . On the Robinson version, the Soviet Union is 18 per cent larger than...

Hong Kong is slipping away. Michael Trend on the chances Michael Trend on the chances the Government may miss AS THE once never-setting sun of the British Empire goes down...

G. M. Tamds explains why Toryism is what Eastern Europe needs The author is one of the leaders of the opposition movement in Hungary. 'THIS is a whorehouse, sir', said the...

Between Genscher and Thatcher, Mitterrand seeks a new approach to the East. Timothy Garton Ash reports Paris WHILE Paris is lamed by a massive public transport strike, and...

Edward Heath's first published article appeared under this heading in The Spectator, 19 April 1940 IN A RECENT issue of The Spectator an enlightened public schoolboy added his...

Colin Ward, Britain's leading anarchist writer IT IS perhaps peculiar to Britain that a man of great intelligence and personal charm could write, co-write or edit 26 good books...

The press: Paul Johnson considers the relative virtues of British and foreign newspapers LUNCHING recently with a group of Danes — a diplomat, a publisher and a poet — I was...

People who live in glass houses can't afford the rent CHRISTOPHER FILDES T his week a fusillade of corks saw John Robertson off from the City — the last senior partner of the...

TAKING as I do a Scroogist attitude to the state pensioners' Christmas bonus — it must have meant so much to the late Duke of Northumberland, who I see has left £17 million — I...

I HAVE been wrong all this time about Nigel Lawson's tie. Not, that is, his pink- and-green club tie for moments of ebulli- ence, but the conservative effect in dark blue which...

HAVING laid her eggs, Edwina Currie has moved on to the City, where she is sponsoring a sober movement called Drinksense. (Next, perhaps, Talksense?). There was no such...

RUMMER and rummer at Collins. Rupert Murdoch's offer document confirms that he is unhappy with the management (or rather with the loss of good managers), chairman Ian Chapman...

of North Down Conservative Association's application made me hopping mad — to put it mildly. I have been a Northern Ireland voter for LETTERS almost 40 years, and the only...

Sir: John Ralston Saul's article on the recent Canadian election in The Spectator of 26 November was a rabidly partisan bowdlerisation of the facts. He asserted that it was an...

Sir: Like others who seek to justify the Conservative Party's failure to organise in Northern Ireland Peter Morrison, the Par- ty Deputy Chairman (Letters, 26 Novem- ber),...

Sir: The most picturesque walk I can remember of the City (City and suburban, 26 November) was in the late Fifties when as a new 20-year-old trainee at Lazards (then at 11 Old...

Sir: Christopher Hogwood's opposition to music in restaurants is not quite so root and branch as his letter in The Spectator of 5 November might lead you to suppose. As he may...

Sir: Collusion of muddled papers and creeping amnesia brought about the omis- sion of the book I had chosen, months ago, for the top of my Christmas list (26 November). May I...

Sir: In his review of Vivien Leigh (22 October) John Kobal has bad luck in choosing Hedy Lamarr as the bimbo anti- thesis of Vivien Leigh. She was one of the few Hollywood stars...

Sir: I was interested to notice that Jaspistos awarded the second of his four prizes to some hexameters which do not meet clas- sical standards on caesuras and fifth-foot...

Sir: Paul Johnson (The Media, 26 Novem- ber) claims that British soldiers had no nasty naine for the Germans. He has obviously never heard of the Hun. J. F. S. Kallinicos 50...

They are rotting Paul Foot TIME BOMB: IRISH BOMBS, ENGLISH JUSTICE AND THE GUILDFORD FOUR by Grant McKee and Ros Franey Bloomsbury, £4.95, pp.498 h e evidence, or should I...

is published by Denise Harvey at £21, not £40 as stated last fortnight.

