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The Spectator
The Spectatorextends good wishes for the New Year to all its advertisers. The following are major advertisers who have appeared in our columns during the past twelve months. Abbey National...
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Beating the retreat
The SpectatorT anus, the god who brings in the New J Year facing both ways, is surely the tutelary deity of politicians. But politicians, not being gods, do not manage the posture as...
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Political commentary
The SpectatorIt is hypocrisy Colin Welch N ow is the time for New Year resolutions and soon, alas, will come the time to break them. Backsliding is all the more like- ly, in that the...
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Notebook
The SpectatorA s this week consists principally of Bank ..Holidays, I am not where may you think I am, sitting at my desk writing this Notebook, but somewhere completely dif- ferent, doing...
Subscribe
The SpectatorUK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £15.50 IRE17.75 £18.50 £24.50 One year: £31.00 1Rf35.50 £37.00 £49.00 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made payable to the...
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Another voice
The SpectatorPerfect yuletide celebration Auberon Waugh T hegreat religious revival which I have often remarked on this page plainly makes up in enthusiasm what it lacks in numbers....
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Isa Mae's unhappy New Year
The SpectatorNicholas von Hoffman Washington I sa Mae Lang has lost her long fight against eviction. The 93-year-old lady, after months of resistance by herself and her lawyer, is being...
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A girl's best friend no more
The SpectatorRichard West Kimberley T he nearest thing to pornography in this puritanical country is to be found in the Financial Mail, South Africa's answer to the Economist. In a...
One hundred years ago
The SpectatorThe congratulatory style in which our contemporaries chronicle the fact that M. Pasteur has inoculated two hundred animals with rabies — one of the most frightful of all...
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The conscience of M. Cot
The SpectatorSam White Paris president Mitterrand is becoming wor- ried about his image. He indicated as much to a group of political correspondents whom he received at the Elysee recently....
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Anti-nuclear wars
The SpectatorAndrew Brown Stockholm T he idea of a nuclear-free zone in Scandi- navia was invented by two of the most successful statesmen in Europe — Presidents Tito and Kekkonen — one...
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Mr James R. Mancham
The SpectatorIn the Spectator of 28 August an article by Anthony Mockler described the background to the present unrest in the Seychelles. In contrasting the present unhappiness in the...
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Give them back their marbles
The SpectatorChristopher Hitchens S hortly before the last war, Nicos Kazant- zakis visited England to write one of his best (and least read) travel books. It is pro- bably the most...
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Island in the rain
The SpectatorJames Hughes-Onslow Hobart, Tasmania BarryB arry Humphries, a leading light in the Wilderness Society, recent- ly told the people of Hobart what he thought of their state...
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Unions without muscle
The SpectatorPeter Paterson T he automatic assumption that you have to go back to 1926 and the collapse of the General Strike for comparative pur- poses whenever the trade union movement is...
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Bookshop days
The SpectatorDavid Taylor W hen I worked in a bookshop — a bookshop, incidentally, possessing an extensive clientele with varied interests — we scarcely sold a single copy of those books...
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A Hebridean funeral
The SpectatorMichael Bywater T his is the story of a man's death and his burial. There is not much to say about the man's life. He lived on an island some twenty miles out in the sound of...
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Culling for conservation
The SpectatorMichael Wigan t has become almost an autumn tradi- tion, a perennial seashore drama fought in the far-off hinterlands — the confronta- tion of Orcadian fishermen culling seals...
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The press
The SpectatorA high-pitched Msssss Paul Johnson he demonstrations outside British 1 nuclear bases conducted recently by ordinary-housewives-with-no-axes-to- grind, proselytising lesbians,...
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Canine companions
The SpectatorSir: Thank you for your kindly reference in your Notebook (27 November). Perhaps William Hickey's 'mini-paroxysm' was only a disguised defence of a fellow gossip writer whom I...
Sir Roy's role
The SpectatorSir: In his otherwise flattering review of John Physick's book The Victoria and Albert Museum: the History of its Building (4 December). Gavin Stamp claims, among other...
Alexander of Macedon
The SpectatorSir: According to my understanding of the matter Alexander's advance across India was halted by the refusal of his Macedo- nians to go any further. Arrianus (and his modern...
Mote and beam
The SpectatorSir: How dare John Gross complain of the dishonesty of the film The Atomic Cafe (11 December) when his own article is at least as tendentious. It is not true that the reviews...
Only an alternative
The SpectatorSir: How much we agree with Richard In- grains's comments on Hymns for Today's Church (4 December) which, together with the new Church liturgy, he describes as disastrous. One...
The sons of Edward Kennedy
The SpectatorSir: The vitriolic article by Christopher Hit- chens on Edward Kennedy (`Farewell to a family man', 11 December) contains a serious factual error: 'In particularly, after the...
Film of which year?
The SpectatorSir: Although I realise many of your cor- respondents maintain contempt for the ephemeral, I feel constrained to point out that your 'Film of the Year' (18 December), the albeit...
Letters
The SpectatorET: missing the point? Sir: It is part and parcel of the critic's task to administer salutary doses of cur- mudgeonliness, but when, like Peter Ackroyd in his review of E.T....
