A serious outbreak of cuffing. T he Tories did very badly in the elec- tions for the European Parliament, but not so badly that Mr Major was forced to resign; he made do with...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 COPING WITH THE KIMS V isitors to Pyongyang, the capital of North...

The strange death of Liberal Democrat England SIMON HEFFER O ne who emerged well from the Euro- pean elections was Mr Richard Huggett. He enterprisingly stood in Devon and...

NIGEL DEMPSTER R oyal Ascot this week reminded me of a passage in the autobiography of the late Lord Clark of 'Civilisation'. In it he recounted how in the early summer of 1940,...

You cannot strike a balance between ruling yourselves and not ruling yourselves CHARLES MOORE Others may feel that the normal rule does not apply. If the Tories had done well...

Andrew Davidson reports on the connections and similarities between two men from famous families, and wonders if the friendship can survive exposure THE PALACE is pleased to...

Boris Johnson explains why the fight to succeed Jacques Delors has suddenly become rather dirty THE BATTLE to succeed M. Jacques Delors starts in earnest over the baklava and...

Italian fascists did well in the European politicians are wrong to ostracise them Rome MY NEIGHBOURHOOD, a crumbling and picturesque part of Rome between the Tiber and the...

Head-hunters are the lowest of the professional from bitter personal experience IT IS always fun to try to rank occupations in order of odiousness. If your Titanic lifeboat...

persist.. . ROUND HERE, pregnancy is infec- tious, like plague or typhus: but it gener- ally has more devastating effects by far, than those ancient enemies of Mankind, the...

Liz Hodgkinson welcomes the end of That's Life, and argues that consumer affairs programmes have become a menace to society LAWYERS the length and breadth of the land must be...

REUTER reports a case of lynching in Georgia, which in its devilish cruelty surpasses anything yet recorded, even of that crime. A negro of that State was accused of having...

E.W. Swanton, who has been watching South African cricket teams for 70 years, rejoices at their return to the playing fields of England AN" 1 ' ER a gap of all but 30 years,...

A Vintage Subscription Offer Give a Spectator gift subscription to a valued friend or relative, and we will give you a gift in return - a bottle of Modt & Chandon 1986 Vintage...

It's always tea-time in Santiago da Chile PAUL JOHNSON But then I have been a Chile fan for more than 30 years. I love its absurd shape, the sombre lakes of Valdivia and the...

I LOOK forward to Arlen's reply. For instance: `Do you mean, in words of one syllable?' Or: 'Because the directors' responsibilities are laid down by company law, and the Stock...

Laughter and tears with the Comical Onion, splashing out on a costly hobby CHRISTOPHER FILDES I do hope that the Comical Onion has got it right this time. Its foreign forays...

CADBURIER and cadburier. The Stock Exchange is baffled. Its rules now require companies to comply with the Cadbury Code of Corporate Governance, or to explain why they don't....

I SHOULD have guessed it. After years of effort, I succeed in getting the Budget moved out of Cheltenham week. It moves to November, and the Treasury's calendar must change. The...

UNHAPPY FACES at the Old Lady's birthday party. The Bank of England is dis- pensing with the services of its leading expert on the Far East. I would have thought that an area of...

GREAT WAS the City's umbrage when the Prime Minister decided that a knighthood for the Lord Mayor of London should no longer come up with the rations. Paul Newall, who was the...

Sir: 'There is a phrase in German that has its uses,' declares Professor Norman Stone (`By land, sea and air — eventually', 4 June), 'Gott wird nicht verspottet: which means,...

Sir: The digital nature of our genetic codes does not disprove a life force (`The tele- phone exchange of life', 11 June). It could simply be the way the life force expresses...

Sir: How ridiculous of CSH in his Portrait of the Week (11 June) to write that the trumpeter Red Rodney was unusual in the jazz profession in being white. Not only have there...

Sir: John Simpson engages in a now well- established practice of seeking to drum up support for 'Europe' by ignoring the guts of the question and by focusing on secondary...

Sir: Tony Scotland need not resort to Tas- mania's 'middle-class anti-transportation- ist' past (whatever that is), in order to explain why some Tasmanians are opposed to...

12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £80.00 1=1 £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £91.00 0 £46.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$130 LI US$66.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175 0 US$88 Rest of Airmail 0 £111.00 ❑ £55.50...

Sir: D. L. Crosby (Letters, 4 June) provides us with a useful summary of Theodore Dal- rymple's views, and one to which many of us working in the NHS would be happy to put our...

Sir: Pigs might fly, and the moon be proved to be green cheese before I could have found myself in agreement with Digby Anderson, or so I thought. Now he has written so...

Sir: To this farmer The Spectator is a 'recre- ational' magazine. Such a judgment must partly depend on one's perspective. Even so, Dominic Lawson's classification of Farmer's...

Sir: Your reason for assigning the review of Yitzchak Shamir's autobiography to James Buchan, was quite obviously not to publish a scholarly treatise on the contents of the book...

Sir: If Mr Blair of the Labour Party were to obtain ultimate success as a result of the mis- sion upon which he has just embarked, there is a possibility that Great Britain...

Sir: It is appropriate that ex-Masons should describe former brothers as 'selfish, stupid, prejudiced and ruthless' (`Swearing alle- giance to Widow Twanky', 14 May), since the...

Sir: If I might be allowed as a layman to intrude into the spirited modernist visual arts debate currently being fought out in your columns (Letters, 28 May) — my own Damascene...

If you want free spirits, look among the nobodies SIMON JENKINS Who-knows-whom is still the dominant ideology of British government. It infuses ever stranger corners of public...

How could we have ignored him? Jonathan Keates BALZAC by Graham Robb Picador, £20, pp. 521 by Graham Robb Picador, £20, pp. 521 D uring the late 1940s and 1950s, a wave of...

