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PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The SpectatorSerb-human. T he Director of Public Prosecutions announced that an inquiry into allegations of perjury and malpractice had failed to produce sufficient evidence to prosecute...
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SPECTAT TEE OR.
The SpectatorThe Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 FULL OF CANTUAR While insincerity is always a vice, sinceri- ty is not...
SPECTATOR
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POLITICS
The SpectatorFat heads, thin skins, and an every day story of repression SIMON HEFFER O ne of the effects of the Tory election victory was supposed to be a surge in the Government's...
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DIARY
The SpectatorL ess than a fortnight ago the Sunday Times Magazine published an engrossing little table headed 'The 10 richest people in the world.' In fourth place were 'The Reichmann...
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ANOTHER VOICE
The SpectatorWhat has the Earth done to deserve a Summit? CHARLES MOORE T he earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is, and so it ought to be good news that the leaders of the world...
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WHO DARES, NEED NOT FEAR INQUESTS
The SpectatorMark Urban questions the wisdom and propriety of the SAS campaign in Northern Ireland TO MANY — perhaps most — people in Britain it is unsurprising and quite accept- able that...
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BLOOD IN OUR BACKYARD
The SpectatorMartin Bell reports on the slaughter in Bosnia that Europe cannot ignore THERE WAS a time — it seems an age ago but was only the beginning of March — when we thought we were...
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If symptoms
The Spectatorpersist.. . WHILE the desire for freedom is so nearly universal in mankind that it is considered almost instinctual, the accep- tance of the consequences of one's own actions...
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VISIONS OF DECAY
The SpectatorRory Knight Bruce visits sleazy Genoa as it prepares for the launch of its Columbus festivities Genoa OUTSIDE CHRISTOPHER Columbus's house in Genoa's Piazza de Ferrari, a...
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Unlettered
The SpectatorA reader saw this advertisement in the Independent Magazine: It's a fact that we speak seven times faster than we write. In the time it took Dickens to write A Tale Of Two...
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OH, NOT TO BE IN ENGLAND
The SpectatorMichael Lewis says farewell to the Old Country without regrets New York WHILE PREPARING for my departure after eight years' residence in England, I chanced upon a scene...
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A GENERATION OF INCOMPETENTS
The SpectatorMartin Weyer explains why British bankers have made so many mistakes over the past 20 years THE HIGH STREET banks are inextrica- bly part of Britain's social fabric. We expect...
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HAVING LADIES TO TEA . . .
The SpectatorJohn Stokes recalls the people and events of a vanished age EVEN AS a schoolboy, I loved history and politics and religion. I took a close interest in the 1931 general...
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One hundred years ago
The SpectatorTHE DERVISHES of the Soudan are recovering from their torpor, and recently effected a daring raid on Serra, a village fifty miles within the Egyptian frontier. More than a...
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AND ANOTHER THING
The SpectatorWho's in charge of the clattering train? PAUL JOHNSON Y u would have to go back a long way — to the shameful days of the late 1930s, perhaps — to find a parallel to the...
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Sir: 'Very humiliating', Evelyn Waugh once wrote after he had
The Spectatordropped a danger in a book review, 'particularly as the point of the review was mocking' the author's own howlers and solecisms. In the course of my review of Mr Stannard's life...
Carry on Klagenfurt
The SpectatorSir: Nigel Nicolson (Long life, 9 May) pro- vides a lucid critique of Macmillan's role in the handover of Cossacks, non-Soviet émi- grés and Yugoslav citizens to be slaugh-...
Audit of review
The SpectatorSir: I have just seen Terence Keeley's review of David Edgerton's book England and the Aeroplane (Books, 11 April), and its dismissive but ignorant comments about my own book...
Sir: The Foreign Office Minister Garet- Jones criticises Mr Noel
The SpectatorMalcolm's criti- cism of the Maastricht Treaty, as signed, because it has been replaced by a fresh text which the FO has helped to manufacture. If a solicitor did likewise to a...
LETTERS Diet of Brussels
The SpectatorSir: It was very perceptive of Tristan Garel- Jones (Letters, 16 May) to conclude that my article about the Maastricht accord referred to an out-of-date text of the treaty. The...
Offence and defence
The SpectatorSir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft, writing about Martin Stannard's book on Evelyn Waugh, (Books, 25 April) says, 'Oh, for Christ's sake, Stannard, put a sock in it!' I was sorry to see...
