'If you recognise any of these men just point them out.' SOLDIERS involved in the shooting of three IRA members on 'active service' in Gibraltar gave evidence to the coroner's...

page 32

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 REMEMBER ROMANIA O N PAGE TEN we print an open letter to President Ceausescu, which was smug- gled out of Romania last month. The decision to...

0 n 10 August I read a four-column headline in letters of matching size, which ran: 'Royal fusillade salutes princess with- out name,' and this, of all places on the front page...

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Brighton AUBERON WAUGH This would seem to be her intention in opposing the abolition of frontiers and customs barriers within the Common Mar-...

activities of America's most influential — and secretive — financier New York MICHAEL MILKEN is a man for our age. He lives in an anonymous villa in the San Fernando valley in...

PRESIDENT Cleveland and Mr. Harri- son, the two candidates for the Amer- ican Presidency, repeat their program- mes in letters accepting nomination. Their main topic is, of...

Doina Cornea asks her president to leave Romanians in their villages 'WHY don't they resist?' is often the response to any description of the destitu- tion which Nicolae...

John Casey visits a land of garlic, tradition and yearning for unity 'IN ENGLANDO', said the taxi-driver who was taking me from Pusan to Kyong- ju, 'you have King Elizabetha....

Rupert Scott finds the Italians suddenly trying to clean up Rome ITALY has a new obsession. The whole country is suddenly fascinated by filth. This is to some extent an...

Anton La Guardia meets the young people of Belfast who have never known peace Belfast CHILDREN in the Roman Catholic ghet- toes of west Belfast are remarkably resi- lient. Far...

London has a new wave of upwardly-mobile Irish immigrants, writes Jonathan Gregson IRISH immigrants seeking work on what is for some reason termed 'the mainland' used to arrive...

The GCSE is a system aimed at keeping people happy, writes Michael Trend WE HAVE reached that season of the calendar which marks both the start of the school and the political...

`ONE third of black New Yorkers between the ages of five and 19 are murdered. (Sunday Times, 18 July) THIS staggeringly high rate has never been reported before. The long-...

Christians should get 'fussed' about 'The Last Temptation of Christ', argues William Oddie CERTAIN aspects of The Last Temptation of Christ, said the Archbishop of Canter- bury...

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

The press: Paul Johnson asks if politics has had its day LAST week I spent some time watching the TUC debates. A few years ago I would actually have gone down to Bournemouth....

Sir: I am perplexed by the line of your renewed interest in Northern Ireland appa- rent in recent editions. Your editorial on 27 August made much of T E Utley's 'certainty of...

Sir: What on earth gave Michael Trend CA healthy lot', 30 July) the idea that Premium Bonds were 'brought in after the first world war to pay for disablement pensions'? They...

Sir: I agree with Paul Johnson (The press, 25 June) that 'routine coverage of painting arouses little interest'. (The same could, however, be said of routine coverage of...

Sir: Mr Trend's article on police efficiency on 10 September made some fairly robust and inaccurate statements. It is not good enough to suggest, solely on the basis of the...

Sir: Patrick Forman (Letters, 27 August) need not look to a conspiracy by the oyster factors of Billingsgate to explain the dearth of cheap gigass (Pacific) oysters. In 1974,...

Sir: Michael Dukakis doesn't have a dis- proportionately large head (`The resistible charms of the bodies politic', 20 August). The problem is that he has the physique of a...

Sir: Nirad C. Chaudhuri (`The "Glorious" Revolution that never was', 16 July) is right to stress the importance of the 'great' historians of the past. They are often ignored by...

Sir: It is one thing for Rodney Milnes (Arts, 27 August) to be particularly against a Wagner production at Bayreuth, but then to declare that he will never go to the place again...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £45.00 0 £23.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £55.00 0 £28.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $90 0 US$45 Rest of...

Ameri-ippon the ultimate joint venture MAX SUICH top official from the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MOE), at a briefing for foreign journalists in Tokyo recently offered this...

ROBERT PESTON A transparent Legoland mausoleum looms over the south bank of the Thames between Tower Bridge and London Bridge. Built as a triumphal monument by a latterday...

Inflated anxieties or how to win bets on the Retail Prices Index CHRISTOPHER FILDES W orry of the week is inflation. Never mind, it will soon be the trade figures. This week...

WOMEN, elephants and Sir Denis Rooke never forget an injury. British Gas's pachydermatous chairman was displeased when his North Sea assets were taken away to be privatised as...

I FORECAST a stampede into the only safe job left in the City. Unease in the stock markets, where so few firms are busy enough to keep themselves warm, has given way to fright,...

their meeting their only obvious point of agreement with the board was a common disappointment with the share price, which has been going nowhere for years. They would like to...

