'I assure you everything is under control'. he annual rate of inflation for August — 7.3 per cent, a fall of almost one full point on the previous month — was announced....

SPECTATOR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WCIN 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 CONSUMARXISM R evisionism in the Labour Party has, it seems, come...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY — Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months UK E 0 £55.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £66.00 USA Rest of Airspeed 0 US $99 World Airmail £82.00 Airspeed 0...

M r Kelvin MacKenzie, tile editor of the Sun, is, contrary to many expectations, a rather private man who, to my know- ledge, has only given two interviews in the whole of his...

Two different ways for society to crack up AUBERON WAUGH I n parts of Tottenham, I was told last week, no whites and very few blacks go out after dark. No doubt the same...

The European idea is not necessarily liberal. Noel Malcolm investigates the shadier branches of its family tree AS WITH war and the generals, the history of the 'European'...

Timothy Garton Ash on Poland's amazing new government TWO wonders happened in Poland over the last month: a great and a small. The great wonder is that the country acquired a...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard looks at the tactics of 'pro-life' guerrillas in America — and their opponents in the media New York MY squadron assembled furtively before dawn in a...

Con Coughlin explains why Colombian authorities have taken so long to tackle the drugs cartels Medellin IS there something about mountains that gets people high on drugs?...

Damian Thompson previews the Archbishop of Canterbury's difficult meeting with the Pope AS THE bronze doors of the Vatican swing open to admit him on 29 September, the...

Paul Webb on the strange life and imagination of Wilkie Collins, who died 100 years ago THIS week marks the centenary of the death of William Wilkie Collins, an im- mensely...

Michael Heath

The press: Paul Johnson looks at the pros and cons of the new Sunday PRODUCING an entirely new paper from scratch, with two main sections totalling 64 pages, plus a 72-page...

THROUGH my post comes a photograph of post-industrial Britain — a disused warehouse reflected in an empty water- way. All it lacks is a dog floating upside down. This dismal...

FRAMLINGTON is the unit trust com- pany which looked after the savings of 100,000 people and a year and a half ago was sold over their heads. Now events are justifying the...

Hello, Mr Hashimoto, welcome to Washington — we have something you want CHRISTOPHER FILDES h e Chancellor and I are off to Washington for our annual hooley. It is arranged...

THE bid for BAT has produced what I hope is a new lightbulb story. I like the genre, as in: how many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? None, but the lightbulb...

Ignorant architects Sir: Your Diary and Gavin Stamp's review of the Vision of Britain exhibition (16 September) oppose the shrill views of Mr Hutchinson to the more moderate...

Sir: My name has been removed from many mail order lists by the simple expe- dient of returning all junk (and crank) mail bearing the cypher franked in black, 'De- ceased:...

Sir: Like Michael Trend I spend many happy hours letting my word processor run riot through lists of proper names. I think his computer and mine should meet, as they appear to...

Sir: Having just read Angela Huth's Diary (26 August) rightly criticising the careless- ness of film and television producers in relation to settings and clothes, I would point...

Sir: Regarding Tom Pilkington's letter (16 September) I think he will find that there are many others who see the days of the week in colour. Back in 1971 when I was studying...

KEY PERSONNEL. Tired men with plastic briefcases. RESPECTED ELDER STATESMAN. Yesterday's nearly-man. Nigel Burke

Colin Welch recalls the richly idiosyncratic chaos of his appalling prep school He drove with fero- cious panache a bull-nosed Morris tourer with many essential parts...

Women in science THE Science and Engineering Founda- tion Sector Studies Group of the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC, studying the number of science doctorates...

Alarums and the man Bevis Hillier BERNARD SHAW: VOLUME II 1898-1918 THE PURSUIT OF POWER by Michael Holroyd Chatto &Windus, £18, pp.422 0 ne of the few aspects of Shaw's...

I go with the grain of foreign courtesies By writing, to somebody met only twice, I remain, your impassioned eternal lover Or My soul is yours each minute of night and day....

Anthony Howard FROM SHORE TO SHORE: THE TOUR DIARIES OF EARL MOUNTBA 1 - IEN OF BURMA 1953 - 1979 edited by Philip Ziegler Collins, £18, pp.388 W th the publication of this...

Frances Partridge LYDIA AND MAYNARD: LETTERS BETWEEN LYDIA LOPOKOVA AND MAYNARD KEYNES edited by Polly Hill and Richard Keynes Deutsch, £17.95, pp.367 J ust as handwriting...

