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Why the worst?
The SpectatorJimmy Carter's presidency opened with the highest of hopes and has ended in low ignominy. Four years ago this fresh-faced man who had come galloping out of Georgia to seize...
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Political commentary
The SpectatorHow to be British Ferdinand Mount Abroad is a bloody place to be born, to misquote Uncle Matthew. It is only in later life that you discover the inconvenience of having first...
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Notebook
The Spectator'Giving the "Observer" to Rupert Murdoch would be like giving your lovely 18-year-old daughter to a gorilla.' Mr Clive James was speaking at a journalists' meeting the other,...
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Another voice
The SpectatorMr Prior's Yellow Paper Auberon Waugh It was only when 1 read the Department of Employment's Green Paper on possible changes in the law on industrial relations that I...
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The Reagan vulgarama
The SpectatorNicholas von Hoffman Washington From 1937 on, when he was a sports announcer in a movie called Love is on the Air, Ronald Reagan played many roles. He was a football player, a...
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America expects
The SpectatorHenry Fairlie Washington All students of government should have watched television on Inauguration Day from the beginning to the end. They would have learned how far the...
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Reagan and the Middle East
The SpectatorEdward Mortimer New York Ronald Reagan must be the first President of the United States who can claim a foreign policy success on the day of his inauguration. For despite Jimmy...
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Learning from Mrs Thatcher
The SpectatorTom Bethell Washington Just as Ronald Reagan's team was arriving in Washington, a remarkable new book on economics, entitled Wealth and Poverty was published in New York. Its...
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tthnocide' in the Soviet Union
The SpectatorBohdan Nahaylo In recent months mass demonstrations in Estonia, protests by leading Georgian and Estonian intellectuals and the imprisonment of Ukrainian, Estonian and...
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Mr Prior waits for answers
The SpectatorPeter Paterson Mr Jim Prior's latest thoughts on the reform of trade union rights and powers emerged l ast week to cause scarcely a tremor on the Richter scale of union...
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Home thoughts from abroad
The SpectatorJo Grimond When I returned from Sicily last week I found that, according to the British press, the sky had fallen — St John-Stevas had be-en dismissed. Neither this, nor for...
One hundred years ago
The SpectatorWhen we spoke,last week of the hope of a mild winter having vanished, we did not anticipate the horrors of this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday fell a snow-storm such as has not...
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The press
The SpectatorQuantity, not quality Paul Johnson To judge by the total of books published in 1980 by Britain's 10,000 firms, you would not think there was the smallest hint of recession in...
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in the City
The SpectatorThe Duke of York's men Tony Rudd The most depressed part of the City these days is the g ilt-ed g ed market. The outlook for g overnment stocks seems so much less hopeful than...
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Letters
The SpectatorSassoon remembered Sir: I must take issue with some remarks made by Simon Raven in his review of Siegfried Sassoon's Complete Memoirs of George Sherston in your issue of 3...
Park problems
The SpectatorSir: In order to make a praiseworthy case, Christopher Price exaggerates (10 January). On the evidence of one visit to Upton Park, he represents the ground as almost a fascist...
Lies, damned lies...
The SpectatorSir: The logic of Mr Cameron's letter on alcohol (10 January) is so mysterious that one begins to sniff a Henry Root-flavoured mischief in what could generously be called his...
Gamblers of class
The SpectatorSir: The poor little Greek boy has got it wrong again (`High life', 17 January). I must advise Taki that, more than 200 years ago, wicked Ralph Benson was gadding about with the...
Gnat Allen
The SpectatorSir: After his review of Stardust Memories (3 January), it should be apparent even to American readers that Peter Ackroyd likes neither the film nor its director and all his...
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Breakfast deserts
The SpectatorSir:" . . . but it won't work': so says Simon Courtauld of breakfast television (Notebook, 10 January). It will. 'Ninety-five per cent of the population will not watch it.' Most...
Health and freedom
The SpectatorSir: I am grateful for the article entitled The medical revolution' by Mr Brian Inglis in your issue of 20-27 December 1980. Of the many interesting points he makes I. would...
The power of advertising
The SpectatorSir: I have been a regular reader of the Spectator for some years, and have noticed over ths period that an advertisement titled `Durex Protectives' is regularly inserted by a...
Hold the front page?
The SpectatorSir: So offensive to the eye and touch is your new cover that it is necessary to remove it before tasting the familiar delights within. Please may we have our old one hack? John...
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Strange and unusual
The SpectatorAlan Watkins Religion and Public Doctrine In Modern England Maurice Cowling (Cambridge £20) In 1950 it was widely accepted that the 20th century's greatest economist was J.M....
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Hard playing to get
The SpectatorEric Christiansen The Game of Tarot from Ferrara to Salt Lake City Michael Dummett (Duckworth £45) Twelve Tarot Games Michael Dummett (Duckworth £5.95) The Game of Tarot has...
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Turfed out
The SpectatorJeffrey Bernard The Guv'nor: A Biography of Sir Noel Murless Tim Fitzgeorge-Parker (Collins £8.95) The Barry Brogan Story: In His Own Words (Arthur Barker £5.95) Chalk and...
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All about Evas
The SpectatorFrancis King Taboo Eva Jones (Cape £6.50) Waking Eva Figes (Hamish Hamilton £3.95) When a reader enters the world of a novel, he at once makes an effort, however unconscious,...
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AUTHORS WANTED BY NEW YORK PUBLISHER
The SpectatorLeading subsidy book publisher seeks manuscripts of all types: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scholarly and juvenile works, etc. New authors welcomed. Send for free, illustrated...
Wilder shores
The SpectatorBenny Green The death last week of the composersongwriter Alec Wilder calls to mind the book he published in 1972, American Popular Song; the Great Innovators, 19001950. Too...
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'New Spirit' at the Academy
The SpectatorJohn McEwen The press release for the exhibition A New Spirit in Painting (Royal Academy till 18 March) says that this is the first time an international contemporary painting...
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Cinema
The SpectatorOpera buffa Peter Ackroyd Blood Feud ('X', Odeon Kensington) There is something very agreeable about Italian films. Watching them is like being transported in a bathosphere to...
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Hindsight
The SpectatorRodney Milnes Rodelinda (Welsh National Opera, Mold) Lucia di Lammermoor (Scottish Opera, Glasgow) Romeo and Juliet (English National Opera, Coliseum) Hindsight is a wonderful...
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Passion ploys
The SpectatorPeter Jenkins Passion Play (Aldwych) Naked Robots (Warehouse) The Workshop (Hampstead) Touched (Royal Court) Picture-restoring James (Benjamin Whitrow) is happily-enough...
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Hold-up
The SpectatorRichard Ingrams People keep going on about the 'ordeal' of the American hostages, now at last at an end. But what about the ordeal of television viewers bored into the ground...
Fancy Nancy
The SpectatorTaki Washington Well, it's goodbye Willie Nelson, Hello Frank Sinatra. And about time, too. Jimmy Carter, the small man of stature, vision, execution, and many other things, is...
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Desert song
The SpectatorJeffrey Bernard It's been a rotten week. Very grey and without a single highlight. It's true I upset a few people but they were fairly boring incidents. There was the row in...
Holy war
The SpectatorPatrick Marn ham An occasion that took place last October lingers on hauntingly in the memory. It was the ceremony held to mark the unveiling of a bust of Lord Russell, which...