Bum rap pinned on thinker Ferdinand Mount THE TRIAL OF SOCRATES by I. F. Stone T he young men of Athens must have been an odd crowd to be corrupted by Socrates, or so I used...

Philip Glazebrook VIEWS FROM ABROAD: THE SPECTATOR BOOK OF TRAVEL WRITING edited by Philip Marsden-Smedley and Jeffrey Klinke Grafton, L14.95 pp. 466 I found it an...

Anthony Holden CITIZEN COHN by Nicholas von Hoffman Harrap, £12.95, pp.483 t couldn't have happened to a nicer guy', was one response to the news that Roy Cbhn was dying of...

or almost £30 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it can be to track a copy down. Now you can save...

Laurence Lerner THE ESSENTIAL GESTURE by Nadine Gordimer Cape, f15, pp. 352 WHITE WRITING by J.M. Coetzee Yale, f14.95, pp. 208 S outh Africa's two leading novelists have...

Francis King THE CAPTAIN AND THE ENEMY by Graham Greene Reinhardt Books, £10.95, pp. 192 T he obvious thing to say about Graham Greene's new novel, published in his mid-...

In Anger, Under Siege and Too Much by Robert Hewison, Methuen, £6.95 each. Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years 1903-1939 by Martin Stannard, Paladin, £6.95 Hammer: Witness to History...

Cressida Connolly THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD by Alice Thomas Ellis Duckworth, £9.95, pp.233 I know people who buy The Spectator for the Home life column alone. Its weekly...

Anita Brookner A SEASON IN THE WEST by Piers Paul Read Allison Press/Secker and Warburg, £10.95, pp. 238 T he delights of the West, as envisaged by Czech writer Josef Birek,...

Exhibitions Their own men Giles Auty Jeffrey Camp (Royal Academy, till 9 October) Leon Kossoff (Anthony d'Offay, till 8 October) Carel Weight (Bernard Jacobson, till 8...

Bill Viola (Riverside, till 9 October) Nam June Paik (Hayward, 29 September-11 December) Edge 88 (Clerkenwell, till 25 September) Box of tricks Adrian Dannatt F or most...

Hamlet (Phoenix) The Taming of the Shrew (Barbican) Too, too solid performance Christopher Edwards A fter his bright and amusing Bene- dick, his showy and unexpectedly funny...

Long Live the Lady (`15', Renoir, Chelsea) Flights of fancy Hilary Mantel I f you have been away from your native country for a long time — years rather than months — you...

Provincial pleasures Peter Watson T he barons of Bond Street, who love nothing so much as a little retsina- or rioja-induced relaxation throughout the entire month of August,...

Remixed blessing Marcus Berkmann P op music has an ambivalent attitude to its heritage. On the one hand large chunks of pop history are virtually out of bounds, on grounds of...

Give us a break Wendy Cope T ime gathers speed as the years go by. Films I was still vaguely intending to see at the cinema are shown on television and turn out to be four or...

Two brave men Taki ike Icarus, Andrew and Randall Crawley, who died so tragically last Satur- day, always flew too close to the sun. They were reckless in the way brave, not...

When we were very young Jeffrey Bernard I recently heard somewhere that preg- nant women who are addicted to a soap opera such as Neighbours produce babies that will stop...

Fundamental error Alice Thomas Ellis I 'm glad our editor didn't like The Last Temptation of Christ. That is, I'm sorry he had to spend a boring few hours, for that is never...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of either Chambers Dictionary or Chambers Crossword Manual — ring your choice) for the first three...

Myself when young Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1540 you were in- vited to provide a paragraph, consisting of one sentence of about 150 words, from an early chapter of an...

Karpov's kaleidoscope Raymond Keene A s Anatoly Karpov approaches forty there has been no sign of any waning of his powers. On the contrary, he is intent on increasing his...

THE man ,‘ ho tried to teach politics to lazy undergraduate Anderson was Profes- sor Peter Campbell. Patient and kind, he was also a scholar specialising in French politics. I...

The `origins' of these puzzles are their setters Jac, Mass and Doc: see 27, 30, 41 & 11; 20, 22, 43 & 29; and 10, 12, 17 & 13 respectively. Winners: A. J. Clark, Hartley...

Did Marx, Freud, Mark Twain or de Gaulle ever watch a cricket match? If so, how would they have described and inter- preted it, assuming a command of English? A description of...

Leaves from the commonplace book of Wallace Arnold I have long favoured maroon socks, and I am occasionally attracted by the prospect of sweet sherry, but in few other ways am...

IT WAS an especial pleasure to make the acquaintance of the younger generation of Mitfords. Across the table from me was the anorexic Pecca, habitually toying with her food. In...

REGALING me with hilarious tales of Farv, Muv, their ill-trained butler, Shuv, and their nouveau-riche governess, Parv, Decca Mitford insisted I join the family for an intensely...