election expressed opposition to a single European currency in their addresses to constituents; these included two junior ministers and Dame Angela Rumbold, the vice-chairman of...

Even the ranks of hackery could scarce forbear to cheer but will it do the PM any good? BRUCE ANDERSON 0 n Tuesday and Wednesday, the Tory party went off message. Central...

S imon Sebag Montefiore, you're a wicked fellow,' said Sir James Goldsmith, as he spotted me among the press while he campaigned in Newlyn, the Cornish fish- ing port. 'Yes, you...

Where the Tory candidate's cause is contemptible, and Labour's candidate has no cause at all MATTHEW PARRIS To the Memory of Rachel Charlotte O'Brien ... Her death was...

Minor public schoolboy . . . mere consumerism . . . raging egomaniac. Labour's intellectuals tell Robert Taylor what they really think about the Labour leader for whom most of...

I RECOGNISE, of course, that perfectly decent people may disagree profoundly about euthanasia, just as they may dis- agree as to whether Bronzino was a bet- ter painter than...

Anne McElvoy reveals how the spin doctor's revolving finger pointed to Labour's real election rivalry IF LABOUR'S election campaign is suc- cessful, it will have been won in...

. . . said the female heckler with the raised umbrella when Petronella Wyatt explained that she wasn't Tory filth but press YOU can only be sure with the Conserva- tives',...

Nicholas Farrell discovers that authority is discouraging a kind of loving on Hampstead Heath IT WAS pitch-black and ice-cold on the night I went to the woods on Hampstead Heath...

Michael Heath

I BRING good news from an unlikely source. In 1952 Andre Deutsch pub- lished Chamber of Horrors, a compila- tion of official jargon by `Vigilans', who I've always thought was...

Douglas Johnson says that despite what they really think of each other, France and Germany dare not retreat from unity HELMUT KOHL is staying on. He will stand in the...

Rory Knight Bruce recalls joining a unique club at the same time as being asked to shoot his own stepfather by the founder IT IS 12 years since the death at 65 of Sir Iain...

Rottweilers, hack-yobs and a host of other unclean creatures PAUL JOHNSON I remember vividly all the elections since 1945, and this has been easily the sunniest so far. The...

Always chum up to an elephant before you share a bath with it CHRISTOPHER FILDES I suppose that Tony Blair's friends in business were picked for him by his adver- tising...

Sir: I am outraged, but amused, by Miss Wyatt's vitriolic attack on my compatriots (Another voice, 29 March). I have known Petronella since we were both in our teens, when she...

Sir: Neil Hamilton has more brass than Benares. He tells a tale worthy of Dickens at his most sentimental, full of late-night vigils as he toils over lost tax returns to prove...

I admitted in my oral evidence to Sir Gordon Downey that I lied to Michael Heseltine. I did not. Mr Glover is merely repeating one Guardian lie. Another is that I admitted tax...

Wyatt's views about Italians. They are absolutely correct, as any Italian would confirm in a private conversation. Publicly, particularly if you are an ambassador, the stance is...

Sir: If S. Runciman (Books, 12 April) is to succeed A. Forbes, he must not only criti- cise others' name-dropping, he must length- en his sentences. Christopher Taylor 5 Park...

Sir The correspondence with Alice von Schlieffen points to a matter far more important than the military details of the events of August and September 1914. One does not have to...

Sir: I am writing on behalf of Mr Victor Herman, who has on occasions helped me, voluntarily, by playing the bagpipes at func- tions that I have organised for students here. I...

Labour's spin doctors have turned against the BBC because television is now bad for their patients STEPHEN GLOVER A few weeks ago Charles Lewington, the Tories' communications...

Brussels, the City, big business, even the police they'll all back the rule of Machiavelli Blair PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE 'There are some political minds', wrote Michael...

Yankee doodling dandy Philip Hensher THE OXFORD MARK TWAIN (29 volumes) OUP, £240 M ark Twain was always presenting himself as a plain-speaking, ordinary sort of fellow, with...

Philip Glazebrook THE DIVING BELL & THE BUTTERFLY by Jean - Dominique Bauby Fourth Estate, £9.99, pp. 129 T his grave and intensely interesting book is the account of his own...

John Jolliffe RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN by Linda Kelly Sinclair-Stevenson, f25, pp. 365 S heridan's character and life were an unusually violent mixture of sparkling qualities...

of a better self Teresa Waugh HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE by Main de Botton Picador, £12.99, pp. 215 L urking in the world of letters there must somewhere be someone who...

Selina Hastings THE KISS: A SECRET LIFE by Kathryn Harrison Fourth Estate, £14.99, pp. 207 T he story Kathryn Harrison tells in The Kiss is so terrible that I felt guilty at...

