The Portillo massacre P ublic-spending cuts would be sought first of all in the departments of health, educa- tion and social security, Mr Michael Por- tillo, the Chief...

Mr Major grabs a life-raft on the sea of drift and waffle SIMON HEFFER I want to see a society that liberates people. Dignity, security, independence, self-respect — these...

DEBORAH DEVONSHIRE I don't suppose many readers of The Spectator keep their own chickens. You hens know what you're missing. A flock of nens becomes quite fascinating when you...

Now we must take action to keep the flood of unemployables at bay AUBERON WAUGH I n an article on Mrs Clinton's inability to find an Attorney-General who had not bro- ken the...

Anne Applebaum reports on how, for Europe's most admired country, niceness turned out not to be enough Stockholm AROUND CERTAIN countries there bangs an aura of the past, a...

persist.. . TO HAVE a philosophy is one thing, to put it into practice quite another. I believe that Man is born with certain inalienable responsibilities, but not everyone...

Michael Heath

Boris Johnson reports on the resurgence of the French fear of perfidious Albion Brussels IF IT IS true, it is the political story of the decade. The prime minister of France...

Simon Courtauld meets Juanita Carberry, and hears tales of rhino-whipping and other pastimes popular among the Happy Valley set Here's to myself and one other And may that one...

Brian Masters argues that we are no more perverted than we used to be. It's just that newspapers no longer hide the truth A FUTURE social historian given the task of examining...

Brian Jenner gives a first-hand account of the humiliations facing the unemployed Oxford graduate IN 1987, before I went up to university, I gleaned from a Times article by Dr...

No ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay this decade PAUL JOHNSON W e are living in the Grey Nineties. The greyness oozes relentlessly out of the stratosphere, enveloping all five continents in...

Potted plants on show at British Airways and the Bank of England CHRISTOPHER FILDES S ome boardrooms have potted plants in them and some have non-executive direc- t ors. The...

Sir: I have been following your correspon- dence on anti-Catholic prejudice with some interest (`Gunpowder, treason and plot', 16 January and Letters, 23, 30 January). I have...

Sir: Last week (6 January) in two articles , by David Hart (`Not enough bang for our bucks') and Paul Johnson (And another thing) you compared French and British military...

Sir: Regular readers will be well familiar with Giles Auty's frequent tilts at modernist windmills, but others reading his New Year salutation 'A New Year Age for Art' (23...

Sir: I feel sure that I am not alone in being distressed by Mr Charles Gordon's unkind and trivial article on Rudolf Nureyev (Arts, 16 January), especially in view of his recent...

America: oldest tradition Nigel Spivey REPUBLICS ANCIENT AND MODERN by Paul A. Rahe University of North Carolina Press, $49.95, pp. 1201 , fashionable fantasy: America is...

Montagu Curzon WIDE-BODY: THE MAKING OF THE 747 by Clive Irving Hodder & Stoughton, f18.99, pp. 371 I t is greatly to be hoped that the title will not put off the female...

Marie-Alice de Beaumarchais A DOUBLE LIFE by Frederic Raphael Orion, £14.99, pp. 374 G uy de Roumegouse, the hero of this novel, is a Protestant of hobereau extrac- tion. A...

Ross Clark A couple of years ago the task of read- ing seven first novels would have been about as enjoyable as eating seven bags of dry flour. But to judge by this collection...

Thomas Pakenham A HISTORY OF ULSTER by Jonathan Bardon The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, £30, £14.95, pp.928 J onathan Bardon is the Marathon Man of Ulster history. He begins...

Anthony Daniels THE SHRINE OF JEFFREY DAHMER by Brian Masters Hodder, £14.99, pp. 242 T he extremes of human behaviour fascinate us all, for they seem to shed light on what is...

Michael White EINSTEIN'S DREAMS by Alan Lightman Bloomsbury, £11.99, pp. 179 T ime completely governs all our lives. From the moment we are born to the moment we take our last...

Andro Linklater THE UBIQUITOUS PIG by Marilyn Nisseson and Susan Jonas Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f16.99, pp. 136 hen I was eight, I owned a pig called Hamlet. Its name must have...

Alan Judd THE DOUBLE LIFE OF STEPHEN CRANE by Christopher Benfey Deutsch, £17.99, pp. 294 M ost people who know anything about Stephen Crane know him as the...

Architecture The Alliance of Sculpture and Architecture (RIBA Heinz Gallery, till 20 February) When Art was Unity Alan Powers & t should be an important axiom in the ans...

Robin — Prince of Sherwood ( Piccadilly ) La Musica ( Hampstead ) Worlds Apart ( Stratford East ) Into the woods Sheridan Morley T. o hail a new West End musical by pro-...

Colour bars Peter Phillips E dvard Munch wrote of his Frieze of Life, currently on display in the National Gallery, that althou g h he had not planned the paintin g s as a...

Young British Artists II (Saatchi Collection, till summer 1993) Barclays Young Artist Award (Serpentine, till 28 February) Steam of consciousness Giles Auty B y chance, both...

Damage (`18', selected cinemas) The Public Eye (`15', selected cinemas) Hard grind Vanessa Letts D amage, by the French director Louis Malle, is a film about British MPs,...

Wet wet wet Ursula Buchan I t would be pleasing to think that we : ni ght learn some eternal and immutable fh from our experience of the weather in th e last few months,...

Court circular Taki I n a recent interview with Dan Rather, Mrs Pamela Harriman, the Queen Mother of the Clinton Court, as she is now know n , ' as well as the natural mother...

A touch of Tabasco Martyn Harris he tyrannical chef is a classic Eighties figure, combining fear and greed, indul- gence and puritanism, huge prices and tiny helpings, but it...

Not a drop to drink Jeffrey Bernard T he case of the woman who won £15,000 damages from her employers because of the suffering she endured at work from passive smoking has...

Star struck Nigel Nicolson L ast week I attended the gala premiere (in aid of the Almeida Theatre) of Damage, the film of Josephine Hart's sulphureous novel. At the start a...

L.,40riLimit.....)074L,SPL)1( - THERE IS a modern axiom, beloved by the twin, modern, bogus disciplines of social work and management studies, that people should be 'affirmed'....

Raymond Keene A t first glance the rating discrepancy between Gary Kasparov (2805) and Nigel Short (2655) appears to be so great as to make their forthcoming world cham-...

Bathetic Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1765 you were in- vited to write a poem in which the last line is a crashing example of bathos. The Eternal heard, and from the...

A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 1 March, with two runners-up prizes of £10 (or, for UK...

A great rearguard action Frank Keating IT WAS a heady weekend in Cardiff. Wales 10 , England 9 — the first defeat in rugby's 5- Nations Championship for the strong- ! l ined...

Dear Mary.. . Q . Are there any new remedies for jet lag? T he other day I failed to get into club class 911 a night across the Atlantic and arrived i n London feeling as...