he ASLEF rail strike started with both I sides sounding confident, Mr Buckton that the response had been as good as he could have hoped after a hostile press cam- paign; British...

The triumph of Roy Stephen Fay R oy Jenkins arrived at the Social Democrats' headquarters last Friday, to hear of his victory in the Party's leader- ship election, looking...

M y Sunday was completely ruined by the. Sunday Times. I read three things in it which cumulatively plunged me into despair and filled me with feelings of bit- terness towards...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £15.50 IRE17.75 £18.10 E24.50 One year: £31.00 1R£35.50 £37.00 £49.00 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made payable to the...

To be a virgin Auberon Waugh A t a time when the whole of intelligent Britain is discussing Mr Ferdinand Mount's brilliant new book: The Subver- sive Family: An Alternative...

Patrick Marnham Tegucigalpa to San Salvador T he bus company's sign was intended to be reassuring. `Transportes El Salvador — Safety, Comfort, Responsibility.' Lower down, as...

Christopher Hitchens New York A few mornings ago, Senator Edward Moore Kennedy of Massachusetts was being interviewed on CBS news by Diane Sawyer. She relayed to him a joke...

Sam White A most everyone involved in the events of May 1968 was at one time or an- other touched with madness. There was de Gaulle himself raging impotently as control of the...

Anthony Mockler S he looked over her shoulder as if fearful, even in her own guesthouse, of spies. It is a very common precaution in the Seychelles nowadays. 'Tell me, M'sieu...

Patrick Desmond `Trouble in the Middle East' has for so 1 long meant war between Israel and her neighbours, or the threat of it, that Western eyes have rarely strayed to the...

David Gollob Seville If you push them they will remind you that, before, Palmar was nothing; whereas now . . . They gesture to the metal gates in the 15-foot wall that seals...

Roy Kerridge D ear Enoch Powell: Anyone who is an admirer not only of George Borrow, but also of Surtees, must be a man of sound views. However, I am afraid that I consider Your...

John Stewart Collis I t was really two tournaments. There was a challenge between the players; and there was the challenge against the weather. Thus in the first week when...

Timothy Garton Ash `T he atmosphere is remarkably free', says the Professor just back from Warsaw. Food is:no problem': at least, he always had plenty to eat. You think for a...

Sir E. Watkin has at last been com- pelled to suspend the works on the Channel Tunnel. The Board of Trade on Wednesday applied to the High Court (Chancery Division) for an...

Geoffrey Stern `T regard myself as spokesman, teacher 1 and follower of the social line of Catholicism and not of capitalism or socialism. My devotion to truth, justice and...

Unapologetic Paul Johnson A l of us journalists must submit, from time to time, to rebukes from readers. Why, even the delightful Arthur Marshall has just been rapped over the...

Jo GrimOnd Q urely it cannot be true that the Falkland victory is to be celebrated like a Roman Triumph at St Paul's Cathedral? If we want to commemorate the dead, a funeral...

Rate for the job Tony Rudd S o now it's official. What we took for the light at the end of the tunnel is after all that of an oncoming train. Economic recovery as part of the...

Sir: Yet again Paul Johnson (26 June) calls for free market considerations to dominate television programmes. Can he really be serious? As a form of communication television is...

when the terms of reference of the inquiry into the origins of the recent Falkland Islands debacle come to be drawn, the recent history of commercial relationships between...

Anglo-Argentine lady without comment (Notebook, 26 June). The comment might have been intemperate, which this writer is fighting not to be. My connection with Argentina has...

Sir: I am working on a biography of Nancy Mitford and would be very grateful if any of your readers who knew her, or who have information or papers relating to 'her, would be so...

The Falkland Islands Sir: As your readers are painfully aware, and as the archives will indelibly confirm, the Spectator lost its nerve over the Falklands war. I imagine that...

in much the same way that the woman correspondent, quoted by Alexander Chancellor (Notebook, 26 June), thinks about her government in Argentina. And, for that matter, the way...

Team spirit Geoffrey Wheatcroft e was a so-called Pink, who believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Progressive Education, the Integrity of anyone spying for Russia,...

Richard West Travels in West Africa Mary Kingsley (Virago £5.95) 'T sabella Bird is the ideal traveller' wrote the Spectator critic in 1879, of the first edition of A Lady's...

Robert Bernard Martin A be Burrows used to sing plaintively that he was walking down Memory Lane without a single thing to remember. Not so H. R. F. Keating, who apparently has...

The genius of William Trevor Patrick Skene Catling A good short story, like a good poem, exists only in its expression. Its essence is irreducible and immutable. As William...

Miranda Seymour The Prodigal Child David Storey (Jonathan Cape £7.50) rr he ability of Carlos Fuentes t° fascinate, baffle and provoke puts him alongside Nabokov and Calvino...

FREDERICK THE GREAT by Nancy Mitford. 9. Rothwell Street, London NW1 8YH. AUDREY WYNNE HATFIELD: any out - of- print herb books by this author urgently wanted; also gardening...

Marghanita Laski I was an English Poet: A biography of Sir William Watson Jean Moorcroft Wilson (Cecil Woolf £12.50) W illiam Watson, who was born in 1858, was knighted in 1917...

Pursuit of excellence Anthony Burgess Toscanini Beethoven's complete sym- phonies (RCA VL 46020) Toscanini Wagner: Siegfried Act II/Idyll (RCA VL 46008) Toscanini Wagner:...

Sssch... John McEwen J ulian Schnabel is 31 and hails from Brooklyn. His painting (Tate Gallery till 3 September) is a visual equivalent of Funk Rock. It makes up in bombast...

Goofing off Peter Ackroyd A Kind of Hero (`AA', selected cinemas) J udging by the audience at the cinema 1 attended, Richard Pryor, the black American comedian, has a...

Fool's Day Mark Amory King Lear (Stratford) Lear (The Other Place) A t the interval after two hours of King Lear I had not suffered a dull moment and after a further hour and...

Talc' New York T he New York Yacht Club is located west of New York's Fifth Avenue, but that is its only drawback. Although some members think that its proximity to the New...

Inside out Jeffrey Bernard To Ken, H.M. Prison, Stanford Hill, Sheerness, Kent. D ear Ken, Just a line to let you kW; that the Russians gave an `outspoke n feminist four...

To enable competitors to economise on postage, entries for one or more weeks of the competition and crossword may be posted together under one cover addressed 'Competition...

No. 1226: Transformations Set by Jaspistos: You are invited to expand a well-known nursery rhyme, limerick or clerihew (please specify which one) into a poem (maximum 14 lines)...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked to list amusing and accurate differences, barring the biological ones, between men and women in this unisex age. La difference...

clued, a nin e. letter word and the horizontal b° , cutting off the last letter should b e ignored.

Improvements Raymond Keene w orld Championship games are always subjected to intense scrutiny by post- mortem analysts, and in some cases (notably the Spassky-Fischer clash of...

A pr'ze of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correci solution opened on 26 July. Entries to: Crossword 565, The Spectator, 56 D )ughty Street, London WCIN 2LL. 1 2 3 4...

The nursery rhyme (20 16) is ' diddle-diddle' and the variarfr. replace: 28 cat; 10 fiddle; 42 NW' 21D moon; 35 dog; ID fun; 23 dis h; 8 spoon (see Chambers). Winner: Charles A....