M r John Major, the Prime Minister, insisted that he would not decide a policy on Britain joining a single European cur- rency until after the election. In the mean- time the...

Mr Clarke has always been reckless; the PM has failed to prevent him from becoming a wrecker BRUCE ANDERSON T he most absurd comment in the recent European degringolade was...

BARRY HUMPHRIES P lease hold the line while we try to connect you. The number you are calling knows you are waiting.' This bright lady's voice often assails me through the tele-...

If you really want to punish the Tories, here is the way to do it MATTHEW PARRIS A the years of Conservative govern- ment roll by, a private urge grips me with growing...

John Gummer says what the Christmas story means to him: awesome proof that God not only exists, but once existed on this earth AS an undergraduate at Cambridge, I first found...

Michael Heath

Opposition to Labour on tax, rejection of single currency. Important interview by Simon Sebag Montefiore INTERVIEW the Spice Girls, I thought. But the Spice Girls are...

At the height of the party season, Ewa Lewis on the rights and wrongs of thank-you letters IT IS SAD that letter-writing is a dying art and future history is on computer...

By A.L. Kennedy LOVE WOULD have been something else. Something more. More lovely or maybe more ugly. More convincing, any- way. Definitely more convincing. Given time, even a...

. . . Jonathan Cecil laments that there is none of this in today's variety show style of pantomime ACTORS traditionally say they became stage-struck from the moment they saw...

E.C. Hodgkin recalls London's last prewar Christmas. And Andrew Gimson describes Berlin's E. C. Hodgkin writes: IT FELT much more like the first Christ- mas of war than the last...

By Jane Gardam ON THE MORNING of Christmas Eve my sister's husband died. I live in Paris. She lives in Herne Bay. She telephoned me at once, and at once 1 said that I would...

I DO not want to trespass on Dr Dal- rymple's patch (indeed I'd run a mile to avoid it), but I've just come across a new book of prison slang which shows how dreadful prison is...

Plus one thin politician. Bruce Anderson and Alan Watkins on the food, and more especially the drink, at a famous London restaurant Bruce Anderson writes: MIDWINTER is the...

Peter Jones on the odd or painful means by which the ancients procreated. But at least they knew what children were for GREEKS and Romans placed enormous importance on having...

Christmas numbers Here is a list of poets: Hilaire Belloc; Richard Crashaw; John Donne; Robert Herrick; Rudyard Kipling; Henry W. Longfellow; William McGonagall; Harold Monro;...

That daft office memo can win you champagne let's hear it for bowls, planted, personal CHRISTOPHER FILDES I t is two thousand years since Caesar Augustus sent out the first...

that you did not distance your excellent magazine from the views expressed, which will have given offence to many — perhaps the majority — of your readers. Of course it was...

Sir: William Oddie ('IVly time at homoerotic college', 7 December) recalls his unhappy time at theological college. He should con- sider how upsetting, even traumatic, count-...

Sir: James Srodes (`The spy of the century', 23 November) is not one to let facts inter- fere with his fancies of history, especially facts showing that Alger Hiss was falsely...

Sir: Most of your outraged correspondents have missed the crucial point that Paul Johnson is making about the Church of England (And another thing, 23 Novem- ber). It doesn't...

Sir: Simon Blow's distressing account of his father's descent into alcoholic dementia (The Duke who killed my father', 7 December) attempts to pin the blame on Bendor...

Sir: As a native Jerseyman, I was surprised that you should publish such a wildly inac- curate article by Artemis Cooper (Invasion of the sun gods', 30 November). Presumably...

The year in books Philip Hensher T he experience of looking back over a year in books is rather an embarrassing one for the average book reviewer. The titles of books long...

John Mortimer THE AMUSEMENT OF THE PEOPLE AND OTHER PAPERS: DICKENS' JOURNALISM, VOLUME II, 1834-51 edited by Michael Slater Dent, £25, pp. 408 h is collection of Dickens'...

Frances Partridge DEAR WRITER. . . DEAR ACTRESS: THE LOVE LETTERS OF OLGA KNIPPER AND ANTON CHEKHOV edited by John Benedetti Methuen, £18.99, pp. 292 h e distinctive genius of...

Claudia Fitzherbert CHARLO 1 YONGE by Alethea Hayter Northcote House, £7.99, pp. 81 C harlotte M. Yonge, the Victorian novelist prolific even by the standards of her age, has...

John Bayley THE FOUNDATION PIT by Andrey Platonov Harvill, 114.99, pp. 192 F ew really good novels get written about 'important' subjects. Why should they? 'The free novel', as...

Byron Rogers ONE LEG by the Marquess of Anglesey Leo Cooper, £25, pp. 446 I t seems he may not have said at Water- loo, 'By God, sir, I've lost my leg.' So the Duke of...

Thomas Blaikie A VICIOUS CIRCLE by Amanda Craig Fourth Estate, £15.99, pp. 367 A t last! At last! For six months now the literary world has tremulously awaited Amanda Craig's...

Michael Bywater EINSTEIN: A LIFE by Denis Brian John Wiley, £18.99, pp. 509 I f you did well at school, you got into the scholarship year, and then they told you secrets,...

Philip Glazebrook THE DRAKE MANUSCRIPT IN THE PIERPOINT MORGAN LIBRARY introduced by Verlyn Klinkenborg Deutsch, £39.95, pp. 272 T his surprising and beautiful book pre- sents...

Alan Watkins THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF POLITICAL QUOTATIONS edited by Antony Jay OUP, £15.99, pp. 515 h ough Sir Antony contributes an intro- duction to this book, in which he...

