Demoralising the Serbs . M r John Major, the Prime Minister, decided to go to Birmingham to encourage candidates in the Conservative interest in the forthcoming local...

Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 WHO'S BLUFFING WHOM? H istory, wrote Tolstoy, is the product of vast, impersonal forces, and not the cre- ation of...

Essex does not deserve to have politicians inflicted on it SIMON HEFFER T hose of us who live in Essex find it odd that our county should be a focus of the local elections...

M odern life holds few greater plea- sures than flying first class at somebody else's expense. Personally, if I had to pay for the privilege myself, I wouldn't enjoy it. I'd...

A nation still haunted by the spectre of the English country house AUBERON WAUGH M any years ago I made a pilgrimage to Cornwall to visit Dr A.L. Rowse, the poet and...

The Too , party is the latest in a number of British institutions to lose its bearings. But, argues David Cannadine, it is not the present Prime Minister's fault JOHN MAJOR...

John Simpson experiences a narrow escape from a mob of jogging spear-carriers in KwaZulu Durban BELOW US lay the Mahlabatini plain, as green as a Welsh valley. Here in January...

Alasdair Palmer casts doubt on the claims for a new sort of nuclear device, and explains the real terrorist threat CENTRAL Television's investigative flag- ship, The Cook...

IT IS funny that inmate is only used on the wireless news to refer to 1) prison- ers and 2) nutters. It is a complicated word, probably coming from inn and mate. It originally...

pattern in modern French politics: suicides by President Mitterrand's former friends Paris Ah, Dieux! Pour la servir, jai tout fait, tout gulag, Et fen recois le prix je l'ai...

THE Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, in a letter to Friday's Times, gives some facts which show that the Jews are pour- ing into Palestine. About one hundred thousand Jews have...

Martin Vander Weyer argues that building societies, once called `friendly; now epitomise the worst aspects of modern financial whiz-kiddery WHATEVER happened to the building...

Liz Hodgkinson argues that Dennis Potter is the latest beneficiary of a new phenomenon: the artistically impressive terminal disease NEVER IN the history of television has so...

persist.. . LAST WEEK, on one of my prison rounds, I encountered a respectable, indeed admirable, man who had run a business in this country for 15 years, before having been...

The editor of the Cambridge History of the English Language says the apostrophe ONCE or at the most twice a year, when my column in the Daily Mail has nothing better to do with...

THE CONSPIRACY theory of oil is that the Saudis have pulled the plug on the mar- ket. As the low-cost mass-producer, they want to drive out their marginal competi- tors, squeeze...

MARK TWAIN said that a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education, and an independent financial adviser is to an insur- ance broker what a cauliflower is to a cab- bage....

THE SINGLE European market brings with it the concept of a passport. This will allow the licences and qualifications of one country to be acceptable in all of them. The prospect...

MINISTERS have now decided to seize the initiative for themselves. Like addled eggs and bad dogs, financial nasties will let them demonstrate the smack of firm gov- ernment. In...

MY RACING correspondent, Captain Threadneedle, writes: The ingenious finan- cial bookie Stuart Wheeler of IG Index has worked out the Cabinet as a handicap. He can thus offer...

Lurid tales of greed, ambition and disaster financial nasties: ministers act CHRISTOPHER FILDES weeping measures are to be introduced to crack down on 'financial nasties'....

Winston Churchill inherited a philo-Semitism from his father. He may have developed a favourable atti- tude towards the Jews in later life, but he did not show it at an earlier...

Sir: You quote me in the article by Andrew Roberts on Churchill's alleged racism (Winston replied that he didn't like black- amoors', 9 April), so perhaps you will allow me to...

Sir: Describing the altered film version of his exciting book Fatherland, Robert Har- ris, the novelist and now Spectator diarist, excoriates other writers who take money for...

Sir: It has not yet been established that to refer to someone as a lawyer brings that individual into hatred, ridicule or contempt or lowers him in the estimation of right-...

RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £77.00 0 £39.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £88.00 0 £44.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$125.00 0 US$63.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175.00 0 US$88.00 Rest of Airmail 0...

Sir: Buggery is penetration by the penis of the anus. With respect to Simon Heifer (Politics, 9 April), it is 'legal' for nobody, of whatever age or sex, in public or in...

for a name for his new enterprise. How about the British Neanderthal Party? D.I. Barker Purton House, Nr Swindon, Wiltshire

Sir: Alasdair Palmer (`The case of the van- ishing witnesses', 26 March) tells us that `more than 300 cases have collapsed over the past two years because of successful...

Sir: I really must protest at Robert Harris's savage attack on John Patten (Diary, 2 April). The article by Patten which inspired the attack contained a well argued and entirely...

Sir: Pace Simon Heifer (2 April), there already is a Forza Inghilterra — it's called the UK Independence Party. I did a Berlus- coni when I founded it, the only difference...

Sir: After his chat with Pierre Marion at the Café Fiore ('When spies mean business', 9 April), Alasdair Palmer reports his claim that 'we used to bug Air France'. He does not,...

Sir: Why does Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 2 April) suppose that bad manners are the monopoly of what he patronisingly describes as 'the lower classes'? He should ponder the...

