T he Americans are withdrawing from UNESCO for the good reason that they have been paying for a great deal of it without being able to influence how it spends their money. Like...

Mr Jenkin's cap Charles Moore W hen the Conservatives proposed the introduction of county councils in 1888, Lord Randolph Churchill welcomed it as an extension of 'Tory...

A i eminently unsuitable candidate once proposed by my grandfather for membership of the Athenaeum Club was duly blackballed. When he asked sadly if there had been many...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £17.25 IRL17.25 £20.50 L26.50 One year: £34.50 IRL34.50 f41.00 £53.00 Cheques to be made payable to the Spectator and sent to...

Towards a Greater Brittan Auberon Waugh A: e wait for Parliament to reassemble nd resume its deliberations on Mr Leon Brittan's Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, we learn...

Christopher Hitchens Washington H ere in the nation's capital the stewardship of the editorial page of the Washington Post is held by Ms Meg Greenfield — though, following a...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington yn the television pictures from Damascus, 1Lt. Robert Goodman and Jesse Jackson were up front and animated, but over to the left sat a dour...

Allan Massie Edinburgh he Seventies were a period of unusual 1 intellectual excitement in Scotland. It's hard to say quite why, but three elements may be identified. There was...

Richard West T hursday the 5th of January saw the beginning of Anti-Racism Year, or so I had read in a statement by the Greater Lon- don Council, but I was in Scotland at the...

Mr Gladstone made a very fresh and interesting speech to his Hawarden tenants on Wednesday, at the annual dinner of the tenantry, on the subject of the present condition of...

Roy Kerridge 'The town of Epworth in Lincolnshire is not only the birthplace of John Wesley but the unofficial capital of the Isle of Ax- holme. Despite the efforts of the...

Tessa Reay D r Richard Allan lives with his pretty young wife in a stylish modern house with integrated garage — one of a group of 12 homes tastefully landscaped with mature...

George Walden A 11 this talk of '1984' is getting me .L.down. Politically it is worrying too: the threat loses conviction with repetition. Someone is trying to lull us all into...

Brian Inglis T he court in Livorno which found the Scots nanny Carol Compton guilty of arson has now delivered a written judg- ment which creates an unusual legal prece- dent....

Secrecy and privacy Paul Johnson In conjunction with the 1984 Orwell ballyhoo, one of the phoniest campaigns in many years has been launched to arouse support for a Freedom of...

Is the sky the limit? Jock Bruce-Gardyne A mong the many gratuitous New Year messages sent winging to 10 Downing Street last week and the week before there was one which must...

Sir: Congratulations are due to Paul Johnson (10 December) for his perceptive appraisal of student media, their characteristics and relation to the 'adult' press. There were,...

The Beatles' art Sir: It is possible to abhor the 'youth culture' of the 1960s and yet find Colin Welch's Beatles pieces (10 and 17 December) dreadfully overstated. Those...

Sir: Auberon Waugh (`Damned lies', 17 December) exposes considerable ignorance of survey research by suggesting that one- seventieth of one per cent of women over 16 is a...

Epstein in his otherwise perceptive piece on popular culture (`Beatlemania', 17 December) should so lack the moral judg- ment evidenced elsewhere. I am certain that Mr Welch...

Sir: Auberon Waugh (`Tale of two authors', 10 December) correctly perceives the failure of the Nobel Prize for Literature to reflect true literary merit over the years, Of those...

Sir: In your issue for the 31 December, there appears an article entitled 'Water under the bridge', by Rober Silver. Since the name is not a very common one, some of your...

Sir: Gavin Stamp (Letters, 7 January) asks Why the Greek government has not called on France to return the Winged Victory of Sannothrace. The answer is very simple, and was...

Faith used to appear in visions demanding 'trinkets', this must be even more miraculous than the usual run of visions, for no such person ever existed. `St Faith' is simply the...

subliminal ef- fect of W.L. George's Children of the Mor- ning on William Golding's Lord of the Flies might have deepened had he referred to Ambrose Bierce's (6.1842) short...

civilization a good turn by taking the marbles from the P arthenon. Captain William Hoste, Royal Navy, writing home from Athens about his r emoval of 'any pieces of stone with...

Sir: I am not at all sure that the always admirable Miles Kington needs to be apologetic to the sometimes admirable P. J. Kavanagh (Postscript, 26 November) for failing to...

Ce n'est pas le Guerre Eric Christiansen The Return of Martin Guerre Natalie Zemon Davis (Harvard University Press £12.75) I t is a curious story. Martin Guerre was a young...

