`Thank you, Mr Brooke, we'll let you know'. S even construction workers were blown up by the IRA as they journeyed home from work at an army barracks in Omagh, Northern...

Telephone: 071 - 405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 THE GIANT STUMBLES ould you rather be dominated by a weak Germany or a strong Germany?' That is a hard question to...

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The Irish question: as good a time as any to ponder the rules of disengagement MATTHEW PARRIS A. a possible hung parliament looms, there is a sense in the Commons this week of...

LUDOVIC KENNEDY T he nicest Christmas present I had this year came from, of all places, the Bar Council: a decanter with my name inscribed on it in appreciation of my inquiries...

Let us all decide how we will vote and shut up about it AUBERON WAUGH S o the softening up process has started. The current issue of the British Medical Journal carries an...

John Laughland reports that France's aspirations to influence Europe are being wrecked by an orgy of high-level corruption Paris THE TOMB of the Emperor Napoleon, whose...

Robert Fox witnesses the latest struggle between Islam and the West on the Mediterranean shore Algiers EARLY this month my friend Mohamed joined the march of 100,000 through...

Michael Heath

Antony Beevor reveals the pressure the royal family is applying in the fight to save historic regiments WHEN, last year, it became apparent that the planned government cuts...

Janine Di Giovanni meets the men who are trying to make Jews believe in Jesus WE ARE now in the second year of the so-called Christian Decade of Evangelism. British Muslims...

persist.. . DEATH is a terrible thing, of course, and I advise most of my readers to have nothing whatever to do with it. I am glad to report that nearly all my patients take...

J. Enoch Powell suggests ways in which the Government can prove to the IRA that it cannot win `ONCE the IRA is recognised as a quasi- military enemy, it can be dealt with' in...

A profile of Richard Ryder, Chief Whip and enigma at the heart of the Government CONSERVATIVE nerve at Westminster from now until the General Election is in the hands of...

A reader received this letter from Cus- tomer Services, South London Lines, Victoria Station. Thank you for your letter of 13 December 1991. I was most concerned to learn of...

A National Painting Competition for Professional Young Artists Adam & Company Bankers and The Spectator are pleased to announce the launch of their Fifth Annual Art Prize,...

Flying monks and green-eyed monsters PAUL JOHNSON 0 ne of the nastier features of our times is the skilfully mounted smear cam- paign in the media. Among the victims last week...

I FEAR that Norman Lamont has let the Treasury fall back into its bad old habit of timing the Budget for Champion Hurdle day, Well, there goes the racing man's vote. I shall now...

INVESTMENT is no substitute. A misdi- rected or unmanaged business can absorb any amount to no effect, as we saw with steel (and with British Leyland.) From sta- ble direction...

WE NOW have two prices for money one that the Chancellor and the Bank of England try to keep up, and another, set by supply and demand, which is lower. Follow- ing Abbey...

COMPLACENCY is the besetting sin of Lloyd's of London, and fright the best tonic. I just hope that Lloyd's is now fright- ened enough to get down to the business of change...

Twenty years of resolute government that's how to run a railway c II R ISTOPHER FILDES G erard Fiennes was the railwayman who announced at King's Cross station: 'We regret the...

Sir: Michael Kennedy's letter (18 January) states that Toscanini never said, 'To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it on again.' I was close to...

Sir: Paul Johnson's article, 'Time to stop chattering about Aids' (7 December), dis- misses Aids as a scare promoted by the homosexual lobby in order to extract money from the...

Sir: Charles Moore is quite right to take a dim view of the Department of Health's recently published discussion paper on intercountry adoption (Another voice, 18 January). Of...

Sir: I would like to thank Paul Johnson (And another thing, 18 January) for telling us that 'Keats had completed his life-work when he died, aged 26, five years later'. Now...

Sir: Contrary to what I said in my review of Kate Fleming's book about her mother (Books, 23 November), it was Duff, rather than Rupert, who wrote the Hart-Davis biography of...

Sir: As a long-time devotee of the works of John Cowper Powys I was delighted to read that A.N. Wilson has now discovered this great British writer (Diary, 11 January). Powys...

Too much interest on junk James Buchan DEN OF THIEVES by James B. Stewart Simon & Schuster, £16.99, pp. 494 INSIDE OUT: AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO WALL STREET by Dennis B. Levine...

When my heart heaves like a hooked fish and breath creaks crooked as hairpins from my lungs, I remember Francis, our sweet- tempered cat who — poisoned by Christian neighbors -...

Harriet Waugh NEVER JUDGE A MAN BY HIS UMBRELLA by Nicholas Elliott Michael Russell, f14.95, pp.201 N ever Judge a Man by his Umbrella must be one of the rummest...