Sir: Could I suggest that Dr Noel Malcolm (Letters, 9 April) tours Bosnia soon, to add a little contemporary human understanding to his peerless academic knowledge of that...

Sir: I must take issue with Simon Heifer on how he treats my home MP, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn (Politics, 9 April). Anyone who has had the pleasure of this man's company would...

We cannot all sit and commune with nature in the desert wilderness SIMON JENKINS Tucson, Arizona inter in Arizona!' was the advice Galsworthy gave J.B. Priestley. Successful...

My old China Charles Powell EXPERIENCES IN CHINA by Sir Percy Cradock John Murray, f19.99, pp. 276 I declare an interest. Having long worked with Percy Cradock in the Foreign...

John Cornwell SEVEN EXPERIMENTS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD by Rupert Sheldnake Fourth Estate, £15.99, pp. 269 H ere is a scientific experiment suggest- ed by the experience...

Tanya Harrod THE CLAY ART OF ADRIAN SAXE by Martha Drexler Lynn Thames & Hudson, £19.95, pp. 160 T he Clay Art of Adrian Saxe takes us into the febrile world of contemporary...

William Buchan ASPECTS OF ARISTOCRACY by David Cannadine Yale, £19.95, pp. 321 Let wealth and commerce, law and learning die, But leave us still our old nobility! I t may be...

After the Scottish jazz singer in the Festival barn I come on some lost acquaintances, willing to yarn as though we had never lost touch. Disintegrated dark holes in my life...

Kevin Sharpe THE KING'S BEDPOST: REFORMATION AND ICONOGRAPHY IN A TUDOR GROUP PORTRAIT by Margaret Aston Cambridge, £40, pp. 267 hough neither technically accom- plished nor...

Cressida Connolly CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN by Louis de Bernieres Seeker & Warburg, £14.99, pp. 436 L ouis de Bernieres is one of the 20 who appeared in last years notorious...

Amanda Craig OTHER LULUS by Philip Hensher Hamish Hamilton, £11.99, pp. 220 M ules of all kinds hanker for parent- hood, and when a reviewer turns novelist there is always a...

Euan Cameron FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: PARIS IN THE SIXTIES by Peter Lennon Picador, £1 6.99, pp. 220 P eter Lennon's mother was intensely relieved when her 17-year-old son...

The vicar gave us a new commandment About low energy ligth bulbs, global Warming, etc. He took as gospel The very Old pre-Christian Testament, A bad move, always to the...

Exhibitions Invasions of Italy Roderick Conway Morris I Normanni (Palazzo Venezia, Rome, till 30 April; Doge's Palace, Venice, 27 May — 18 Sept) I Goti (Palazzo Reale,...

Ruskin Spear (Crane Kalman, till 30 April) Alexander Creswell: the Splendour of Imperial Europe (Spink & Son, till 28 April) Narrative poems Giles Auty I met the late Ruskin...

Johnny On A Spot (National) Brecht in Hollywood (Bridge Lane) 900 Oneonta (Lyric, Hammersmith) Ghosts/The Merchant of Venice (Barbican) Johnny one note Sheridan Morley I n...

Teaming with talent Peter Phillips M iss Brodie once said: 'Phrases like "the team spirit" are always employed to cut across individualism, love and person- al loyalties....

How to save yourself 51 trips to the library ... or over £30 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it...

Recipes for success Ursula Buchan I was always told that what distinguishes human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to cook and to gar- den. These two...

The real thing Martin Gayford hat is a jazz singer?' is one of those questions — like 'What is art?' and `What is this thing called love?' that eter- nally perplex. Most of...

Critics and censors Martyn Harris T he Late Show changed its logo this week from the usual lone wolf to a Shere Khan tiger, as it turned its attention to India: 'A nation...

Burdening the shoulder Taki I f any of you are contemplating shoulder surgery, don't. I've had my share of opera- tions in my lifetime, as well as two broken legs, both arms,...

My fellow inmates Jeffrey Bernard I was re-apprehended last week by two storm-troopers claiming to be ambulance men after three weeks of having been Awol from the Middlesex...

Rare women Nigel Nicolson hile I was staying in a Cambridge hotel last week, I wondered yet again at the taciturnity of ageing British couples. There they were, some 20 of...

•• Breakfast at Simpson's In the 1980s, alongside the kiwi-with- everything school of vulgarised nouvelle cuisine (the sort that flourished here), there were chefs fanning...

Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1825 you were invited to write some advertising copy linking a philosopher with a prosaic pro- ject. The Times advertisement invoking the name of...

SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA ValDl o R N SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA Young pretenders Raymond Keene THIS WEEK AND NEXT I will analyse the styles of three young grandmasters who have...

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During Oscar Wilde's editorship of Woman's World, he wrote to Queen Vic- toria asking if she had any early verses which he might publish. She hadn't. But supposing she had had ....

CROSSWORD GRAHAM'S) PORT W. a J. GRAHAM'S PORT 1155: W is for water by Ascot A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first...

Unlike two peas in a pod Frank Keating EVEN IF England's cricketers continue to salvage some self-respect in the final Test match in Antigua, and however green the shoots of...

Q. Isn't your reply to M.A.S., London (19 March, in answer to her question about whether to tip a youth who had changed her wheel) unnecessarily involved and therefore...