The morning after A s the day of the general election drew close, the polls suggested that sup- port for the Conservatives had remained firm and steady — at 40-45 per cent...

IN HIS unilateralist speech on Sunday, Mr Enoch Powell said that the theory of nuclear deterrence could be discarded: The salutary event of Chernobyl streng- thened and...

WHAT WENT UNSAID good jokes. There have scarcely been any Interesting incidents. The chief excitement has come from watching a man who has P a ssed his entire adult life only...

DURING the election campaign, Mr Kin- nock has given detailed thought to the presentation of himself. One aspect of this presentation is the impression of physical activity. He...

A prospect more inviting than Labour's moral nullity FE RDINAND MOUNT A s I entered the Royal Agricultural Hall, the Rasta poet, Benjamin Zepha- niah, was just finishing: You...

W hen the election was at last an- nounced my first reaction was simply re- lief. Now, I thought, I really can escape from the various half-made plans that I have mistakenly...

Now we can bring back the cane for Anglo-Saxon schoolboys AUBERON WAUGH A t the beginning of last month I conducted an earnest enquiry into the faults of our education system,...

PERSUADING THE BRITISH Fred Barnes, an American, is surprised by British methods of electioneering MY HABIT when checking into a hotel room is to turn on the television and...

HOLY FOOLS AND USEFUL IDIOTS Richard West traces the rise of Church interference on behalf of the Left THIS election was remarkable for the entry of both main Churches into...

is looking for a mature (25-35) and intelligent person to sell corporate and advocacy advertising. The successful candidate must have previous experience, ideally selling a...

WHEN THE POLLING HAD TO STOP The media: Paul Johnson has some critical reflections on an unsatisfactory campaign THIS has been a badly-fought and badly- covered election, in...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard watches Fawn Hall giving evidence to the congressional committee Washington THE National Security Council must have been an incestuous sort of place....

Radek Sikorski on the revelations of a high-ranking Polish defector A REMARKABLE interview has just appeared in the Polish émigré journal in Paris called Kultura, with Colonel...

Tim Heald reports on the preoccupations of PEN congresses Lugano THE programme for this year's Ascona Literary Prize was undeniably daunting: a benvenuto, a saluto, an...

Gavin Stamp calls upon the London Underground to halt its destruction of stations AN UNDERGROUND railway can be more than a method of moving people about cities, as anyone who...

THE City will now resume normal service, and about time, too. These election weeks have given us unreal markets, in which rumours about polls have finally given way to a...

I AM more of a Florence man myself, though I don't feel so strongly as Jock Bruce-Gardyne who, given the choice between Tokyo ano Venice, has flown non-stop to Tokyo. Ve. ice...

Goodbye to the money market's master of kindness and caviare CHRISTOPHER FILDES 0 ut of the City and the world, with Kenneth Whitaker, goes a unique source of fun and the...

THERE is not, contrary to received opin- ion, all that much wrong with the opera at Covent Garden. What needs to be changed is the audience, which would be familiar to Sir Henry...

Shiva Naipaul was one of the most gifted and accomplished writers of our time. When he died in August 1985 at the age of 40, The Spectator announced that it was setting up a...

Sir: Doris Heifer (Diary, 30 May) writes of Tony Benn's spirit of optimism and the very warm welcome he received in Liver- pool. She adds a PS 'Those politicians who say they...

Sir: Why you should publish a letter (6 June) from an obvious shit like Sampson, heaven alone knows! One meets people like him all over the world who sneer at goodness and...

Sir: I buy the Spectator every week to read. Starting at the back with Jeffrey Bernard I work through the excellent reviews past Paul Johnson's nonsense, and, dodging the...

Sir: May I seek to throw some light on current events in Fiji and particularly in defence of Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, who seems widely to have been traduced in the media at...

Sir: With reference to Hugh Montgomery- Massingberd's article on the Scottish court (25 April). George IV was, as he says, the first of the Hanoverian Kings to visit Scotland;...

Sir: On tucking into the recently published Selected Literary Criticism of Louis Mac- Neice, praised for his 'filial piety' in P.J. Kavanagh's Life and Letters (9 May), I find...

Leaders Sir: I found Andrew Gimson's panegyric on the 'brilliant populism' of the Sun's leader writer (`Take me to your leader writer', 6 June) curious for what if left out....

. Granny Haines died yesterday in Burnley. She was only 91. Had she lived in Bournemouth, she would have been 92. Had the Health Service paid for rejuvena- tion treatment...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £ (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) Outside Europe...

Sir: Michael Trend, reporting from Cam- bridge (`Shirley slips back', 30 May), stated that I was there supporting Robert Rhodes James, the Conservative candidate. In fact I have...

Sir: Your reviewer, David Sexton (Books, 30 May), reports that 'the Sunday Times claims to have spent £850,000' to acquire the serial rights to An Affair of State, the new book...

Sir: Your advertisement in today's Inde- pendent (5 June) claims that this week's Spectator (6 June) includes a contribution from Jeffrey Bernard. On parting with my pound, I...

Sir: I find your advertisements for Aims of Industry somewhat tedious. Patrick French The Residence, 17 Royal Crescent, Edinburgh.