Is he here? Is he back? I asked them: No one seemed to know. I ran outside to look for him As fast as I could go, Into an empty courtyard And the sibilance of snow. Anonymous...

like that: One cannot learn the skills involved At the drop of a hat: It's the slow-learnt skills in the depths of love That I'm working at. Lady Nakatomi (8th century)

David Owen PEACE: THE PLAIN MAN'S GUIDE TO WAR PREVENTION by Hugh Hanning Cecil Woolf, 1 Mornington Place, London NW! 7RP, E9.95, pp. 160 h e UN is back in favour. With the...

Nicholas Lezard f you go to acting class in New York, you will probably be asked to do this: . . . think of something you did for someone else that made you feel good about...

Finest of the three main species Victoria Glendinning E very season throws up new varieties and cultivars of the three main species of popular gardening book. The most showy...

The way it was for the moment Juliet Townsend L ooking at the Leslie Howard film of The Scarlet Pimpernel or at a Roman scene by Alma-Tadema I am always struck by the way in...

Peter Vansittart FIELDS OF VISION by D. J. Enright OUP, £14.95, pp.248 A Spectator columnist recently profes- sed bewilderment at the recurring phe- nomenon of D. J. Enright,...

You, infesters of the street's entrails — scavengers pouncing on guttered fagends, buskers praying for silver hats, schizoid half-breeds, sorry dogs, aimless targets, breathing...

Anita Brookner L iterary prizes in France are awarded in November and are generally — but not always — won by the wrong writers. Time alone will tell whether L'Exposition Col-...

Exhibitions 1 Panoramania (Barbican Art Gallery, till 15 January) Art in the round Gavin Stamp A t the foot of the huge cone of earth surmounted by a Belgic lion that marks...

Call Me ('18', Cannon Piccadilly) Unfunny bunny Hilary Mantel I have to confess to dereliction of duty. I have missed the film of the year, the movie of the decade, the...

Post-war British Abstract Art (Austin Desmond, till 22 December) Notions of progress Giles Auty T his train will also be calling at Reptile.' Did I really hear that? Once...

Making History (Cottesloe) Richard II (Phoenix) Man of action Christopher Edwards B rian Friel's new play is an interesting attempt to dramatise how history comes to be...

Adelaide Hall (King's Head, Islington, till 11 December) In the pink Martin Gayford G ood jazz singers are as rare as Ocelots, and becoming rarer by the day. Jazz requires...

Give us the tools . . . Ursula Buchan S , omeone, who shall be nameless but who knows quite well who he is, has broken my gardening knife. He borrowed it for a trifling task...

Rainbow's end Wendy Cope P eople often ask me why I have never reviewed Blind Date (ITV). It's so popu- lar. A year ago I was reliably informed that most of the intellectuals...

Yule nouvelle Taki New York his is a particularly gay time to be in New York (I use the word gay in its correct and original meaning) with parties galore and Christmas trees...

Who's coming to dinner? Jeffrey Bernard A magazine has asked me to name my six favourite and six unfavourite people of all time. Sixty would have been easier but just six is...

No strings on me Alice Thomas Ellis Each room is a mess and in each room is a box — or a chest of drawers — which is also a mess. It is all very discouraging. We have somewhat...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 for the first three correct solutions opened on 30 December. Entries to: Crossword 888, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street,...

Press gang Raymond Keene A fter the 1985 Karpov-Kasparov world championship was terminated in suspicious circumstances, Karpov began to receive a bad press. I believe that a...

Poet's own Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1552 you were asked for an acrostic poem in the style of a well-known poet, the first letters of each line spelling out the poet's...

I 29 I TIUTHL ESSL FF PLEF W F reill I T2 S A L V E 0 - FR I CANFIE TTOC 711101A - 0EO R M RANT RAT A T I ONEl!GHE 41E7 I NUEITIT LEND The unclued lights are SEABIRDS....

A poem, please (maximum 16 lines) about New Year's resolutions. Entries to 'Com- petition No. 1555' by 30 December.

feel I might return to eat in them regularly. Such are the burdens of office, I feel I should always be out trying new places. As an excuse, it's a good one, and not entirely...