ran Igo home now, nurse? I'm feeling much better.' T he British Government told Sinn Fein, the political face of the Irish Republican Army, that it would not be allowed to take...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 0171-242 0603 SACK THE CHANCELLOR O ne of the pieties of the moment is that it really would be the end of Mr Major and the Tories if Mr Kenneth Clarke...

Peter Mandelson is the Caliban's mirror of new Labour they had better get used to the sight BRUCE ANDERSON T here is a dispute in John Major's Cab- inet, and so there ought to...

DAVID HARE T he Spectator diary is as good a place as any to eat crow. A year ago, I wrote an arti- cle in a national newspaper saying that given the calibre of his Cabinet and...

We think we say what we think, but we don't think what we say. That's what I think about Mr Hattersley MATTHEW PARRIS D ), want to know what Mr Roy Hat- tersley earns? You...

. . . yet we still subsidise the sporting one. Mark Archer says much money is wasted on the Sports Council, and that television is wrong about what Britons really enjoy THE...

Michael Heath

`SO WHY,' I asked my husband, `do you always write this lady, instead of this woman, in letters of referral?' `What?' he replied, throwing the lat- est issue of Aggressive...

book should have been The Meaning of Race.

Paul Johnson looks at Tory prime ministers since they were invented in the 1780s, and finds one thing in common: they are unalike This article is an extract from a longer pam-...

. . . that's what we live in, says James Hanson, and he has no doubt who, or what, is to blame THE Los Angeles Times has recently com- pleted a series on increasing media...

Simon Hoggart identifies the last ethnic group in the United States whom it's all right to be rude about YOU MAY be a redneck if: Your wife is heavier than your pick-up truck....

persist. . . TO HAVE one jealous boyfriend may be regarded as a misfortune; to have two looks like foolishness. I am not talking now of two such boyfriends in swift...

There's danger ahead, Poppa Eddie tells the crowds in Threadneedle Street CHRISTOPHER FILDES T housands of workers jostled in Thread- needle Street to cheer the man they call...

I SHOULD never have let myself in for this. Trying to explain, a week ago, the Government's merger policy for last week, I promised an update on this week's policy as soon as I...

IN TROPICAL climes there are certain times of day when all the citizens retire to tear their clothes off and perspire — all, as Noel Coward observed, except for the visit- ing...

JUST as a group of Welsh financial fixers is a Taffia, so the equivalent in Edinburgh is a MacHination. It will normally include the landlord of a border county, a fund manag-...

GOOD NEWS and bad news from Light- atendoftunnel, formerly UK plc. Sir Ken- neth Clarke, ebullient co-chairman and finance director, says that everything is fine except the...

Sir: It's a sorry day when Kenan Malik is using your columns CRace towards censorship', 11 May) to rehearse the well- known foxy ploys of liberals who pretend that genetics and...

Goldhagen controversy. It is scarcely surprising that the post-1945 fatherland has sought completely to disas- sociate itself from the Nazi regime. There was even a postwar...

Sir: I read and reread Anne McElvoy's arti- cle (`Throwing the book at Germany', 4 May) with a mounting sense of conviction that Gentiles lose all sense of proportion,...

12Months 6Months UK CI £84.00 LI £43.00 Europe (airmail) 01£95.00 la £48.00 USA Airspeed LI US$135 U US$68 USA Airmail CI US$180 U US$90 Rest of Airmail LI £115.00 CI £58.00...

Sir: Bruce Anderson, reviewing David Irv- ing's Goebbels (Books, 27 April), asserts that the publication of this book has been `prohibited' in the USA and that this tan...

Sir: You have recently published two articles dealing with the appealing side of the char- acter of the late Professor Richard Cobb (Arts, 11 May and 'Napoleon bad, Critchley...

Sir: I am regularly dumbfounded by the chutzpah of those earning more in a day than millions of low-paid workers do in a week, as they patiently explain why Britain cannot...

Sir: British foreign correspondents, in my experience, are on the whole a friendly and supportive bunch — particularly during hard times. I was therefore surprised and concerned...

Sir: My apologies to Jeffrey Bernard for `bombarding him with unsolicited begging letters' (Low life, 27 April) and my thanks to him for his kind donation to Shelter. Mr Bernard...

Would that someone could expose the hypocrisy of Montgomery of the Mirror (perhaps I have) STEPHEN GLOVER S ome readers may have missed two recent issues of the Daily Mirror...

Confessions of a modern morphine addict PETRONELLA WYATT I have been taking morphine. Not, I has- ten to explain, for 'recreational' purposes. When my recent attack of...

Twelve greedy men David Sexton THE RUNAWAY JURY by John Grisham Century, f16.99, pp.401 I t's natural• for Americans to believe in lawyers. If you have been told that you have...

Douglas Hurd CENTURY'S ENDING: REFLECTIONS 1982-95 by George Kennan W. W. Norton, £19.95, pp.351 L et me get a small cavil out of the way — George Kennan has had 40 fruitful...

Anthony Daniels PLAGUES: THEIR ORIGIN, HISTORY AND FUTURE by Christopher Wills HarperCollins, £20, pp. 324 We all love a good plague, so long as it is far enough away, long...

First the bad news - subscription rates to The Spectator went up on 1 May. The rising cost of print, paper and postage means that we now do need to charge more. The good news...

Alan Watkins TICKLE THE PUBLIC: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF THE POPULAR PRESS by Matthew Engel Gollancz, £20, pp. 352 F r some years now Mr Engel has been one of the most consistently...

