Baby Milk Production UK M r John Major, the Prime Minister, visited Bosnia. He sent three ministers to Europe to frustrate European Community business in revenge for the ban on...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 0171-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 0171-242 0603 UNFIT FOR OPPOSITION W e always hear that such-and-such a party or...

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We will not be in Brussels by Christmas it is time for John Major to put on his white coat BRUCE ANDERSON B eef war is tabloid hyperbole. It is also useful shorthand, and...

T he police have given up on the theft of our family silver. In the absence of pho- tographs to identify each piece, it is unlike- ly it can be traced. (It wasn't Georgian or...

Now that we are at war again, I offer my memoirs of the last one MATTHEW PARR IS S hock is not a common feature of an MP's constituency life. My days as a back- bench drudge,...

As Russians choose a president, Anne McElvoy finds the West's Russia experts divided as to what to do about that country —just as they were before 1917 TWO YEARS ago, when I...

Andrew Gimson tells what happened next when he found an intruder in his flat Berlin THE FIRST sign of trouble was the chewed linoleum. As far as one could tell, during the...

EVERY PRESIDENT of the Fifth Republic must write his memoirs. De Gaulle set the example, writing in the manner of Chateaubriand. Pompidou had the time only to produce a few...

'ONLY MUGS choose a horse by its name,' Jeffrey Bernard once told me after one of his each-way choices, Celi- bate, well and truly belied its name by getting, well, not exactly...

Who killed off the gentleman? Ewa Lewis says that she has received a buffeting from all sides. But in the end, it was the ladies wot did it GENTILITY is in the news. A whole...

Why judges view the rise in crime with judicious complacency PAUL JOHNSON I n the growing rift between the judges and the public, one aspect — the economic factor — is...

EVERY so often in this Billingham-on- Yangtze come reminders that head office is watching, and will not let things get out of hand. One day the International Herald Tri- bune...

Heaven is high and the emperor's far away China copies the ICI model CHRISTOPHER FILDES T Shanghai here is nothing like an arduous swan round the Far East to give you a new...

BILLINGHAM-on-Yangtze is booming, and shows every sign of it. Tower blocks rocket upwards through the night. Marmo- real hotels offer every kind of restaurant, including...

BARNSTORMING through Shanghai the other day, Michael Heseltine saw and praised the transformation of Pudong, the east side of the city. It reminded him, he said, of what his own...

STILL in old Shanghai, under the fretted domes of the Astor House's private theatre, is a thriving model of capitalist innovation: the Stock Exchange. Just five years old and...

Sir: I fear that poor Michael Vestey suffers from a severe sense-of-humour deficit. He believes (Radio, 25 May) that, in a recent edition of The News Quiz, a `throw-away...

Sir: It is always a great pity when someone of beauty like Petronella Wyatt (or so I have read) wishes to give up the opposite sex in order to pursue something else like, in her...

Sir: I am never entirely sure of the ethics involved in having your contributors use you as a kind of poste restante, but David Hare's characteristically superbly written Diary...

Sir: Television reviewers will always criti- cise programmes, and television companies will always be upset when they do. It hurts when hard work and sustained backing for...

Sir: My fellow Englishmen will, I hope, for- give me for rising to Taki's bait (High life, 25 May), but just once in a while I feel it is necessary to reply to the jibes and...

Sir: In his interesting article on Beethoven's dethronement as a cultural icon (Arts, 18 May), Michael Kennedy suggests that the phenomenon is fairly recent, dating back perhaps...

Sir: I hope that Tony Blair's 'honing in on the salad' in Anne McElvoy's article 'I danced with a man' (25 May) was a typo- graphical error — but one can't be sure. This curious...

Sir: Stephen Glover (Media studies, 25 May) castigated the Times propaganda for claiming that paper had 'almost doubled its circulation in three years' without making any...

Sir: It was with a mixture of dismay, disbe- lief and amusement that I read that Rory Knight Bruce ('It's a dog's law', 25 May) turned to the Kennel Owners' Association for...

Sir: Richard Beeston (Letters, 18 May) has missed the point of Robin Gedye's nice piece about expelled correspondents. The Soviet culling of 1985 fractured many lives —...

Since sales went down, all else has failed at the Indie, so the new editor is trying journalism again STEPHEN GLOVER 0 ve might the Independent has changed into a different...

What is really frightening about Mr Blair PETRONELLA WYATT S ometimes I think the Conservatives are barking up the wrong tree. It is all tax, tax, tax and splits, splits,...

A boy forever is a thing of beauty? David Sexton STEVEN SPIELBERG: THE UNAUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY by John Baxter HarperCollins, £18, pp.457 \When I was a child, I spake as a...