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Books
The SpectatorThoughts from the peanut-farm William Shawcross Keeping Faith: The Memoirs of a President Jimmy Carter (Collins £15) T immy Carter insists that he wants his J memoirs to give...
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Injustice
The SpectatorFlorence O'Donoghue Lost Causes James Comyn (Secker & Warburg £8.50) This is one of the cases described by Sir James in this interesting collection of short narratives of...
Murderous Messiah
The SpectatorPeter Paterson The Life and Death of Michael X James Sharp (Uni Books £4.95) T he role \A the demagogue has sharply declined in what we call, in our undefined way, the Black...
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War sketches
The SpectatorDavid Williams Short Stories from the Second World War Chosen by Dan Davin (OUP £9.50) A l the 24 pieces in Dan Davin's excellent collection arise out of experiences undergone...
Monsters
The SpectatorFrancis King Daughters of Passion Julia O'Faolain (Penguin £1.95) T he initial story and the title story can often, between them, be relied upon to convey a writer's dominant...
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Peccavi
The SpectatorA.N. Wilson N o illusion can remain intact forever. One of my illusions was that no one ever reads book reviews, which was why I was so happy to become Literary Editor of the...
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Kathleen Raine
The SpectatorNo doubt others will name some of the many excellent works of history and biography which I seldom have time to read but in which England still continues to ex- cel. The best...
P. J. Kavanagh
The SpectatorI am tempted to give, as my most enjoyed books of 1982, three by the same author, Geoffrey Grigson (published by Allison & Busby). The favourite adjective attached to Grigson...
Simon Courtauld
The SpectatorJacobo Timerman's The Longest War (Chatto & Windus and Picador) is a remarkable indictment, by a Jew living in Israel, of the Begin government for pro- secuting the war in...
J. G. Links
The SpectatorIn The Image and the Eye (Phaidon) Sir Ernst Gombrich has again led us entertain- ingly along the path towards understanding Gestalt psychology and all that; occasionally the...
Books of the year
The SpectatorWe continue our contributors' choice of the books they have most enjoyed in 1982. Harold Acton A History of World Art by Hugh Honour and John Fleming (Macmillan) is unques-...
Richard West
The SpectatorTwo of the books I most enjoyed this year were paperback reprints of classic works: Elephant Bill by Lt Col J. H. Williams, first published in 1950, and An English Lady in the...
John Keegan
The SpectatorThe most important work of military history to appear this year, and for several past, is William H. McNeill's The Pursuit of Power (Blackwell) a superbly tenden- tious attempt...
Arthur Marshall
The SpectatorThere are a number of books that I happily re-read every year, among them The En- chanted April, Vile Bodies and Wode- house's The World of Mr Mulliner, and to this list I now...
Richard Ingrams
The SpectatorThe First Clerihews by E. C. Bentley (OUP) is a nicely produced facsimile of the St Paul's School notebook with G. K. C's drawings. I also enjoyed Brief Lives by Alan Watkins...
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Arts
The SpectatorFlying finish Mark Amory Clay (Pit) N ot childish, childlike,' said someone in The Knack and that is what shrewd adults hope they are dishing up for us at the moment. This...
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Cinema
The SpectatorLow drama Peter Ackroyd Looks and Smiles ('AA', Camden Plaza) W hile waiting for Ken Loach's new film in an almost empty cinema, my atten- tion strayed, naturally enough, to...
Art
The SpectatorSound effects John McEwen aintings and drawings by Leonid Past- ernak (1862-1945), father of Boris, is the principal exhibition of the current wide- ranging selection offered...
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Television
The SpectatorOn balance Richard Ingrams Tt is really quite amusing the way research is showing that everyone is switching off, just at the same time the television com- panies are...
High life
The SpectatorWell deserved Taki N ow that 1982 is safely behind us it is time for 'High life's' jet-set awards of the year. Unfortunately, the crisis in ship- ping has put me in the same...
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Postscript
The SpectatorThe brutal truth Patrick Marnham T imeplays strange tricks on us all and 1982 should be remembered for the trick it played on Mr Neal Ascherson. Mr Ascherson is a journalist...
Low life
The SpectatorFair city Jeffrey Bernard Dublin T he weather in Dublin was appalling but the welcomes as warm as always. Words, as usual, fail me when I try to finger just what it is I like...
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Competition
The SpectatorNo. 1250: Perforated spoons Set by Jaspistos: 'Perforated spoons existed long before Mr Greening's promotional ex- ercise for mayonnaise. As enigmatic objects in Anglo-Saxon...
No. 1247: The winners
The SpectatorJaspistos reports: Competitors were invited to produce a piece of prose of 50 words, the first word a monosyllable, the second a disyllable, the third a trisyllable and so on,...
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Crossword 588
The SpectatorA prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 17 January. Entries to: Crossword 588, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. N.1 2...
Chess
The SpectatorLooking back Raymond Keene I have already made the Spectator awards for the chess books of the past year, nominating Jon Speelman's book of Best Chess Games and giving as many...
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