`if you do that again, we won't sell you any more arms.' T he Prime Minister proposed a Euro- pean Magna Carta entrenching basic hu- man rights. The IRA failed to kill Lord....

W hatever happens in the Gulf, there is one lesson to be drawn: it does not pay to be nice to bullies. For much too long President Bush ignored warnings from the American...

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Mrs Thatcher enlists Eastern Europe for her war of ideas NOEL MALCOLM T here is a jinx on Mrs Thatcher. Recently, every time she has hoped for a triumph on the international...

ALEXANDRA ARTLEY O ne evening this week, when pave- ments in central London had become almost painful to walk on, we found ourselves sipping icy lemon vodka in Not- ting Hill at...

Perhaps it is time we started worrying about the old age pensioners AUBERON WAUGH C I have seen the future and it works,' wrote the great American thinker, Lincoln Steffens,...

America felt at home in the world ad hoc reaction to the rude awakening of Iraq Washington SAY what you will about Saddam Hussein, he does know something about the design of a...

John Simpson on the dangerous tendency of Iraq's ruler to do as he threatens ON A Victorian Ionic pillar near my house a tattered poster from 1988 still flaps in the breeze....

J. B. Kelly on the hypocrisy of the Gulfs oligarchies TO ANYONE even faintly inclined to- wards a cynical view of international rela- tions the past week's hullabaloo over the...

Michael Heath

Philip James was the only British officer attached to the Kuwaiti army the last time Iraq tried to invade TWENTY-NINE years have passed since another power-crazed Iraqi ruler...

Tim Heald investigates Tim Heald investigates the Latin American attitude to whodunnits THE Mexican immigration officer had clearly never seen a visa like it. ' Motivo del...

TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR.' Sir, Will you permit me to notice two mistakes in your article on 'Etiquette,' in relation to the precedence given to Cardinal Manning on the...

persist . • . I WENT to prison again last week; a prison doctor friend of mine needed a respite from ministering to the unsick, and I stood in for him. No doubt prisoners...

The press: Paul Johnson on appeasement in the quality papers THE Iraqi invasion of Kuwait stirred uneasy memories of Suez for many of us. In 1956 I was writing the Middle East...

POOR little Yellowhammer lies on its back with its claws in the air. The cat got it, and now the receiver has it. To the City, it is the latest warning (Saatchi is the loudest)...

A WHIFF of brimstone hangs in the air over the world's markets. Their profession- als have to decide whether this is a turning point, when the markets' working assump- tions...

IT HAS happened before. Twenty-odd years ago I had to do with a weekly newsletter, sent out from the Middle East's happy and prosperous financial capital, Beirut. Week by week...

THERE is someone missing from the committee now formed to represent the creditors of British & Commonwealth Merchant Bank. The big names are there. headed by the Midland, but no...

Saddam Hussein gets out of debt by holding up the bank CHRISTOPHER FILDES I suppose that if I owed a fortune to the National Westminister, and could not pay it back, because I...

Sir: I thought that the way in which otherwise reasonable human beings are regularly reduced to raging lunatics by London traffic is so much part of life's rich pattern that I...

Sir: As the 'very nice and rather extraor- dinary woman from Vienna' with a sense of the absurd and encumbered with the pleasurable task of doing a PhD thesis on Jeffrey Bernard...

Sir: It is good to see that at last some one outside the solicitors' profession is con- cerned about the potential problems cre- ated by the Courts and Legal Services Act,...

Sir: Mr J. Enoch Powell's article ('An ill trade wind', 21 July) makes a watertight case for the dismantling of the United Kingdom, and an independent Scotland. Ramsay Manners...

Taxi Drivers' Association reveals much of the lamentably arrogant outlook of some taxi drivers. He indirectly condones the assault upon me by a London cabbie by disparaging my...

Is your travel book necessary? James Buchan I can't remember when I went off British travel writers, because I was mad about them once. Unpacking some old books at home a...

