A good spanking. S ome low newspapers published a pur- ported telephone conversation between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles. Prince Charles was subsequently said...

Labour prepares to close down the something-for-nothing society SIMON HEFFER M r Tony Blair and the late Aneurin Bevan are rarely associated with each other, despite both...

I am very nervous of being approached in the street by strangers. Asked if I am who I am, my instinct is to hedge cautiously, 'Not necessarily.' Two recent encounters left me...

Going to the dogs while slyly combining piss-take of the genre CHARLES MOORE D on't go to see the film Reservoir Dogs, which was described in City Limits as 'slyly combining...

Mark Urban reveals the Russians' plans to bombard the West with lethal viruses, and speaks to the man behind them F OR THOSE who believe the Cold War can now safely be...

Alasdair Palmer explains why our leaders are too scared to sanction the assassination of a man they want dead 'THE WORLD will have trouble with Iraq SO long as Saddam Hussein...

Janine di Giovanni explains how the French are running the show in Sarajevo's only functioning hotel Sarajevo THE TELEPHONE rang shortly after midnight. I was in deep sleep,...

persist. . . THE RECESSION has not yet affected the prisons, at least as far as turnover is concerned. Last Saturday, I was on duty for receptions, that is to say for the med-...

Radek Sikorski reports on the successes and setbacks in his plans to restore a Polish manor house Dw6r Chobielin IT IS NOW almost four years since my g amily bought Dwor...

Julia Langdon assesses the career and character of her former landlord, Mr Andrew Knight THE EDITORIAL conference at the Sun- day Times on Tuesday this week may well have been...

Michael Heath

Andrew Roberts opens the files on the Nazi Fifth Column in south-east England ONE OF THE last great enigmas of the second world war has been unwrapped this month with the...

Isabel Wolff reports on the property market's latest casualties: nuclear shelters AS A CHILD growing up in the Seventies I knew exactly what I wanted to be. I didn't want to...

When the kissing had to start PAUL JOHNSON e of the ways in which the Western Style of life is being imposed on the entire World is in the far from minor matter of kissing....

Do you get taken to court often? Not since you sued me last CHRISTOPHER FILDES j I have never been manipulated by the Princess of Wales but I hope that if I were I should...

Sir: Father Antony Sutch's reference (Gun- powder, treason and plot', 16 January) to press speculation, which I have not seen, over the possible conversion to Rome of the...

Sir: Simon Courtauld's interesting sugges- tions for alternatives to the present Wind- sor dynasty ('House to house inquiries', 2 January) omits one important, and possibly the...

Sir: It is always open season for sniping at social workers, so Alasdair Palmer's article held few surprises (`The state stole their children', 9 January). However, the picture...

Sir: Alan Duncan MP, (Letters, 12 Decem- ber) is right when he writes, 'Those who are successful in politics tend to be those who from an early age have harboured no doubts...

Sir: When anyone has the temerity to criti- cise our newspapers, some pompous editor soars into bogus orations on 'the liberty of man'. Yet the salacious vulgarity and spite-...

Sir: At the risk of appearing ill-mannere d (Low life, 16 January), might I remind Jet . " frey Bernard that the Arab clients of the London clinic are in fact semites, whatever...

Sir: I've read and reread Mr Moore's article on private happiness (Another voice, 19/26 December) and find I don't agree. I used to feel that Lady Diana Spencer undertook...

Sir: Mr Ivor Bulmer-Thomas (who is mostly right about everything) takes me to task (Letters, 16 January) for saying that the Church of England in its present form is the product...

Sir: J. Enoch Powell in his review of Tyn - dale's Bible (Books, 19/26 December) says that the translators of the Authorised Ver- sion relied 'heavily and without acknowl -...

Brightly burning tiger John Grigg AT THE HEART OF A TIGER: CLEMENCEAU AND HIS WORLD, 1841-1929 by Gregor Dallas Macmillan, £25, pp. 620 I n November 1917 the 76-year-old...

William Leith SCRUPLES TWO by Judith Krantz Bantam, £14.99, pp. 517 S cruples Two is the second instalment in the story of Wilhelmina 'Billy' Ikehorn, the beautiful, spoilt,...

Hilary Corke THE INVISIBLE MAN: THE LIFE AND LIBERTIES OF H.G. WELLS by Michael Coren Bloomsbury, £20, pp. 240 I n his last years Wells described himself as 'a first-rate...