Peter Quennell Three Literary Friendships John Lehmann (Quartet £8.95) O n 27 May 1816, two English poets, one already an exile, the other an exile to be, met almost by chance...

Harriet Waugh The Proprietor Ann Schlee (Macmillan £8.95) A nn Schlee's second novel, The Proprietor, confirms the impression made by Rhine Journey that she is a serious, good...

Alfred Gilbey When will ye be Wise? The State of the Church of England General Editor: Anthony Kilmister (Blond & Briggs £12.95) T his book should never have been sent to a...

Please send the subscription to: Name: Address: This offer closes 17th February 1984. The Spectator Open to non-subscribers or to those who want to take out a gift...

Alan Watkins Up and Under: a Rugby Diary Frank Keating (Hodder and Stoughton £9.95) A maxim of publishers is supposed to be that books on Napoleon always sell, books on South...

Harold Acton China Guido Fossati, foreword by Anthony Burgess (New English Library £14.95) Cultural Atlas of China Caroline Blunden and Mark Elvin (Oxford/Phaidon £17.50) E...

Elizabeth Jennings The Early Writings of Charlotte BronW Christine Alexander (Blackwell £19.50) H owever different the prose of 1 'Charlotte Bronte is from that of her sister,...

Harriet Waugh's most recent novel is Kate's House. Mgr. Alfred Gilbey has just publish- ed We Believe, a reassertion of essen- tial Catholic belief.

Harrowing experiences Rodney Milnes II trovatore and Eugene Onegin (Opera North, Leeds) The Excursions of Mr Broucek and La traviata (Coliseum) Die Fledermaus and...

Not so ugly Peter Ackroyd The Honorary Consul ('18', selected cinemas) titijorthern Argentina on the border of j 1 1 Paraguay' — throbbing music com- posed by Paul McCartney,...

Ideas and images John McEwen T here will no doubt be other exhibition s in 1984 on the subject of 1984 but the standard set by the one at the Camden Arts Centre will be hard...

Great and good Giles Gordon Moby Dick (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester) Hello, Dolly! (Prince of Wales) D irector Michael Elliott has reprogrammed the space capsule that...

Anti-Auntie Richard Ingrams T am beginning to think my strong feelings of antipathy towards the BBC are caus - ed more than anything by a daily bout of annoyance with Radio 3....

of Giles Gordon's review of Oliver! last week. The sentence should have read: `The denizens of Fagin's kitchen, Artful Dodger and all, seem closer to Barrie's Lost Generation —...

Eye contact Jeffrey Bernard I keep getting bombarded with unsolicited mail. Sometimes it's pleasant stuff from Spectator readers but more often than not it's publicity rubbish...

Fair future Taki I guess it was only a matter of time before Tina Brown, Henry Kissinger, and D. Harold Evans would all end up in the same t ftn. Tina, who was once my editor...

Mad surgeons P.J. Kavanagh om e time ago Mr Colin Welch, in friendly fashion, took me to task for saying that I detested political writers, and politicians, who were too...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for a revoltingly flattering poem in heroic couplets in praise of a contemporary person of power or eminence. You ate toads and licked...

Home win Raymond Keene I t is becoming increasingly obvious that computer companies are natural spon- sors for chess events. Further proof of this was provided by the generous...

No. 1303: Mods' degree Set by Jaspistos: Last year a student at Boise State University, Idaho, was granted a degree in social science after taking 13 physical education...

A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 30 January. Entries to: Crossword 640, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. 1 2 r3...

Polioencephalomyelitis (14 Furioso) 16 Podagra 17 Rhizocarp 18 Spell (19 Roland ) 21 Superabundance 22 Derailleurs 25 Tassel 28 Dons God's armour 29 Suttee 30 Claim 34 RaY ,11...

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...

Wine Club Auberon Waugh A fter two expensive pre-Christmas offers, I decided to start the New Year with some highly recommendable Price- beech cheapies. The first two wines...

c/o Recount Wines, 44 Lower Sloane Street, London SW1 Tel. 01-730 6377 DESCRIPTION PRICE No. OF VALUE Inc. VAT CASES 1. Tocai di Lison Classico 1982 DOC 12 bots. AG Dal Moro 2....

M ost of the world's stock markets — in London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich and Sydney — reached the highest levels ever in their recorded indices. The Financial Times...

BIRCH WOOD by John Banville (Seeker & War- burg). Helen Wathers, 54 Poland St, London W1V 3DF. UPTON SINCLAIR: '0 Shepherd Speak' and 'The Return of Lanny Budd'. Sir Gi.bert...