C.D.C. Armstrong THOMAS CRANMER by Diarmaid MacCulloch Yale University Press, £25.95, pp. 692 F ittingly for one who lived in a time of religious conflict, Thomas Cranmer has...

Christopher Hampton DAVID LEAN by Kevin Brownlow Richard Cohen, £25, pp. 809 I nveigled (or Spiegeled, as he puts it) into embarking on this massive book under the impression...

Leslie Mitchell THE YOUNGER PITT: THE CONSUMING STRUGGLE by John Ehrman Constable, L35, pp. 882 J ohn Ehrman has been living with William Pitt for three decades. The first...

Jane Ridley LUTYENS AND THE EDWARDIANS by Jane Brown biking f25, pp. 276 N ot long after Lutyens' death, his daughter Ursula embarked on a sentimen- tal journey round the...

Nigel Clive A BOTTLE IN THE SHADE: A JOURNEY IN THE WESTERN PELOPONNESE by Peter Levi Sinclair-Stevenson, f17.99, pp. 277 P eter Levi was Oxford's Professor of Poetry in the...

Non-fiction: This Year in Jerusalem by Mordecai Richler, Vintage, £7.99 The Weather Prophet by Lucretia Stewart, Vintage, £6.99 Modern Philosophy by Roger Scruton, Mandarin,...

Roll over, Beethoven Michael Kennedy reflects on why Mozart has now moved to the top of the popularity charts D uring the half-century and more in which I have been listening...

100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection (Design Museum, till 6 October) Are you sitting comfortably? Edward Lucie-Smith A n odd thing is happening to...

William Morris (Victoria & Albert Museum, till 1 Sept) Biding his time Tanya Harrod Self-portrait by Morris, 1856 T here have already been some notably sour previews and...

Vases and Volcanoes (British Museum, till 14 July) Oasis of elegance Martin Vander Weyer H ow nice it must have been to be Sir William Hamilton, even if Emma went to the bad...

Kids (18, selected cinemas) Showing off Mark Steyn i ds is the sort of film where, when one of the eponymous juveniles wants another to make room for him on the sofa, he...

Simply Disconnected (Minerva, Chichester) Mind Millie For Me (Haymarket) Nuremberg (Tricycle) Defeated by time Sheridan Morley S imon Gray's Simply Disconnected is...

The shock of the old Giannandrea Poem V aslav Nijinsky's choreographic genius has been acknowledged by many scholars, researchers and journalists. Yet only a few people were...

A bit of rough James Delingpole I hereby disown my father. To his eternal shame, it turns out that he is a huge fan of my least favourite television drama, Sharpe. `Why?' I...

Stop the brainwashing Michael Vestey W hen Simon Pemberton thumped Shula Hebden in The Archers last Friday night, a line from Noel Coward's Private Lives sprang to mind:...

Close encounters Christian Hesketh I n rugby terms, this last fortnight has seen some exciting encounters. On 4 May, the final of the Pilkington Cup was played before an...

Bending the odds Robin Oakley S ome 25 years ago my old friend Jeffrey Archer informed me, with all the gravitas of a future peer of the realm, 'The world is divided into...

Where's my perk? Alan Judd A banking friend is to lose his compa- ny car. Lest the hearts of non-bankers and of owners of non-company cars crack with grief, I should say at...

Forget the analysts Taki than intellectual exercise. Both ladies are estranged from their husbands, something I find very sad where Cosi is concerned. When Cosi married her...

Whose blood is it anyway? Jeffrey Bernard But, as I say, the blood transfusions were indeed a bloody bore. Each bag took between seven and eight hours to go through — usually...

Ground rules Leanda de Lisle T he garden is a source of considerable stress in this house. Not the walled kitchen garden, but the garden around the house — if you can call it...

BRIDGE Sound tactics Andrew Robson West led a safe V10 against South's ambi- tious grand slam contract of 7NT. With only 12 top tricks, ostensibly South needed ♦ Q to fall...

go through it precisely. I had always assumed it was not difficult to eat aspara- gus. You pick it up by the thick end, push the thin end into the mayonnaise, pool of olive oil...

COMPETITION ISLE OF L -41 : 1 U fkA Cooking up poetry Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1932 you were invited to supply a recipe in verse. Cucumber sandwiches (Peter Norman),...

IN•THE-STRAND CHESS SIMPSON'S IN-TILE-STRAND D8-Day Raymond Keene A CURIOUS PHENOMENON exists predicated on the isolated observation of an unusual word, phrase or idea,...

b DMZ n ri iiI Emigre A ti N diersEiwrigicri rikArreran E3 TONErlianialial ACIEIVICI on LIME to UM E hiEE ( A T Ari A©c Le m T Nue UM E A T u u IC A 11 ri Ur a Apr...

This competition was suggested by Leo Stein. Kipling wrote a story entitled 'The Man Who Was'. You are invited to write one entitled 'The Man Who Wasn't'. Maximum 200 words....

A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1989 Port for the first correct solution opened on 3 June, with two runners-up prizes of £15 (or, for UK...

Desperate passions Simon Barnes SOMEONE spat on Eric Cantona's head as he went up to collect the FA Cup on Satur- day. Someone else threw a punch at Alex Ferguson. There is...

Dear Mary.. . Q. Your correspondent J.G.H. of Norfolk writes (Dear Mary, 4 May) of his difficulty in purchasing sock suspenders. May I advise him that one admirable alternative...