`They've put James Anderton in charge of traffic control.' R umours of scandals in the City abounded. The Government, uneasy about possible political damage, proposed to...

"Behold I am against the prophets," saith the Lord, "that use their tongues and say 'He saith' " ' (Jeremiah, chapter 23). N O ONE should dismiss the possibility that God...

MR JOHN Taylor, the Ulster Unionist MP and MEP, has resigned his association with the Conservative Party in the European Parliament. This, in view of the Hillsbor- ough...

THATCHER'S CITY POLITICS W ith the withdrawal of BTR from its takeover bid for Pilkington the recent news from the City takes on a new aspect. Perhaps the day of the mega-bid...

The electoral appeal of striving to be a nation once again PETER RIDDELL D israeli has a lot to answer for. His vivid development of the idea of Two Nations in Sybil, and his...

J anuary must have become the cruellest month for publishers. This is when their normally compliant authors, reacting to th eir Public Lending Right returns as uhver was...

How to live with the two-party state juggernaut AUBERON WAUGH T here are certain truths which the British people simply do not wish to be told. Perhaps we 'communicators' — as...

Pilkington and Guinness have shown how merger mania undermines public confidence in the City. Christopher Fildes proposes ways to restore order THE__ chairman snorted:...

lithographs of the Kent and Sussex seaside commissioned specially by the Spectator, and attractively pack- aged in their own portfolio with accompanying text by the artist. This...

Radek Sikorski on the snags in the Soviet-backed amnesty proposals I TOOK a bet with a Social Democratic peer before the recent hullabaloo that by next Christmas there will...

Bohdan Nahaylo discovers a distaste for the Aghan war in Soviet youth papers IN RECENT weeks the Soviet media has at last broken an important taboo in its coverage of the...

Nicholas Budgen questions a piece of social engineering in a Wolverhampton school I SUPPOSE many people assume that the goings on at Brent and, say, Liverpool are isolated...

Paul Barker attacks the Government's attempt to tinker with the jury system TliERE are problems in having intellec- tual chief constables, like the present Metropolitan...

SIR . . . She was not intended to be a story of imaginative adventure only. In the first place, an attempt is made in it to follow the action of the probable effects of...

Frank Johnson watches the audience at the first night of Otello IN THE next century, social historians should be able to make something out of the first night last week of...

Peregrine Worsthorne remembers a much-loved historian and eccentric WHEN a friend telephoned to tell me that Desmond Williams had died, it took me a moment to realise that...

The press: Paul Johnson argues that a change at the New Yorker is overdue `GOVERNMENTS are born to die,' Lord Beaverbrook once observed cheerfully. He might have added, so are...

Sir: In his anxiety to demolish any enter- prise that he perceives to be 'for the d isabled' and therefore doctrinally dis- t asteful, Auberon Waugh (Another voice, 17 January)...

Sir: While noting its total irrelevance to the important subject under discussion, which was so admirably contributed to by Mr Henry Morland in the same issue, I was much...

Sir: The revived intensity of interest in S o uth Africa has caused outsiders like Richard West (`At war with the twentieth cen tury' 17 January) to see at least — and t0...

Young Tebbit Sir: Paul Johnson may be right to suggest (The press, 17 January) that Mr Tebbit's line — 'Nobody with a conscience votes Conservative' — which I reported in the...

Sir: Christopher Buckley should re-view The Santa Fe Trail (`Reagan out of con- trol', 3 January). The part of Custer is played by Errol Flynn, not Ronald Reagan. Reagan plays...

Sir: It is obvious that Alice Thomas Ellis (Home life, 13 December) has never been to Australia or she would realise that the small number of people who wear hats here do so for...

Sir: Your reviewer Hilary Rubinstein (Books, 17 January) says, regarding Victor Gollancz: 'There is little doubt that the Left Book Club contributed to Labour's landslide...

I LEFT home in 1950, to go to Oxford and to become a writer. Writing was a family ambition. It was something both my brother and I inherited from our father; many of our ideas...

Report by Charles Moore T HE judges were Alexander Chancellor, former editor of the Spectator, Gillon Aitken, Shiva Naipaul's literary agent, Marti n Amis, the novelist, and...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £ (Equivalent SUS & Eurocheques accepted) RATES 12...