Sir: I am not of Henry VIII's opinion (Letters, 6 June). I think both Yorkshire and Lincolnshire the most magnificant of English counties. A. L. Rowse Trenarren House, St...

Or how the British enjoy a drink or two beside the Mediterranean ANDREW GIMSON WHEN I told Mr David Bird I was going on a Club 18-30 holiday, he implored me to Tetu fisider....

Dr Klein on infection from milk [to the Editor of the Spectator] SIR,—I must beg to protest against your remarks upon this subject. You say, — 'Somebody is always adding a new...

Engaging and engaged Robert Blake BENJAMIN DISRAELI, LETTERS: 1838 — 1841 edited by M. G. Weibe and others University of Toronto Press, $60 YOUNG ENGLAND by Richard Faber...

William Scammell THE ORDER OF BATTLE AT TRAFALGAR by John Bayley Collins Harvill, £12 L ionel Trilling occasionally wanted to live in a 'quiet place' beyond the snapping of...

Miron Grindea THE STIR OF LIBERATION by Joseph Frank Robson Books, £17.95 F or more than half a century, writing on Dostoevsky (possibly the most exten- sive on a major Russian...

David Wright WHEN THE MIND HEARS by Harlan Lane Random House, f18.95 B efore beginning to discuss this book, which carries the subtitle 'A History of the Deaf' it is...

Anthony Blond WORLDS APART by Gavin Young Hutchinson, f14.95 Z ulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom Zia hanged, (Gavin Young recalls that the general asked him to change his 'hang the...

Norbert Lynton PAUL KLEE by Carolyn Lanchner Thames & Hudson, £39 T here are 10,000 Klees, and we shan't know him until we know them all. Books of course help with their words...

Michael Beaumont COMEBACK by Dennis Connor Bloomsbury, £13.85 I n the autumn of last year, with the eliminating rounds for the right to chal- lenge for the Americas Cup in full...

Francis King CLOSE QUARTERS by William Golding Faber, £9.95 W hen in 1980 William Golding's Rites of Passage won the Booker Prize, there were those, one of the runners-up in...

Knowing more than they knew, knowing everything, really, or more than we want to know, we dismiss them now, in their waistcoats, their hose, their grandiloquence. If we see them...

Anne Chisholm SARUM by Edward Rutherfurd Century Hutchinson, £9.95 0 n the first page of this mammoth historical saga about life in and around Salisbury, it is very cold and...

Picture it. Across sputtering wavelengths other suns with satellites bobbing like dumplings glimmer, whirr, flash and finally blow like reading-lamp bulbs on verandahs in the...

Rupert Scott BERNARD BERENSON: THE MAKING OF A LEGEND by Ernest Samuels Harvard University Press, £19.95 T wenty-eight years after his death the popular reputation of Bernard...

Radio Tactical tuning Noel Malcolm samples the BBC's election fare and discovers why phoners-in are seldom satisfied. F or me, the keynote of the election campaign was struck...

A Small Family Business (Olivier) Three Sisters (Albery) Polite applause Christopher Edwards A lan Ayckbourn's new play, directed by the playwright, has just opened at the...

Disposition of the dots Peter Phillips O ne of the most enjoyable concerts I have been to for some time took place last Thursday in Chichester Cathedral, given by the London...

Winifred Nicholson (Tate Gallery, till 2 August) Gentle reminders Giles Auty 0 urs is an artistic era which confuses the gentle with the ineffectual. In such a climate, the...

Desert Bloom (PG', Cannon, Tottenham Court Road) A nuclear family Hilary Mantel F ive years after Hiroshima, it seems, the Bomb could still be fun. In the unsea- sonably hot...

Thin end of the Wedge Marcus Berkmann F or music watchers, perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this election has been the almost absolute invisibility of Red Wedge. For...

Light relief Peter Levi T he election was a tiring exercise for the humble viewer, because never have all the arguments been so thoroughly covered, and never have there been...

Getting to like Jimmy Taki New York Last week, while dining with the 39th President of the United States, Evelyn Waugh suddenly came to mind. If memory serves, he was once...

Kippers are off Jeffrey Bernard I should have been with you last week but I was as sick as a dog. The pancreas is infuriated again. How anyone can eat sweetbreads is beyond...

Millionaires' row Alice Thomas Ellis I nearly got thrown out of Christies last week. I went with Caroline, and I had been asked, only I hadn't got a ticket. It was a...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

Worse than gnomes Jaspistos I N Competition No. 1475 you were asked for ingenious, loony and horrible suggestions as to how to 'improve' the garden. In the realm of interior...

Revisionism Raymond Keene M y investigation into the great tournaments of all time has gained fresh insights from the recent visit to London of Einstein lookalike, Nathan...

111 I WAS intending to write about old sherry this month, but the Tories changed all that. The story which ended with Norman Teb- bit humourlessly preventing me from be- coming...

You are invited to write any sort of poem on any aspect of Wimbledon (maximum 16 lines). Entries to 'Competition No. 1478' by 26 June.

I 9 B S A I'LL. H T E C T U,_112TIR 12 * 13 TAPE R RIOERJR C H 0 " ALL IS 13 CAMIONI CrIA ' PT - MDT PIS 7JP4SIN 22 U N H0 ME L ' ON E'S T E P TA REM 25 SCREEM " II...