Anita Brookner THOSE IN PERIL by Nicolas Freeling Deutsch, £11.99, pp. 212 T his is Nicolas Freeling's 30th novel, and it is time to pay tribute to the most eccentric, the...

Patrick Skene Catling BURY MY HEART AT W. H. SMITH'S: A WRITING LIFE by Brian Aldiss Hodder, £13.95 pp. 221 T he jacket blurb of Last Orders (Cape, 1977), one of Brian Aldiss's...

Nature is merciless, Tears at the roots and murders out of habit, Yet all is well they say, you say, we say, And saying so makes for the less distress, Not in the broken tree or...

Raymond Carr JUAN GOYTISOLO: THE CASE FOR CHAOS by Abigail Lee Six Yale University Press, £20, pp. 192 JUAN THE LANDLESS by Juan Goytisolo Serpent's Tail, £8.99, pp. 288 uan...

Anthony Sampson WE BRITISH: BRITAIN UNDER THE MORISCOPE by Eric Jacobs and Robert Worcester Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £15,pp. 222 T he pollsters have finally entered their...

Gavin Stamp THE BUILDINGS OF SCOTLAND: GLASGOW by Elizabeth Williamson, Anne Riches and Malcolm Higgs Viking, f20, pp. 701 T hey used to appear at least once a year, but...

Jessica Douglas-Home DANGERS, TESTS AND MIRACLES: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF CHIEF RABBI MOSES ROSEN Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £17, pp. 300 0 n the surface, Dangers, Tests and...

A new view of India Ruth Guilding Tigers Round the Throne: the Court of Tipu Sultan (1750-1799) (Zamana Gallery, till 14 October) S outh Asian culture has always con- jured a...

Colourful character Giles Auty I t strikes me sometimes that pre-war photography and pre-war films are matters best left to the connoisseur. I have sat at times, at the...

I blush to admit . . . Marcus Berkmann E very record collection, at some time or other, needs a thorough going over. For one thing, they share with spider plants the apparent...

Unhappy medium Hilary Mantel T wenty-five per cent of Americans are 'born-again Christians' — or so Douglas Kennedy claims in his Bible-belt trave- logue In God's Country. He...

King Lear (Lyttelton) Three Sisters (Royal Court) Balancing acts Christopher Edwards 0 ur tirst sight of the old man in this new production of King Lear is not en- couraging....

High stakes Taki Gstaad Back in the middle Sixties the then Prince Fand was a regular chemmy player at Aspinall's wild game. Fand was always accompanied by a young and...

Yankee hanky-panky Miles Kington We are told so often that the Pacific is the future seat of power, wealth and influence that Channel 4 thought they must be on to a winner...

Den of iniquity Zenga Longmore 0 n the question of whether Omalara's first birthday party should be held in my Brixton flat or at Boko's Harlesden abode, opinion amongst my...

A bleeding shame Jeffrey Bernard I was irritated last week to read here that `Jeffrey Bernard is unwell'. I had, in fact, had an accident which is quite a different thing....

I made a very good fish mayonnaise with that unfashionable fish the coley. It is a marvellous fish, otherwise known as saithe or coal fish, but people in our dear and pleasant...

Not Amurath Raymond Keene H arry Baines was a prominent official of the British Chess Federation. When he died last year a large bequest made it possible to provide the bulk...

Half-rhymes Jaspistos 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY I n Competition No. 1637 you were in- vited to make light-hearted use of half- rhymes in a poem entitled ' The Butcher ' , `...

971: Whirlwinds by Mass A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary') for the...

In a recent piece in the Times, Miles Kington pointed out that there should be words which ought to, but don't, exist, to serve a perfectly good meaning. We need a word, for...

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In the lap of the gods Frank Keating WHAT diversions are in store for Old Trafford? To be sure, the venomous little public spat between two former Indian captains, Bedi and...