Philip Marsden FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN by William Dalrymple HarperCollins, £18, pp. 483 F or several hundred years, under the capricious thumb of the sultan, the peoples of the...

Fiction: The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester, Picador, £5.99 Last Orders by Graham Swift, Picador, £5.99 Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard by Timothy Mo, Paddleless, £5.99...

Charles Douro WELLINGTON: A PERSONAL HISTORY by Christopher Hibbert HaglerCollins, f20, pp. 404 T be asked to review a biography of an ancestor is a challenge. The fear of not...

William Buchan THE SECRET WOMAN: A LIFE OF PEGGY ASHCROFT by Garry O'Connor Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 236 T he author of this biography has been unfortunate in that its publication...

Michael Hulse CASTLES BURNING by Magda Denes Doubleday, £16.99, pp. 350 P art of me fell in love with the voice of Magda Denes and part, flipping back more frequently as the...

Christopher Hart NOW ALL WE NEED IS A TITLE: FAMOUS BOOK TITLES AND HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY by Andre Bernard W W. Norton, £7.95, pp. 127 B leak House would still be one of the...

Philip Ziegler UNDER TWO FLAGS: THE LIFE OF MAJOR GENERAL EDWARD SPEARS by Max Egremont Weidenfeld, £25, pp. 370 G eneral Spears was intelligent, brave, clear-sighted,...

William Scammell OUT OF SHEER RAGE by Geoff Dyer Little, Brown, f16.99, pp. 244 To everyone else on the island it looked like I was in deep thought, wrestling with...

o pera addicts, if you ask them nicely, will tell you three things about Daniel- Francois-Esprit Auber's dramatic master- piece, La muette de Portici, first produced in 1828....

Glasgow's miles worse Redundancies, funding cuts, closures: the city institutions are in a mess. Felicity Owen reports I n the central hall of Kelvingrove, Glas- gow's great...

Lohengrin (Chatelet Theatre, Paris) Brought back to reality Michael Tanner couple of months ago, reviewing Covent Garden's excellent revival of Lohengrin, I commented that...

Turner in the North of England, 1797 (Harewood House, Nr Leeds, till 8 June) Go north, young man John Whitley I t's rare to be able to spot exactly the moment an artist jumps...

The cutting edge Ursula Buchan e it or not, there are basic differ- ences between the sexes. Apart from the obvious ones (women cannot remember football results for longer...

Tom and Clem (Aldwych) The Critics — Up For Review (Battersea Arts Centre) Marlene (Lyric) Top-level meeting Sheridan Morley M ichael Gambon is not only one of the greatest...

The Saint (PG, selected cinemas) Twin Town (18, selected cinemas) Ring of no confidence Mark Steyn M y memory of The Saint boils down to little more than...

I had to have her James Delingpole I can't remember how many times a minute men are supposed to think of sex, but, whatever it is, I fear I have a similar problem with my...

There was a soldier . . . Michael Vestey S ometimes radio can transform the familiar into the exceptional, a thought which occurred to me when I heard Tunes of Glory...

Happy ever after Robin Oakley R acing people, particularly those who still go jumping on a Saturday in mid-April, are mostly unashamed sentimentalists, the sort who take in...

The truth hurts Taki once wrote in these pages that, whenev- er a tank comes up against a student, I root for the tank. It was, I admit, a bit over the top, prompting a couple...

The secret garden Leanda de Lisle W ho are the dotty people who write to problem pages and magazine colum- nists? People like me, I'm afraid. When I'm writing I feel like a...

Rash youth Andrew Robson WHY is bridge attracting so many young players in Europe yet so few in America where the game is in danger of dying a slow death? The average age of...

DOES affluence make for better cookin g and eatin g ? Let's put the q uestion rather more narrowly: do those of you who are now middle-a g ed and middle-incomed cook and eat...

i ,, it 1I4l , COICH %HIV) P I S OF I ,9,,,R,_,A,, COMPETITION Mid-Victorian madness Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1978 you were invited to supply a scene from a melodra-...

IN-THE-STRAND SIMPSON'S IN-THE-STRAND CHESS Mind-bending Raymond Keene CHESS is more than pure calculation. It also involves qualities of imagination, cre- ative leaps and...

A first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1991 Port for the first correct solution opened on 6 May, with two runners-up prizes of £20 (or, for UK...

Tiger burning bright Simon Barnes LAST Tuesday was Jackie Robinson Day. Robinson was the first black player to play major league baseball in the United States. This is the...

Dear Mary. . Q. I have recently returned from a skiing holiday in Switzerland, where one of our Party insisted on bringing his mobile tele- Phone onto the slopes. The contrast...