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Sting in the tail
The SpectatorSir: Mr Waterfield's quotation (Letters, 2 May) of the episode of the woman taken in adultery is incomplete. The woman's accusers indeed retired ashamed. Jesus then said,...
Semitic semantics
The SpectatorSir: Readers of your cover story by Gleb Shestakov (`The Bear bites the Jews again', 2 May) will note that the title promised more than the article itself delivers. Far from...
Just in Casey
The SpectatorSir: As Auberon Waugh observes (Another voice, 16 May) the Casey affair was a laugh. All over Dublin students are arrayed in T- shirts inscribed with the legend: `Wear a Condom...
Soft fuzz
The SpectatorSir: Bone-headed policing of the kind recounted by Janine di Giovanni (`The unserious crime squad', 9 May) does not only betray a strange grasp of priorities. It is also very...
Open-handed treatment
The SpectatorSir: My attention has been drawn to an item in Portrait of the Week (9 May). It is stated that 'Recommendations published by the Scottish Law Commission will out- law the...
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BOOKS
The Spectatorh God, not more books on Spain! Reviewers rejoice as their incomes soar but euphoria is replaced by exhaustion, as, stunned in mind, they grapple with topics as diverse as the...
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Sheldonian Emperors
The SpectatorDo you remember the blunt old heads and how, before they went, their melting necks were neatly caught and held in plastic sheet? Those heads had often nodded reassurance. In...
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The tragic hero of his own life
The SpectatorClive Sinclair STRINDBERG'S LETTERS: Volume I, 1862-1892 Volume II, 1892-1912 edited and translated by Michael Robinson The Athlone Press, £80, pp. 952 I should declare at the...
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Alas poor country; almost afraid to know itself
The SpectatorNoel Malcolm THE RISE AND FALL OF NICO- LAE AND ELENA CEAUSESCU by Mark Almond Chapmans, f18, pp. 320 A , happy families are alike, Tolstoy tells us, but an unhappy family is...
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Last Haiku
The SpectatorNo, wait a minute, I can't be old already, I'm just about to — Connie Bensley
Old Eton faces, old Eton places
The SpectatorH. K. Prescott WALTER HAMILTON: A PORTRAIT edited by Donald Wright James & James, 174.95, pp. 240 I f Walter could have read this book, how delighted he would have been by its...
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Still biting the dust
The SpectatorDavid Montrose B ooks about the maltreatment of indigenous Americans — North, South and Central — must cope with evidential over- load: there has been so much, for so long,...
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Looking for trouble
The SpectatorFrank McLynn DANZIGER'S ADVENTURES by Nick Danziger HarperCollins, £17.99, pp. 290 N ick Danziger is a 34-year-old 'danger man', veteran of a hundred photo- journalistic...
London's Latin Quarter
The SpectatorDavid Wright ARTISTS AND BOHEMIANS: ONE HUNDRED YEARS WITH THE CHELSEA ARTS CLUB by Tom Cross Quiller Press, £20, pp. 192 T wenty years after its foundation in 1891 a new lease...
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The tragedy of a valour-ruined man
The SpectatorFrancis King OUTERBRIDGE REACH by Robert Stone Deutsch, £14.99, pp. 409 I n these days of radio communications, satellite tracking and helicopter rescue, to sail single-handed...
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Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand Von Helmholtz
The SpectatorHermann Helmholtz said the problem facing the scientist is this: reduce a creek, a kiss, a flaming coal from this random tracing to some irreducible final text dancing to the...
The most despised of the guilty men
The SpectatorJohn Grigg SIMON: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF SIR JOHN SIMON by David Dutton Aurum Press, £25, pp. 364 J ohn Simon had the rare but frustrating distinction of holding the three...
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Making books out of bits of books
The SpectatorTom Shone W hen a star nears the end of its life, Albert Einstein suggested, it collapses, its radius becoming smaller and smaller until it reaches the state of a dimensionless...
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FINE ARTS SPECIAL
The SpectatorT he disappearance of India's heritage and the preservation of what remains of it is currently exercising the country's intelli- gentsia. India's monuments are poorly con-...
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Exhibitions 1
The SpectatorTreasures of a Polish King: Stanislaus Augustus as Patron and Collector (Dulwich Picture Gallery, till 26 July) Vaut le detour David Ekserdjian L oan exhibitions of old...