Lucy Hughes-Hallett A LIFE OF J. R. ACKERLEY by Peter Parker eople ought to be upset,' wrote J. R. Ackerley. `Life is so important and, in its workings, so upsetting that...

Patrick Leigh Fermor CRETE 1941 EYEWITNESSED by Costas Hadjipateras and Maria Fafalios, Evstathiadis Group, £5, pp.320 T he appearance of this book, 50 years after the...

Norman Stone THE TORCH TN MY EAR by Elias Canetti, translated by Joachim Neugroschel Deutsch, £13,95, pp.372 V ienna is the loneliest and most de- pressing city in Europe....

Francis King LONDON FIELDS by Martin Amis Cape, £12.95, pp. 470 M y fellow contributor Nigel Burke has never, as far as I recall, included the word 'many-layered', at present...

J. Enoch Powell SIR THOMAS ROE 1581-1644, A LIFE by Michael Strachan Michael Russell, £19.95, pp.340 STORY OF MY LIFE by P. Meadows Taylor Pluto Press, £9.95, pp.47I 0 ne of...

Harold Acton VIOLET TO VITA: THE LETTERS OF VIOLET TREFUSIS TO VITA SACKVILLE-WEST edited by Mitchell A. Leaska and John Phillips Methuen, £16.99, pp. 303 B urn this!...

Andro Linklater GOLDWYN by A. Scott Berg Hamish Hamilton, £16.95, pp.582 E xcept for her eye-catching name, the life of Mania Gelbfisz was obscure but — and this is worth...

Nothing deliberate. Still, ten years should see The ties of the dead to the living grow less tight. That lonely grave a thousand miles away. Who now can talk my chilling worries...

The sun was setting as I struggled Up here to the Lonely Pass Where, for a grip between bare rock, Stunt trees and ragged grass Struggle with the same dry fierceness As, between...

Alan Watkins PALACE OF VARIETIES by Julian Critchley John Murray, £13.95, pp.152 J ournalists have always appeared quite high in the occupational groupings of Members of...

Opera Rum goings-on Rodney Milnes h ere are some pretty rum things going on at the Coliseum, and not all of them on stage. Leaving aside for the moment the ENO's demeaning...

Purist with a human touch Zelig Michaels F ew cities have had as many prophets without honour as Vienna. But the Au- strian capital has long made a habit of reclaiming the...

Christopher Couch (Marlborough Fine Art, till 14 October) Karl Weschke (Redfern Gallery, till 5 October) The Lost Idyll: Sculpture and Carving by Members of the Guild of St...

Bach betrayed Robin Holloway E ighty-two down, 116 to go; I am slowly fulfilling a long-held wish to listen to all the church cantatas of J. S. Bach. When I first began to...

Fires: Hughie O'Donoghue (Fabian Carlsson, till 28 October) The fires prevail Alistair Hicks W e now live in a time when really Whatever you do nobody is going to be...

Glittering prizes Ursula Buchan A fter more than 15 years, I can still recall the shame and disappointment of being the only girl to leave school without a prize — not even...

next week.

Worst of both worlds John Diamond I 've just spent the mayoral election week locked with a television set in a New York hotel room (in the next room to Jesse Jackson, as it...

Flight maiden Taki T New York he very first time I flew from the Big Olive to the Big Bagel was in 1948 and I was 11 years old. The trip took the better part of two days, with...

Out of this world Zenga Longmore B ecause it was raining rather heavily earlier on in the week, I dived into number 27 instead of visiting the clinic. Claudette was busy...

Break a leg Jeffrey Bernard T his coming Tuesday is crunch-time: the opening night of the play in Brighton. Since I have not seen anything of the rehearsals I am a little...

. • hl 1014 L egi n hl 1014 L egi n THE small minority of Britons who shop and cook with discernment and effort have not, up to today, been oppressed by the ignorant and...

Gentlemen of Japan Raymond Keene L ast week I was surprised to learn that the first game of the World Go Cham- pionship, sponsored by the top Tokyo paper, Asahi Shimbun, was...

Speaking likeness Torn Castro I n Competition No. 1592 you were in- vited to reveal what some famous painting would say if it could speak. Not surprisingly, although many of...

A first prize of 120 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary') for the first three correct...

When Germaine Greer recently wrote about the loss of her parrot, someone in a letters column asked, 'Have we no modern Catullus who could console her by immor- talising this...

12 — a rat compound — 19, 28, 37) are rodents. Inner circuit: APOSTATISE. Winners: J. Light, Weybridge (£20); Thomas East, Pinner, Middx; Sue Brownlie, Berinsfield, Oxon....