TII huff and puff, and I'll blow your house down.' or the first time in 19 months, the rate of inflation fell: from 8.3 to 8.2 per cent. The annual rate of growth in the...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 POLISH LESSONS System has been its seemingly total imper- viousness to...

SUPPOSING the World Wildlife Fund for Nature Conservation had announced that it had decided to operate a shoot-to-kill policy against illegal badger hunters (who have,...

A n English teacher recently told me she had been reading one of the stories in my new collection, which she had seen in Dillon's, and had enjoyed. I modestly enquired, then,...

Can the ghost of Marshal Main yet save us from Thatcher? AUBERON WAUGH The conservative tradition in France has a much harder edge than that of Britain, Which soon drivels off...

Supporters of regular cervical smear tests credit them with saving hundreds of lives. Anthony Daniels questions their merit and their cost I VAGUELY remember from the days...

Anne Applebaum detects among Poles unhappiness with the new coalition Warsaw THE newsagent on Piwna Street in War- saw's old town started selling Solidarity badges along with...

Jeremy Gavron reports from Sri Lanka, where there is fear on all sides Sri Lanka THERE is something particularly brutal about killings in a beautiful land. In Sri Lanka, where...

How time-share operators fool simple people like Nicky Bird I AM not in the habit of winning things. I have the opposite of the Midas touch. So when a company called Holiday...

Michael Heath

William Deedes remembers the easy-going, if chaotic period of the Phoney War UNLIKE many people of the war genera- tion, I do not remember precisely where I was or what I was...

The media: Paul Johnson salutes the Diaghilev of publishing THIS is the week when the autumn pub- lishing season begins to get into top gear again. Review copies are thumping...

Monetarism is dead, long live monetarism JAMES BARTHOLOMEW h ere is a strange quiet among our previously contentious economic theorists. Where once the disputes between Keyne-...

XENOPHOBIA. No one has ever com- plained of suffering from xenophobia, it is something one criticises in others. It seems to be common in Parliament, and it is this fear of...

Rough justice in a City with more laws than order CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he City is now trying competitive forms of justice, and the forms of justice are trying the City. The...

Sir: Despite the attraction at first sight of C. D. Howard-Johnston's plan (Letters, 22 July) to maintain the stocks of Hong Kong water if the supplies from the mainland were...

Sir: There is plenty of comment in The Spectator concerning British policy in Hong Kong, but none about Hong Kong's policy to Britain. Hong Kong's attack on the Lancashire...

Sir: On reading Mr Auberon Waugh's splendid article on the success of the National Trust and the declining fortunes of the Anglican Church (Another voice, 22 July), I wondered...

Sir: Auberon Waugh's ultimate utopian society (Another voice, 12 August), in which no one succumbs to Green, socialist, nationalist or any other utopian creed, can best be...

Sir: Paul Johnson (The press, 17 June) suggests a 'compromise': suppress the Rushdie book and hand over the money, if the ayatollahs suppress their incitements to riot .and...

HUMOURS OF THE BENCH ITO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR, — The Scotch Bailie who made such a charming jumble of a "bountiful Providence" — health and strength, and...

All those lonely people Bevis Hillier LEWIS PERCY by Anita Brookner Cape,111 .95, pp. 261 A . s this novel ends, the central charac- ter is leaving England for a job in...

Sophia Watson PLAYING IN THE SAND by Christopher Hudson Macmillan, 02.95, pp. 240 D ouglas Manifold once wrote a great war poem, 'DogDay.' Since then he has written stylish,...

Philip Glazeb rook IN XANADU by William Dalrymple E14.95, pp.310 I t is disappointing that no voice express- ing the feelings and viewpoint of their generation has made itself...

Lucy Hughes-Hallett THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY DRINKER by Joseph Roth Chatto & Windus, £7.95, pp. 49 J oseph Roth died in Paris in May 1939. One who drinks himself to death at...

Jonathan Clark THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE' by David Womersley CUP, £35, pp. 318 A nother damned, thick, square book! Always scribble,...

Under the seat of the old wicker chair, Formed not of legs but a basket upside down, A little room has prospered on its own While you in sun would sprawl and read and frown....

Iron in the soul Patrick Skene Catling S tanding silent upon Mulcahy's Peak, I felt like stout Cortez (or that other man), and Henry Cotton and P. G. Wodehouse. Mulcahy's Peak...

Theatre Small war in Absurdistan Barbara Day reports on the cultural battles now being fought on the Czech stage A bsurdistan' is the name many Czechs give to their own...

Northern highlights Peter Phillips t the time of writing, which is perhaps a week before the first possible time of reading, the Proms do not yet seem quite to have hit the...

Scottish Art since 1900 (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, till 24 September) El Greco: Mystery and Illumination (National Gallery of Scotland, till 15 October) Patrons...

My Left Foot (`12', Curzon Mayfair) The man God understood Hilary Mantel his is a film about a man who has a disability, but not about a disabled man. The difference is...

Short, sharp and shocking Wendy Cope A rriving back in London from Califor- nia is a depressing experience and it didn't help to discover that half the episodes of LA Law...

Mussel bound Jeffrey Bernard W hat a coincidence it is that Michaeli is employed as a mortuary assistant at the very same hospital that has kindly invited me to come in for a...

Sir Harold's hospitality Taki y Tuscan friend and neighbour Lord Lambton (or Lorlambton, as my children call him) had a treat in Store for me last week. 'But you'll have to be...

HERE we are to judge the annual Interna- tional Picnic Competition. This year, there were so many entries, especially in the juvenile categories, that the Duke of Atholl had...

IR - - - • dill Rheinhessen — back to the forefront? THE Rheinhessen is Germany's largest wine region — also her most blandly amorphous and, currently, least reputed. It is...

This is the third in a series of lithographs by Alan Powers showing the Welsh borders, accompanied by sonnets from a series by Peter Levi. MONTGOMERY is a planned town of the...

Victor F Raymond Keene K afka's Josef K inhabits a nightmare city. It is situated in an ominous, frustrat- ing landscape, prefiguring a modern computer-dominated bureaucracy,...

Whenas. . Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1588 you were asked for a nine-line variation of Herrick's famous poem, yours beginning `Whenas ., — my Julia(n) —'. • You were by no...

A first prize of £20 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...

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`Rhopalics' are verses in which each line thickens towards the end 'like a cudgel' because each word in it has one more syllable than the one before. You are challenged to write...

Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £55.00 0 .07.511 Europe (airmail) 0 i66.0(1 d £33.011 USA Airspeed 0 US S99 0 USS50 Rest of Airmail fl £82.00 0...