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Exhibitions 2
The SpectatorMadly contextual Giles Auty hat would your reaction be if a fel- low passenger on a train confided to you that he was really Napoleon Bonaparte? Most would conclude that the...
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Crafts
The SpectatorGordon Russell Centenary Exhibition (Gordon Russell Ltd, till 12 June; Broad- way, Worcestershire, 22 June-3 July) Gordon Russell (Design Council, till 14 June) Hearts of oak...
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Sale-rooms 2
The SpectatorWell chewed Alistair McAlpine O n 28 May, Christie's have a sale of Spanish art, 'Treasure from the Maravillas and other Works of Art'. Forget the other works of art: it is...
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Architecture
The SpectatorThe greening of the valley Ebbw Vale Garden Festival Does the land wait the sleeping lord or is the wasted land that very lord who sleeps? S o runs the last of the many...
Exhibitions 3
The SpectatorLiving Wood: Sculptural Traditions of Southern India (Whitechapel Art gallery, till 31 May) Lessons in living tradition John Henshall I have commented before, most recently...
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Music
The SpectatorCome buy their wares Robin Holloway W hile the record industry as a whole flourishes as never before, its first sacrifice in bad financial times is of course contem- porary...
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Theatre
The SpectatorCoriolanus (Chichester) A Slip of the Tongue (Shaftesbury) Proud bloke Christopher Edwards P ride is the essence of Coriolanus. Shakespeare presents it as both a vice and a...
Further information can be obtained from New Music Cassettes Ltd,
The SpectatorWest Heath Stu- dios, 174 Mill Lane, London NW6 1TB; tele- phone 071 431 3752.
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Cinema
The SpectatorEuropa Europa (15', Odeon Kensington, Screen on the Hill) Van Gogh (`12', Chelsea Cinema, Renoir) True stories Vanessa Letts A though I was duly astonished that the events...
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High life
The SpectatorVeteran of Palermo Taki Athens h athat a pleasant surprise Beaulieu turned out to be. Especially the tennis. I cannot remember how long it's been since I played a match...
Television
The SpectatorOverlapping worlds Martyn Harris A nglo-Saxon Attitudes (ITV, 8.30 p.m., Tuesday) is about secrets, handily symbol- ised by a pagan fertility doll, the `Melpham Idol', found...
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Long life
The SpectatorA flawed Odysseus Nigel Nicolson I t couldn't be the girl over there, could it?' `No, no. He would never have sent a girl.' But he did; and she was. The time was early...
Low life
The SpectatorRock bottom Jeffrey Bernard And now, living in the heart of Soho, my legs can barely take me to the pub just four blocks away. It was in there yesterday morning that a woman...
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Living is easy •
The SpectatorNOTHING MUCH doing on the feast scene today but some corkers coming up: St Philip, founder of the Oratory, on 26 May, with the Mozart Mass in C (Spatzenmesse) being sung in the...
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CHESS
The SpectatorN igel Short's secret weapon against Anatoly Karpov in Linares was the Worrall Attack in the Ruy Lopez. Checking my copy of The Oxford Companion to Chess, I discovered that the...
PURE HIGHLAND MALT nrorcH
The SpectatorCOMPETITION .1111KY Dear Mary . Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1728 you were in- vited to compose a question and answer, of a grotesque or eccentric nature, for inclu- sion...
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CROSSWORD
The Spectator1060: Hornblower (3) by Mass A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word `Dictionary') for the...
No. 1731: If (not Kipling's)
The Spectator'If only I should die . . .' goes Rupert Brooke's famous sonnet. You are invited to write a poem, in any metre or mood, beginning with these words. Maximum 16 lines. Entries to...
Solution to 1057: Hornblower (2) ' C' 0 '11 1 4'5 1 4 4 A 1 . I P
The Spectator'SION 131 i a k,..ri siA r i,,,I,TIE‘t tMITErR EIMILEILNE1 9•AP , P,ETS0 V1 T SEF R A u , R 0 N T I IR . ill ii..n. TE1AD OTOPE a il dm. 11811 H T1, i L. C • E E .....
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SPECTATOR SPORT
The SpectatorTHE PAKISTANI tourists have it in them to be the most dazzling and diamond-sharp side we have seen here for many a summer. With, for good measure, a leg-spin bowler from the top...
YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
The SpectatorQ. My husband and I have been invited to a dance following a wedding and, with his agreement, I accepted the invitation. Now my husband says he does not want to come as he will...