A viewy man Colin Welch THE LONDON DIALOGUES by Tiresias G. Hartley, f18.00 M any Spectator readers must have been fascinated, as I was, by Peregrine N yorsthorne's first...

Derek Mahon TWILIGHT OF THE ASCENDANCY by Mark Bence - Jones Constable, L14.95 E veryone loves the Anglo-Irish, espe! ially the Irish, who take an indulgent. If slightly...

What is it that we make as we obscure Each one our sight with words? What starts within the mind, what voice sings Uncertainly across our doom? The autumn mist falls:...

Peter Levi HOW LORD BIRKENHEAD SAVED THE HERALDS by Anthony Wagner HMSO, f2.50 S ir Anthony Wagner, surely the most scholarly historian to have belonged to the College of...

the second sentence in the final paragraph should have read: 'They were the agents of the first of the super powers, dealing across the trench of carnage and poverty to which...

Miranda Seymour DAN YACK by Blaise Cendrars, translated by Nina Rootes Peter Owen, £10.95 L urid, controversial, savagely funny, Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) was one of the...

(after Etienne Jodelle) I love the laurel green, whose verdant flame Burns its bright victory on the winter day, Calls to eternity its happy name And neither death nor time...

Frances Partridge FURTHER PARTICULARS: CONSEQUENCES OF AN EDWARDIAN BOYHOOD by C. H. Rolph OUP, £12.50 A nyone who read the New Statesman in its heyday will remember seeing,...

Roy Kerridge THE MAKING OF THE BLACK WORKING CLASS IN BRITAIN by Ron Ramdin Gower, £35 R on Ramdin, in this large, closely- written book, defines the black working class as...

Exhibitions British Art in the 20th Century (Royal Academy till 5 April) Salon des Refus6s (Albemarle Gallery till 13 February) Rule by historians Giles Auty A rriving later...

Walls of Glass (`15', selected cinemas) Down the yellow cab's road Peter Ackroyd T he film 'stars' a taxi-driver, although fortunately not an English one. Ever since the...

Wagon train Rodney Milnes I t is not easy to write about the Royal Opera's new Otello without reference to its background. The company is at present the subject of intense...

STUDENTS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY TO ENJOY THE SPECTATOR AT LESS THAN HALF-PRICE More stimulating than any lecture, funnier than the set books, The Spectator should be required...

Still winning Julie Kavanagh T here is something implicitly reassur- ing in the fact that the two runaway successes of SWRB's 40th Anniversary Season were its earliest and...

Twelfth Night (Warehouse) Hot and cold Christopher Edwards A udiences must, by now, be pretty familiar with the achievements of Cheek by Jowl — this country's leading touring...

Karaj an in Vienna Peter Phillips I gathered, after my return from Vienn° two things about the New Year's D a ' Waltz Jamboree of the Vienna PhilhartWj nic: that 700 million...

Fine figures Wendy Cope H ating numbers, they rattle down to zero.' This line by Michael Hofmann has been rattling round my head all week. It comes at the end of a poem...

End of the line Jeffrey Bernard I have just had a letter from an old lady who lives in Suffolk. She is 82 years old and she wrote to say that it wasn't much fun for her to...

Meeting Mr Koch Taki New York I have met Ed Koch, the bald, vulgar, effete and publicity-seeking mayor of New York only once, and that was enough. Although Koch was an...

Silly questions Alice Thomas Ellis I had supposed, with some justice, that I was the most unfortunate creature in the universe. Flu, frozen pipes, power cuts, an incipient...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £12.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

The tooth will out Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1455 you were asked for a passage extracted from a book entitled The Confessions of a Dentist. Dentists? I've had 'em all. The...

New tricks Raymond Keene L ast week it was just possible to include the results of the Foreign and Colonial Grandmaster tournament at Hastings. Here now is the full crosstable...

M.„../PJOL 07 4,0 044 1...Ajeljj I HAVE received a letter from a Spectator reader called Brownlie who lives in a place called Scotland and has 'lost' his dining room. I can't...

`Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour' sang Wordsworth. A sonnet, please, of any sort, expressing the same sentiments about somebody else. Entries to 'Competi- tion No....

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