A bomb exploded at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where most of the Cabinet was staying for the Conservative Confer- ence. It killed four people, including Mrs Roberta Wakeham and...

Bloody, bold, irresolute Tt is worth pointing out yet again that Mrs I.Thatcher really was very brave last Friday. It would have been no disgrace to her if, once she had...

P resident Ceausescu's state visit to West Germany nastily illustrates a central dilemma of Western relations with Eastern Europe. Unlike Erich Honecker and Todor Zhivkov, the...

T he large IRA bomb placed in the Grand Hotel in Brighton succeeded in killing four people. A small domestic gas explosion in the Ronan Point tower block in 1968 killed five....

M r Arthur Scargill says that when the coal strike began in March, nobody imagined that it could possibly last till Christmas. For Mr Scargill, this is a boast, and one must...

A fter the Brighton outrage, a lot of people have been writing that party conferences can never be the same. This will probably turn out to be true. The same People have usually...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £17.25 £17.25 £20.50 £26.50 One year: £34.50 £34.50 £41.00 £53.00 N:1111 L ............................................... Address US...

A silly idea Auberon Waugh (Inc of the problems of writing a weekly k.../column (never mind three or four weekly columns) year after year is the danger of repeating oneself. A...

O K. So above all we must not offend the Arabs. Nonetheless, 17 years have passed since Jerusalem was divided between Arab and Jew. I, for one, would be grateful if foreign...

The senility issue Nicholas von Hoffman Washington T he Reagan-Mondale debate turned out to be a media story. For months reporters in Washington have been looking at the...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Chamula, Chiapas, Mexico L iberation theology is all the rage in Mexico and everybody is rooting for Leonard Boff, the Brazilian friar recently brought...

Gavin Stamp Helsinki Fr he Parliament Building in Helsinki is a 1 monumental colonnaded stone build- ing in that international stripped-Classical style so ignorantly associated...

Young Writers In association with Lloyds Bank The Spectator is launching a competition on October 27 to find the best young journalists and writers in schools and universities....

Stan Gebler Davies T he Irish Republican Army is a gener- ous organisation and would not wish to keep anybody in the dark about its inten- tions. That is why Sinn Fein is kept...

David Longley Tri the aftermath of the Brighton bomb- ing, the IRA spoke of the 'lucky bomb' that would one day kill the Prime Minister and members of the British Cabinet, and...

Andrew Gimson Brighton O n Wednesday night last week I arrived at the Conservative Conference and discovered a great pretence of boredom. Outside the Grand Hotel I ran into two...

A. M. Daniels A s everyone knows (and therefore it As be true), it is next to impossible these days to get your doctor to visit you at home. If by overdramatising your symp- t...

A dawn to remember Paul Johnson I have an image of last Friday morning in Brighton of Sir Keith Joseph, immacu- late in Charvet dressing-gown and Sulka Pyjamas, clutching his...

We do not suppose that any leaders of the Liberal Party in Birmingham sanctioned in any way the riotous de- monstration of Monday; but we wish they had condemned it more...

The Star Chamber awaits Jock Bruce-Gardyne S entiment, as old Father Keynes used to teach us, is everything in markets. Back in the summer, when the Treasury — via the Bank of...

New philosophy Sir: Peter Levi's suggestion (Letters, 13 October) that we philosophers might do better to write in Latin, is virtually a paraphrase into modern English of what...

Sir: Susan Crosland's account of her rat- disturbed night in France (Diary, 13 Octo - ber) brought back a childhood wartime memory. My sister and I attended an Edinburgh school...

refers to homosexuality. The only reference the poet makes to the man's sexual tastes is to say that he is going to be married. We must suppose therefore that he is...

Sir: In the interests of veracity, I must correct the flagrant errors in the 'Low life' article last week. Your correspondent's 'blind date', whom I know, is indeed very...

Sir: Dhiren Bhagat (Letters, 15 Septem- ber) cannot be serious. What he wants of the line: To church a gallaunt jetted gaie is grammatically impossible. The function of the...

Sir: When Rodney Milnes began saying in his review of Turandot (Opera, 8 Septem- ber) that it was 'customarily staged like some ghastly Christmas-tide provincial Aladdin', I was...

Sir: I am gathering material for a book about the end of the war in the Far East, and would like to contact any of your readers who landed on Morib beach on D-Day for Operation...

Sir: If Peregrine WorsthornA ever stooped to using public transport in the south (Diary, 6 October), he would discover that there are genuine proles here too. Who does he think...

Sir: David Ekserdjian points out in his admirable review of Christopher Wright's The Art of the Forger (Books, 6 October) that this author's suspicions concerning the Fortune...