Margaret Forster BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA by Dorothy Allison Flamingo, £5.99, pp. 309 h ere is a certain sort of contemporary American novel which is so overblown that it ends...

Ronald Hyam IN THE NAME OF GOD, GO!: LEO AMERY AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE AGE OF CHURCHILL by Roger Louis W. W. Norton, £12.95, pp. 199 t h ere here is a long and impressive...

Peregrine Hodson JOURNEY TO KHIVA by Philip Glazebrook Harvill, £16, pp. 273 J oumey to Khiva is a literary pilgrimage in the footsteps of the men who went to Central Asia as...

Juliet Townsend APPROACHING ARTHUR RANSOME by Peter Hunt Cape, 114.99, pp. 192 I t is early morning on Wildcat Island, but the Swallows are up and about. John is at the lookout...

When my head fell from the bed make the best of it I said, listen to the floor and I heard rumble of the mill still in the wood, rasp, split, sighs of timber dreamed I rolled in...

William Scammell COLLECTED POEMS by Les Murray Carcanet, £18.95, pp. 331 THE PAPERBARK TREE: SELECTED PROSE by Les Murray Carcanet, £18.95, pp. 392 L es Murray looks like the...

J. Enoch Powell THE BEN LINE, 1825-1982: AN ANECDOTAL HISTORY by Michael Strachan Michael Russell, £17.95, pp. 248 M ichael Strachan, the brother officer who coached me to...

Art A new age for art It is time, argues Giles Auty, to break the modernist stranglehold and direct public funding into worthwhile living art I n my first Spectator article...

The language of Janacek Robin Holloway P erhaps it is strange that the phlegmatic British have taken so greatly to Janacek, a composer from the provinces of a distant European...

The Deep Blue Sea (Almeida) The Game of Love and Chance (Cottesloe) Sea change Sheridan Morley L ike Noel Coward and J.B. Priestley, the late Terence Rattigan has either been...

The Bolshoi Ballet (Royal Albert Hall) Big battalions Sophie Constanti F or anyone who cares deeply about choreography, Yuri Grigorovich's dance- works are the perpetual down...

Learning to hustle Alistair McAlpine T he last two years have been hard ones for the sale-rooms. No longer do the own- ers of masterpieces rush there to dispose of t hem — for...

Man Bites Dog ('18', selected cinemas) Soft Top Hard Shoulder ('15', selected cinemas) Murder most dull Vanessa Letts T he person sitting behind me in the new film from...

All our yesterdays Ian Hislop Y outh's a stuff will not endure.' How right Shakespeare was, even without seeing the elderly Troggs playing 'Wild Thing', or the Swinging Blue...

Groaning under the yokel Taki F our years ago to the day, I attende d what the Washington Post called at the tinte, the 'party to end all parties', which ° I course was...

Gone with the wind Jeffrey Bernard T here were a few of us in the bar of the Grouch() Club the other day talking about Camillagate when, during a pause for reflection and a...

Publish and be embarrassed Nigel Nicolson T here was a time, years ago, when I reviewed five books a week for a Manch- ester newspaper. I wanted the money, the books and a way...

Carpe the ruddy diem, possums Auberon Waugh T here are three red wines above the excellent St Henri Shiraz Caberneto at 19.76 in Penfolds' magnificent range: the formidable...

NEVER, a self-proclaimed sage once advised me, recommend a Chinese restau- rant. It would be just too unreliable a prac- tice. Nightly, or so he held, gaming tables are set up...

Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1762 you were given the first line of Dante's Divina Commedia and invited to continue it with lines begin- ning, 'I . . .'. The best of the...

Black magic Raymond Keene I left Nigel Short last week trailing by 1/2 to 11/2 against Dutchman Jan Timman in their Candidates Final match in San Loren- zo de El Escorial,...

A first prize of £20 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened on 8 February, lyith two runners-up prizes of E10 (or, for UK...

The runaway quartet Frank Keating MMM, ALL of a sudden there is the satis- fYIng whiff of an old-fashioned vintage about the contenders at the top of English soccer's new...

Dear Mary. . . Q. I have a mistress to whom I regularly liaak.e late night telephone calls. The trou- , u le Is that neither of us wants to be the one t o . 11 ang up or the...