Bruce Anderson THE ENGLISH TRIBE by Stephen Haseler Macmillan, £40, £14.99, pp. 201 ational identity is a complex historical question, which can usefully be addressed only with...

Cressida Connolly DEATH COMES FOR PETER PAN I f you're going to die — and, unless you're privy to information which has eluded the rest of humankind, it's safe to say that you...

Michael Howard PASSCHENDAELE: THE UNTOLD STORY by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson Yale, £.19.95, pp. 237 T he Battle of Passchendaele opened in high summer on 16 July 1917. The...

Nick Dent ERSKINE CHILDERS by Jim Ring John Mutray, £19.99, pp. 332 L ike that of his fellow Anglo-Irishman, Roger Casement, the career of Erskine Childers was a remarkable...

Michael Hulse THE TRAVELS OF A FAT BULLDOG by George Courtauld Constable, £16.95, pp. 288 T obogganing in Outer Mongolia, George Courtauld falls off when he collides with a...

Eric Christiansen PAST IMPERFECT: HISTORY ACCORDING TO THE MOVIES edited by Mark C. Carnes Cassell, £20, pp. 304 M r Carnes has the less than self- explanatory job of...

Exhibitions 1 Degas: Beyond Impressionism (National Gallery, till 26 August) 'Believe me wicked' Martin Gayford I want people to believe me wicked,' Edgar Degas told his...

David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa (National Portrait Gallery, till 7 July) He went, he saw, he reported John Spurling I n his book which accompanied...

Giles Worsley on how Londoners are fighting to save their Board schools B oard schools are such a familiar part of the London landscape that we pass them almost without notice....

Birmingham Royal Ballet (Royal Opera House) Trisha Brown Company (Queen Elizabeth Hall) It's not just the steps. Giannandrea Poesio T he technical ability to switch from one...

An attitude problem Marcus Berkmann T wo weeks after the event, Britain's abject failure at the Eurovision Song Con- test still ranldes. After many years of not- very-good...

What Now, Little Man? (Greenwich) Game Over (Brixton Academy) Struggle for survival Sheridan Morley A a novel, Hans Fallada's What Now, Little Man? was a runaway bestseller...

Euro madness Michael Vestey B russels has decreed that all tomatoes in Europe should be blue instead of red, the directive to take effect from May 1999 (this is to allow...

What's up, Doc? James Delingpole I 've never been able to look at morris dancers in quite the same way since that Doctor Who adventure — I forget which — back in the early...

Dream on, petal Alan Judd T he rail carriage I travel in is said to have been built in the Fifties. Many aero- planes are 20 or more years old, ships 50, and in the Eighties I...

What about the women? Robin Oakley R iding breeches are not always the most flattering form of feminine attire. Some of those once-too-often-to-the-tea- tent lady riders found...

Mind your manners Taki G entility Recalled, edited by Digby Anderson, is the most needed opus since the New Testament. The rot began with those God-awful hippies, the...

Siblings and cycles Leanda de Lisle M y eight-year-old son, Christian, seems to have shrunk since I last saw him. When we collected him from boarding school for his exeat...

MADEIRA BRIDGE Unconventional Andrew Robson THOSE WHO know me are aware of how little I value conventional bids. One of the few tools I recommend is Roman Key Card...

L dilinLi 11 4.-.JONLJOLOIL-.• _ . I WONDER if St Joan of Arc could give a helping hand to all this nonsense about beef in France; it is her feast on 30 May, together with...

IN-THE•STRAND CHESS SIMPSON'S IN•THE•STRAND KKK? Raymond Keene WHO SHOULD be the rightful world champion — Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, or perhaps even Gata Kamsky?...

, J U RA .,.. !, •401,111111so IN COMPETITION NO. 1934 you were given certain rhyme words in a certain order and asked to provide a poem accord- ingly. The scheme, I brazenly...

You are invited to compose a public notice (maximum 150 words) which appears to be in prose but is actually in verse, blank or rhymed, the more cleverly concealed the better....

LA D 1 11 • I N _I, 12 13 , :• I N A 1 P Li A rR . la E UT o r T I P0 0 T C • PENS IID E The unclued lights were SHELLS. First prize: Beatrix Mootham, Teddington,...

A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1989 Port for the first correct solution opened on 17 June, with two runners-up prizes of 115 (or, for UK...

Cricketing soul mates Simon Barnes THERE is a book, The Tao of Cricket, which claims that cricket is not an English game, but an Indian game that happened to have been...

Dear Mary. . . In answer to the request of J.G.H., Norfolk (Dear Mary, 4 May), for sock-suspenders and long socks, we are able to supply both by post. R. Head, Vincent Head...