The puerility issue Colin Welch F rom the unenlightened people like Mrs Thatcher and me the Brighton murders produce demands for the death penalty. Even we, of course, can see...

Newby strikes Middle Sea Patrick Leigh Fermor On the Shores of the Mediterranean Eric Newby (Harvill Press £9.95) T he Zuyder Zee by William Barnes; The Frisian Isles by Canon...

Humphrey Carpenter H. G. Wells in Love Edited by G. P. Wells (Faber £8.95) Experiment in Autobiography H. G. Wells (Faber, 2 vols., £8.95 each) I n E. Nesbit's The Story of...

Jo Grimond Eric Linklater Michael Parnell (John Murray £16) Orkney and Shetland Eric Linklater (Hale £9.95) T et us get one thing straight. Eric Linklater was an Orcadian, but...

A. N. Wilson Money Martin Amis (Cape £8.95) T his book has received extravagant praise from Martin Amis's more fawn- ing or soft-brained admirers. Equally (as the narrator of...

Harriet Waugh Empire of the Sun J. G. Ballard (Gollancz £8.95) T his is the first time the Booker short- list has thrown up a novel that should appeal as greatly to children...

Patrick Skene Catling Tough Guys Don't Dance Norman Mailer (Michael Joseph £8.95) The Witches of Eastwick John Updike (Andre Deutsch £8.95) he prime function of dreams, accord-...

Christopher Booker CB: The Life of Charles Burgess Fry Clive Ellis (Dent £10.95) rr here cannot have been many English- ", men who were already national figures before the end...

Francis King In Custody Anita Desai (Heinemann £9.95)) O thers have already remarked on the odd fact that five of the six books on the Booker Prize short-list were about...

Caring about art Giles Auty A t a time when senior churchmen are accusing politicians of having 'uncar- ing' attitudes toward selected social issues of the moment, it may seem...

High fidelity Peter Ackroyd 1984 (`15', Odeon Haymarket) _its looked right, as if the Forties had taken _LB ration cards and strode with them into the future; this was the...

Marginal Christopher Edwards Fool for Love (National: Cottesloe) D espite Sam Shepard's growing reputa - tion in this country, his plays still seem to carry a 'fringe' label,...

Original virtue Rodney Milnes King Priam (Kent Opera) Johnny Strikes Up (Opera North/New Opera Company) I t was unsettling, to say the very least, to see King Priam so soon...

Dear old pals Taki I was sad to hear that my old friend 1.Jeffrey was back in hospital, especiallY after the way he looked upon his return from Barbados. Had he been carrying...

Inspirational Alexander Chancellor 1Vorman Mailer seems a surprisingly 1. cosy and good-natured old thing when you see him on television. He should be an inspiration to all...

Jaundiced Jeffrey Bernard M y body seems to have become more and more addicted to the Middlesex Hospital. Last Sunday I had to be admitted again to have a biopsy on a large...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked to translate a passage of Shakespearian poetry into a barbarous form of contem - porary English. On 22 May 1950 there appeared in...

Pleasant Greene P.J. Kavanagh ere is always interest in seeing for the first time a man whose name is almost a part of the landscape, which in fact defines a landscape —...

No. 1343: Acrostic Set by Jaspistos: An acrostic poem, please (the key phrase being POL ROGER CRAM' PERS) on the subject of the Spectator, or one or more aspects of it. Entries...

6C A 7T I 1 0 N EA6SICALEMODEDUIT k CI LI L T K I E %AGNATE RIMITIO A R 0 L 12EART ItAECALIItGEUTIIIT, ...._, 1 H 12 ..J j R K 7f I % E A P T I D E V 2 d R K E R SIAI1P U DI...

Struggling Raymond Keene Moscow he last three games in Moscow have followed a similar pattern to the rest of the match, with one exception — Karpov's failure to convert a...

Prize: £10 (or a copy of Chambers Dictionary, 1983 edition, value £10.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1978 Port,...

Spectator Wine Club Auberon Waugh O n a tour of the Loire this spring I was impressed by some of the white and red wines being made in the tiny appella- tion of Menetou Salon...

18 Kenway Road, London SW5 ORR Telephone (01) 244 9900 PRODUCT PRICE NO. OF VALUE CASES 1. Menetou Salon (white) 1983 12 bots. £46.20 Jacques Coeur 2. Château Leoville Poyferrd...

Treasure Hunt Set by Caroline Moore The first prize is a pair of 18th century hand-coloured aquatints by Thomas and William Daniell illustrating views of India. Plus two...