long suspected to have terrorist links. Seven people were arrested and a stun gun and a CS gas canister were seized. The government dispatched 30,000 troops and 120 Challenger...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC] N Telephone: 020-7405 1706; Fax 020-7242 0603 LIBERATE THE LORDS I t is probably some time since even the keenest student of...

Oklahoma, flirt with a British boy called PJ. `Wanna see some photos of me?' asked Ashley. PJ grinned. 'I think you'll like them, they're hot,' said Ashley, and winked. A boy...

PETER °BORNE T he announcement that Michael Trend, Tory MP for Windsor and formerly chief leader-writer of the Daily Telegraph, is to step down was slipped out late on Tuesday...

MATTHEW PARRIS S ometimes one's creed points logically where one is intuitively reluctant to go. The flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. Item: we should not give money to...

By promoting mass immigration from the Third World, New Labour has been importing killer diseases, says Anthony Browne. And it is bying to hide what is happening from the...

A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade THE world of environmental science begins to resemble the Catholic Church before the Reformation. Anyone who...

Rod Liddle on why there is nothing we can do to stop Algerians — or anybody else — remaining in the country I DON'T know what Mrs Sadako Ogata is doing these days, or where...

'I would have liked to have given her the Taj Mahal but it would have cost too much to transport,' remarked Richard Burton on the occasion of Elizabeth Taylor's 40th birthday....

Only market forces — backed by government endowments — can save higher education, says Martin Jacomb THE government has got itself into a serious mess in its approach to...

Andrew Gimson talks to a former antiques dealer whose exhibition of nude portraits — 'art as therapy' opens next week WOULD you like 'a framed 16 x 20 inch nude portrait' of...

I HAVE, I discover, had a letter on the kitchen table for many weeks. Its vintage is indicated by the plum juice which somehow found its way on to the lower part. It is from Mrs...

Thousands of disabled babies are living longer than ever before, says Sarah Barclay. Why don't we pay for them? WHEN Emmy Myerson was born in June 1991, everyone celebrated....

EVERY week professionals such as teachers and doctors express their desire to get out of their jobs. Why? Because they have lost their independence. Greeks and Romans would have...

Mark Steyn says Donald Rumsfeld's talk of a deal with Saddam is dispiriting, but believes the phoney war is coming to an end New Hampshire LAST weekend was going pretty...

PAUL JOHNSON O ne of my greatest pleasures is to sit outside my house in the Quantocks, 500 feet above sea level, and watch the clouds arriving from the west. In they conic,...

From Mr Horace Buxton Sir: Peter Oborne (`Living in a state of fear', 11 January) has not grasped the importance of white farmers, and the catastrophe that their eviction is....

From The Revd Canon Geoffrey Ravalde Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 18 January) scores so many valid direct hits that it is a shame he spoils it by implying that Oxford...

From Miss Susan Clarke Sir: I read with surprise the letter of the Bishop of London (18 January). As a journalist, I reported the trial of R v. Burrell and heard all of the...

From Emma Soames Sir: The research that RAPt has conducted over the last ten years bears out the findings of lain Murray (Let them eat porridge', 18 January). Treating...

From Mrs Richard de Graaff-Hunter Sir: I realise that there is a serious crisis in the UK over the possible use of ricin by terrorists, but surely a more diplomatic method could...

From Mr Ciaran Walsh Sir: I would like to thank James Delingpole (Why I daren't admit to being a Tory', 4 January) for reassuring me that I am not alone. As a 23-year-old...

From Mr B.H. Highton Sir: Does it not occur to anyone that the motive of at least some of the 7,000 British men who have accessed child pornography on the Internet was simple,...

From Mr Alex Siddell Sir: Aidan Hartley's view of corruption (Wild life, 18 January) in Kenya is slightly misguided — it was not only the African population that was involved in...

From Mr Claus von Bulow Sir: Steven Norris (I blame Ken', 28 December 2002) comments on the alleged plot behind the rephasing of traffic lights in favour of pedestrians. But...

STEPHEN GLOVER A very high-minded European recently complained to me about British newspapers. Why are they all so awful, he asked? Even the so-called serious ones look like...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES L ord Carrington — it was the kind of thing that happened to him — was asked to become a director of Rio Tinto-Zinc, one of the world's two biggest mining...

Bruce Anderson joins the Masai on an eco-friendly safari A PAIR of lionesses were ambling through the grass; three cubs were scampering around them. A delightful spectacle, but...

Anthony Torrance As with all tourism, there is a precarious balance. How do you enable people to look at something unspoilt without spoiling it? So far, A&K have succeeded. As...

Nicholas Farrell Predappio NO ONE back home has ever heard of the Romagna where I live. 'It's between Bologna and Florence,' I say. 'It's like Tuscany without the British.'...

Peter Tatchell TRYING to arrest tyrants like Robert Mugabe is a tiring, stressful business. Even I need a break. So I headed for Palm Springs, California. to indulge my passion...

Julian Holloway IN THE 14th century, Timur the Lame led a nomad army against the whole settled world. He plundered from the Ganges to the Dardanelles, but the heartland of his...

Michael McMahon IN 1924, feverish, depressed and in Palestine, far from his native land, the travel writer H.V. Morton found himself overwhelmed by a sudden wave of...