Francis King JAMES BALDWIN by David Leeming Michael Joseph, £20, pp. 442 T he life recounted in this biography was, despite all its excesses and absurdities, an heroic one. Few...

John Bayley A PRIVATE VIEW by Anita Brookner Cape, £14.99, pp. 219 A dorable Anita Brookner! And as adorable as a man as she is as a woman! But steady the buffs, that's hardly...

D. Jr. Taylor WOMEN AND GHOSTS by Alison Lurie Heinemann, £1299, pp. 182 hat makes a good ghost story? Apart from their scholarly background, which allows antiquarian heroes to...

M. R. D. Foot DUNKIRK — ALAMEIN - BOLOGNA by Christopher Seton-Watson Buckland Publications, 125 High Holborn, London WC1V 6QA, tel: 071 242 8481, £14.95, pp. 290 urrent...

She sees soldiers in her attic, Papers melt on her stair, A child stops in her hallway `I don't want to go in there.' I wait in the warm basement Thick coffee on the spoon I...

Michael Davie DAISY BATES IN THE DESERT by Julia Blackburn Secker, £15.99, pp. 288 I n the recently published Oxford Illustrat- ed Dictionary of Australia, Daisy Bates...

Michael White A POUND OF FLESH by Art Linson Deutsch, f12.99, pp. 195 S ome subjects are relatively easy to learn from a book. Others, such as produc- ing films, are more...

Simon Blow C ross-dressing in France in the 17th century was taken more lightly and more humorously than it is today. There was no call on therapists, group sessions, or...

Nigel Spivey DR ORWELL AND MR BLAIR by David Caute Weidenfeld, £14.99, pp. 209 A , the heart of this curious little novel is an entirely honourable sentiment: three cheers for...

Frederic Raphael LOVING GARBO by Hugo Vickers Cape, £19.99, pp. 320 I n heaven, they say, there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, though the elect will have to wait...

Our tower block's a temple, Our flat a private shrine, The urine in the stair-wells The sacramental wine. The pushers on the walkways Evangelists of crack Have promised once...

Architecture Festival of change Nicholas Snowman believes the South Bank Centre will become London's central arts quarter 0 ne day, in the middle of April this year, lashed by...

Na chance of a hanging Giles Auty C onfronted by the task of writing my 11th review of a Royal Academy Summer Exhibition for this paper, I feel at some- thing of a loss. A...

The dangers of change Peter Phillips T he 150th anniversary of the first appearance of The Musical Times, on 15 July 1844, offers a field-day for musical his- torians,...

Eaten up with age Alistair McAlpine A carved unicorn horn comes up for sale as lot 33 of Christie's sale of European Sculpture and Works of Art on 5 July. In fact this...

Playing Away! (Grand Theatre, Leeds) Jenufa (London Coliseum) Caffeine injections Rupert Christiansen P aying Away!, commissioned by Opera North and the Munich Biennale,...

Passion (Plymouth) Too many Tonys Sheridan Morley C hauvinism is not enough: sure, the British are still doing well enough on Broadway, with the National Theatre's Carousel...

Reality Bites (`12', selected cinemas) Bach better than bites Mark Steyn B oth this week's films arrive proclaim- ing their hipness; both, in the end, are curi- ously...

Bond bombshell Alan Rusbridger W omen spies fall into two well-loved categories. There is the leggy Dame Diana Rigg type, black leather-clad and more than happy to sleep with...

One-legged nightmare Jeffrey Bernard I was interviewed three times last week and I should be pleased to be flavour of the month, so to speak, but I found it very embarrassing,...

Vile bodies Nigel Nicolson H ere are two stories to test the level of your shockability. Both are true stories. I have altered the names of the people, but not of the places....

Royal handicaps Taki New York I t is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a royal title, must be in want of a wife with spec- tacular umlauts....

c/o Corney & Barrow 12 Helmet Row, London EC1V 3QJ Tel: (071) 251 4051 Fax: (071) 608 1373 White 1. Chardonnay, Vin de Pays des COtes Price No. Value Catalanes 1992 12...

Embarras de richesse Auberon Waugh A l French this time. Let nobody scoff at differences between vintages in France. Four of the wines have been offered previously, but, where...

THE LONDON Oratory summer fête is with us again this Saturday, 18 June, starting at 1130 a.m. and continuing until 5.30 p.m. So, roll up in your hundreds with children, who will...

Gags for fags Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1834 you were invited to write a humour-packed piece of advertising for an imaginary brand of cigarettes. Diogenes only left his...

SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA CHESS Trumped Raymond Keene Gulko — Short; Game 2. AS I EXPECTED, Viswanathan Anand, the Indian Grandmaster, is making mince- meat of Oleg Romanishin in...

L CROSSWORD W. & J. r i GRAHAM'S PORT r GRAHAM'S PORT r 1164: Capital by Ascot A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first...

I read in Pepys's Diary (14 March 1662): `In the afternoon come the German Dr Knuffler, to discourse with us about his engine to blow up ships.' What device this was we never...

M 'A I SH'01. E N T ILMIE M E N I T . ROTL N P E R K E R T A T R S H 0 FL E N %HrAYSO I 10 IE A E s A 'd A ZO O LN YEdA OlULUULIS 0 3a 0 U 4 N 41_,C t I 11; L 1„5H AE...

Not quite Yugoslav cricket Frank Keating ALAS for Yugoslavia that was. If only they had played cricket . . . But, by golly, they did. When Richard West was researching his...

Dear Mary. . . Q. How does one prevent people whom one has invited on a carefully planned holi- day from 'chucking' at the last minute, leav- ing it too late for one to invite...