Alastair Forbes ANTHONY EDEN by David Dutton Arnold, 120, pp. 576 L ess than a third of the way into this fine book's long but well-documented slog the author (whose first...

Deborah Devonshire I ONCE MET edited by Richard Ingrams Oldie, £5.99, pp. 96 T he Oldie's 'I Once Met' is a game of Consequences full of unexpected twists and turns. If only...

Harriet Waugh E lizabeth Ironside's The Accomplice (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99) is her third novel. Her first, A Very Private Entoprise, showed real promise; her second, Death...

David Ekserdjian I n the year of the Macmillan Dictionary of Art (£5,700 come the New Year), it might seem hard to get excited about anything else, but actually there is a...

Juliet Townsend h e writers of picture books for children always have the problem of keeping a bal- ance between the text and the illustrations. It is curious that almost every...

Singing in jubilation Michael Marshall meditates on the music and mystery of Christmas T here was 'no room in the inn', you will recall. But then 'accommodating' the infi- nite...

Howard Hodgkin (Hayward Gallery, till 23 February 1997) Colour conundrum Martin Gaylord W alking into the lower rooms of the Hayward Gallery just now is an exhilarating...

Giannandrea Poesio on what is wrong with some of today's narrative ballets D uring the second half of the 18th century, ballet masters and dance theorists such as Franz...

Leslie Geddes-Brown on design ideas done to death over the decades I n the Forties, every suburban semi was supposed to have a flight of three pottery ducks on its sitting-room...

Michael Church on the surprise success of an unusual Swan Lake L ondon theatre is a parochial affair, which periodically gets a much-needed shove. This may come via a new art...

Die Walkiire (Royal Opera House) Novelty value Michael Tanner N ever can Placido Domingo have made a more ignominious entrance than in the performance of Die Walkiire mounted...

Labour's double act John Parry T o put it in seasonal terms, if they were in pantomime together, they might be the Broker's men in Cinderella or the good and bad robbers in...

All change Sheridan Morley I 've heard of fin de siècle, but this is get- ting ridiculous: never can I remember a time of so much change around the West End, whether...

101 Dalmatians (U, selected cinemas) Surviving Picasso (15, selected cinemas) All bark and no bite Mark Steyn A year or two back, previewing Dis- ney's re-release of the...

Novel designs Ursula Buchan W hen Mr Darcy dived into the lake at Pemberley, in the BBC series Pride and Prejudice last year, the nation (or that half of it which is female at...

Sorry, Phil Marcus Berkmann U nder the Christmas tree lurks a pack- age with your name on it. It is, you esti- mate, five and a half inches long, five inches wide and about a...

Wish I weren't here James Delingpole I t was a toss-up this week between doing cartoons and travel. The former seemed a quite sexy, topical idea because the ineffa- bly...

Dear Michael Michael Vestey m y postbag for the year has made me feel like Feedback on Radio Four. Some of the letters I have received about radio pro- grammes are full of...

Peace in the offing Christian Hesketh A long last it looks as though the unseemly struggle between the RFU and the EPRUC (in theory only, Gentlemen v. Players) is mercifully...

Crime corner Alan Judd T he first car I had stolen was my beloved Mark II Jaguar, left on a south London street for one night. The police said it would have been across the...

Go mitigate Robin Oakley W hen an American Senator's re-elec- tion campaign foundered hopelessly and he was cast into the electoral wilderness, he called his campaign team...

Stop the German-bashing Taki Which brings me to the point I wish to make on this our last free Christmas. The Spectator's editorial of 16 November called the first world war...

Miserable Christmas Jeffrey Bernard I wonder what Christmas cards tell you about the sender. Nearly all my friends in racing predictably enough send cards print- ed by the...

Shop horror, tree trauma Leanda de Lisle A ustralians rub papaya fat on sunburnt skin. In other parts of the world papaya flesh is prized for its contraceptive quali- ties....

Long division Andrew Robson WHEN the opponents are very active in the bidding, you should not play for the suits to divide evenly. Drawing this infer- ence, declarer made the...

LOALJPRIL THIS Christmas edition is coming out so early that I am in a complete muddle about my dear saints. Here we are in the middle of Advent which, according to Father...

tator's restaurant critic it is heartening to report that cooking in Britain, not just in London, has massively improved in the past decade or so. We are no longer outclassed by...

IN-THE-STRAND SIMPSON'S IN-THE-STRAND f elr. ) CHESS Capa the great Raymond Keene JOSE RAOUL Capablanca was world champion from 1921 to 1927, and was widely regarded as...

i j■llik .), MAE .LI SCOTCH , H1511 , MILE OF ShGlE Mktr KOKM .11W COMPETITION No room at Brown's Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1962 you were invited to write a poem, in...

The halves of CHOPSTICKS (9) suggested the other unclued lights. First prize: M.A.L. Wiley, Witney, Oxon. Runners-up: O.J. Smith, St Albans; Kathy Ward, London SW7.

Christmas numbers I. William McGonagall 2. Richard Crashaw 3. Henry Vaughan 4. Harold Monro 5. Anne Ridler 6. Rudyard Kipling 7. John Donne 8. Robert Herrick 9. Henry Wadsworth...

It's Christmas! by Dumpynose A firstprize of £120, three prizes of £30 and six further prizes of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Cassell, £20, paperback The £14.99)...

A week full of joys Simon Barnes TO pursue the trade of sports hack requires a gradual acquisition of perspec- tive, along with a retention of the capacity to be amazed. It is...

Dear Mary. . . Mary Killen has invited some of her favourite celebrities to submit some queries. From: Dame Diana Rigg London Q. I get invited to all sorts of occasions, not...