Clare De Burca THE video finally flickers to life and a shot of my father-in-law's nose is followed by a tiled terrace, steps down to a turquoise swimming pool and green fields...

Philip Hensher MISSING MASTERPIECES by Gert-Rudolf Flick Merrell, £40, pp. 344, ISBN 1858941970 his is a strange, tantalising book of unintentional poetry; it is rather like a...

Julius Purcell THE RADETZKY MARCH by Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann Granta, £14.99, pp. 363, ISBN 1862075131 J ust as Gustav Mahler wove a bugle fanfare into his...

John Casey THE PIANO TUNER by Daniel Mason Picador, £14.99, pp. 356, ISBN 0330492675 T his is a curious story. In 1886, a year after the final British conquest of Upper...

G. S. Rousseau 20:21 VISION: TWENTIETHCENTURY LESSONS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by Bin Emmott Allen Lane/ Penguin, £20, pp. 327, ISBN 071399519X B ill Emmott. the editor of...

William Feaver RESTLESS LIVES: THE BOHEMIAN WORLD OF RODRIGO AND ELINOR MOYNIHAN by John Moynihan Sansorn & Co., £24.99, pp. 280, ISBN 1900178443 W hen John Moynihan was three...

Ian Thomson I'LL TAKE YOU THERE by Joyce Carol Oates Fourth Estate, £10.99, pp. 290, ISBN 0007146442 J oyce Carol Oates is a prolific, even prolix writer, with more than 50...

David Nokes TEACHING LITERATURE by Elaine Showalter Blackwell, 145, pp. 176, ISBN 1631226230 T here comes a time when all professors of literature think of writing a book like...

Caroline Moorehead THE DARK HEART OF ITALY: TRAVELS THROUGH TIME AND SPACE ACROSS ITALY by Tobias Jones Faber, £16.99. pp. 288, ISBN 0571205828 I taly, Carlo Levi once famously...

Rupert Christiansen LIVES OF THE MIND: THE USE AND ABUSE OF INTELLIGENCE FROM HEGEL TO WOODHOUSE by Roger Kimball Ivan R. Dee, $28.95, pp. 375, ISBN 1566634792 I read the first...

Miranda France AT THE TOMB OF THE INFLATABLE PIG by John Gimlette Hutchinson, .£14.99, pp. 363, ISBN 0091794331 J ohn Gimlette and I both won this magazine's Shiva Naipaul...

SPECTATOR SPECTATORS FOR AFRICA The Spectator Appeal A t a time when so much of Africa is in the grip of near famine, sending copies of The Spectator might seem a perverse...

Raymond Carr PICASSO'S WAR by Russell Martin Scribner, £18.99, pp. 274, ISBN 0525946802 I n this book Russell Martin seeks to explain to the common reader how Picasso's largest...

P. J. Kavanagh LIGHT YEARS by Augustus Young London Magazine Editions, £25, pp. 312, ISBN 0904388913 T his is a most unusual book. It might be thought we could do without...

The artist is a great draughtsman but is he a great watercolourist? asks Mark Glazebrook he last David Hockney show at Annely Juda Fine Art was in the summer of 1997. It was a...

Michael Tanner M onteverdi's Orfeo is an intensely moralistic work. Although La Musica launches it by telling us, and showing us, how 'now with noble anger, now with love' she...

Giannandrea Poem() A though his work might not be everybody's favourite, Jiri Kylian remains one of the most eminent and significant figures of European modern ballet. His...

Mark Steyn C hicago opened in December, getting lost in the great Speccie void of the Christmas double-issue, but it just won a bunch of Golden Globes and there's Oscar talk in...

Charles Spencer T his is a column in crisis, My brief is to write about the popular music of the past half century, and during recent weeks I have hardly listened to any....

Robin Holloway W orkshops', piously fetishised in recent decades, have never been my idea of fun. Too often there's a sense of implicit condescension; and even when in the...

Toby Young L e Talking Cure, Christopher Hampton's new play about psychoanalysis, has finally opened at the National. The curtain was due to go up last December but it had to...

Michael Vestey J ulian Bream was rightly described by Humphrey Burton on Radio Three last week as one of our greatest living musicians and a clear successor to Segovia. The...

Simon Hoggart I suppose the reason that The Lost Prince (BBC1) works so well is that viewers identify with little Johnnie, the autistic and epileptic uncle of the present...

Robin Oakley 0 n the death last year of Labour MP Frank Allaun one obituarist recalled Frank's story of the young man who returned from the first world war trenches full of...

Taki T Gstaad hese are quiet days and nights here, the noisy mobile telephone brigades having left immediately after the New Year. It is a sign of the times, the mobile...

Jeremy Clarke I 'm sleeping with a 104-year-old woman. Yep, 104, going on 105. Have been for the last fortnight, too, since she fell between bed and commode in the night. The...

Michael Henderson A BROKEN man came home last week on a slow boat from China. Paul Gascoigne still thinks there is some football left in him. Perhaps his rejection in the Far...

considers itself both pukka and professional, I have recently encountered a problem concerning the etiquette at formal dinner nights. Once seated, one may not rise for relief...

comfort in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, the sporting delights of the house party were marred by the behaviour of one of the guns — Red Chris — who not only missed every bird...

This follows his refusal to wear ear-protectors over many years of shooting, which has resulted in his becoming increasingly deaf. Can you recommend any way in which he can gain...