Piers Paul Read THE LIVES OF ELSA TRIOLET by Lachlan Mackinnon Chatto & Windus, £18, pp.216 E lsa Triolet was the first woman to be awarded the Prix Goncourt. Her novels are...

Patrick Skene Catling CHIEF OF STAFF by William Coyle Chatio, £14.99, pp. 426 NOW AND IN TIME TO BE: IRELAND AND THE IRISH by Thomas Keneally, with photographs by Patrick...

Francis King RADIO ROMANCE by Garrison Keillor Faber, £14.99, pp. 401 h e title of this novel is doubly apt. In the first place, Keillor is writing of a quarter-century period,...

Anthony Howard J. EDGAR HOOVER: THE MAN AND THE SECRETS by Curt Gentry Norton, £19.95, pp. 846 h ere is only one secret that the world now wants to know about J. Edgar Hoover,...

Bruce Arnold O n the cover of the new Penguin printing of James Joyce's Ulysses it is claimed that the book is being published `to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Joyce's...

Was it the blouse-and-skirt combination, the cut Of the fair hair of the near-silhouette Against yellow sea, that made me peer and stare? I walked by white cliffs with my son...

Raymond Carr T e contempt in which the literary establishment holds the works of Robert Smith Surtees is only equalled by the con- tempt in which his readers, like myself, hold...

Exhibitions 1 In the midst of life . . . The Art of Death: Objects from the English Death Ritual 1500-1800 (V & A, till 22 March) I n the midst of life we are in death.' These...

is available from: Mrs Fordham, The R.S. Surtees Society, Tacker's Cottage, Nunney, Nr Frome, Somerset BAH 4NP. Tel: (Nunney) 0373 836442. Cheques payable to The R.S. Surtees...

The Skeleton at the Feast: the Day of the Dead in Mexico (Museum of Mankind, till late 1992) ...we are in death John Henshall enjoys the Mexicans'. exuberant commemoration of...

JFK (`15', selected cinemas) Conspiracy to confuse Mark Amory O nce more we wander on the grassy knoll, once again scan the windows of the Texas School Book Depository....

Der ferne Kiang (Grand Theatre, Leeds) Bewitching flim-flam Robin Holloway T he Artist's suffering Life, transmuted and fulfilled by his Work, is a common- place of the...

Caught in the act Martin Gayford N ot only have astonishing quantities of jazz been recorded — I sometimes wonder whether a major musician has blown an undocumented note in...

Spread a Little Happiness (King's Head) Sophisticated Ladies ((lobe) Innocent charm Christopher Edwards F ew songwriters can have been victims of as many shifts in popular...

Exit, pursued by a table Alistair McAlpine T he year ahead does not look very promising for the art trade, but then it is one of the characteristics of that trade to find...

Hard to get Taki Barbados In hot if futile pursuit of what I perceived to be a 19-year-old but who turned out to be a disappointing 22, I find myself in the Sandy Lane Hotel,...

Grown men crying John Diamond I t is commonly understood that the American language takes its rhythm and its cadence, as well as much of its vocabulary, from the various...

The beginning of the end Zenga Longmore 'My wife left me for a vacuum cleaner.' open of lockless council flat doors. Here in my ground-floor Harlesden flat, even the most...

Melting moments Jeffrey Bernard I cooked a portable radio last night. I had moved it from a chopping-board to make room to prepare a meal, placed it on top of the stove and...

Snows on the Green MOST restaurateurs have taken the Nor- man Lamont line on the recession. That is to say, however much they may moan amongst themselves, they try and act, for...

COMPETITION c vaVAS REG4 4 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY Lear improved Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1711 you were in- vited to take the first line of a Lear limerick and carry...

Russian roulette Raymond Keene T he strongest tournament to be held regularly in the United Kingdom is the Foreign & Colonial grandmaster section at Hastings. This year the...

A first prize of L20 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 solutions...

4°A E UIL IME%ERVERC I " FIRKINIIYEING , D;OM TIVREENCL P I L L E , ,,,ARsE 49 NIS1113 R 0 '1'4 UNNIEH O O R 1 0 TN - , 011A9' T 1ASEMENT L r 111 L t JT T E Y R ' P R A...

Spats, telegrams, mutton pies — everyone mourns something that was once familiar but now rare or unobtainable. An elegiac lament, in verse please (maximum 16 lines), for the...

Greatest hits Frank Keating THE FIFTIETH birthday 'tributes' to Muhammad All read like obituaries. A shame. Okay, the great man may be victim to that unique sidebar and...

Q. Immediately outside my office is a small public park with benches upon which a col- lection of scruffy motorcycle messengers have recently started to appear while they wait...