`Looks like a nasty case of Blair bashing, superintendent.' M r John Maples, the vice-chairman of the Conservative Party said in a memoran- dum, 'If Blair turns out to be as...

THE OPEN LETTER from Hollywood is a wonderful thing. The most recent example to be published in this country was that of Mr and Mrs Richard Gere, who in May announced in the...

SPECTATOR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 THE ECONOMY, STUPID T he approach of the national Budget...

WILSON W hen I tell friends that I so enjoyed a recent fortnight in Ireland that I want to become an Irish citizen, they smile cynical- ly. 'It would certainly benefit you from...

Separating the truth from what is dross AUBERON WAUGH I never met James Watts, the American neurosurgeon who helped popularise the pre-frontal lobotomy in America between 1945...

Forget Albert Reynolds. Forget Bertie Ahern. Forget Dick Spring. Kevin Myers identifies the hidden hand steering the Irish nation towards Anschluss with the North Dublin...

Anne Applebaum attempts to decipher the reasons given for Nato's air strike in Bosnia, and finds that the best code is the zodiac FIFTY NATO jets go up in the air. A large...

British efforts to curb the proliferation of biological weapons are being blocked by the US among others, writes David Shukman IN THE build-up to the Gulf war of 1991, as the...

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF JOURNALISTS NOTHING is so clear to the minds of Englishmen and Americans as that a censorship of the Press must be the very worst method in which the...

Mr Guy Taite Shoosmith, of Gang- bridge House, St Mary Bourne, Hants., late mechanical engineer, who intro- duced barges with no rivets and tugs with no funnels to the river...

I CANNOT say that it is always a plea- sure to receive your letters, though it was good to re-establish contact with that kind surgeon who told me about Jugulars. Now Erin...

Tehran abounds with stories about the corruption of the current regime. Jonathan Ford reports from the cocktail party front-line Tehran THE HOUSE was at the end of a long,...

persist. . . THERE'S nobody quite like a patient for grasping the wrong end of any stick which is proffered him. Ever since the Government decided of its own accord to...

While everyone has neo-Nazis, only Germany is plagued by the Autonomen, writes Christian Cal - 34 Berlin THE ENTRANCE to the courtyard has a steel gate that can be quickly...

Boris Johnson examines the ways in which John Major uses prime ministerial power, and finds a sharp break from his predecessors PRIME MINISTERS are traditionally judged by the...

Ross Clark examines the strange relationship between the BBC and Equity, a very 1970s affair TRY TO THINK of who instigated the first ever strike. The Yorkshire coal-min- ers?...

Parliamentarian of the Year: the winners THE ELEVENTH annual Highland Park/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards took place on Wednesday. The awards were presented by...

There can be few greater combinations than those of classic, bottle-matured Port and the finest English Blue Stilton Cheese when both are in peak condition. The Spectator Port...

Gone is the time when Americans led the world in saying what they thought PAUL JOHNSON T he editor of The Spectator was right to draw attention to the censorship of race...

I NURSE the hope that Kenneth Clarke will amble along to the House of Commons on Tuesday, open his old red box and pull out a four-word Budget speech. 'I told you so', it would...

NUCLEAR SUBMARINES are not my idea of a growth industry. I see them as an underwater answer to the hovercraft: some- thing very clever that the British could do brilliantly, if...

THE BRITISH export effort has More Balls Than Most. This is the company which (so I learn from the British-Ameri- can Chamber of Commerce) has exported 27,000 juggling kits to...

THE COUNTER-BIDDER for VSEL has cash and to spare — the most celebrated hoard in British business. This is, of course, Lord Weinstock, Arnold to some, and man- aging director...

HOW DO YOU foretell the future? Easy — you ask Sir Adrian 'The Code' Cadbury• His Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance has put out what it calls...

Brown joins the club, Gas pays the sub, Major gets the bill CHRISTOPHER FILLIES B ritish Gas has achieved the impossi- ble. It has made me nostalgic for Sir Denis Hooke. That...

that William Cash's piece on the New Jewish Establishment has pro- voked. A midge has been mistaken for a rabid vampire bat. Substitute 'Briton' and `British' for `Jew' and...

in your paper last week (Letters, 19 November). How ironic that the authentic voice of fascism should be heard from such a quarter. The word has virtually ceased to have any...

were written about the William Cash article by your contributors in the 19 November issue (Letters). To be honest, I have always taken it for granted that many of the people who...

Sir: The 29 October issue of The Spectator, Was marred by the inclusion of an article ( Kings of the deal') which advanced the basest of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Far from being...

stale and dismal example of the kind of chronic, low-level anti-Semitism endemic at all levels of English society. The lan- guage of the lower-class exponent of this particular...

Sir: The meaning of my article concerning General Rose last week was distorted by various additions (`Built up and knocked down', 19 November). I did not write that LETTERS...

of American society, and the pretend-blind refusal to recognise it which sometimes goes by the name of political correctness (`Taboo or not taboo, that is the question', 19...

displays a very klein knowl- edge of history. Kindly inform him (1) that his country was the only one to emerge from the second world war economically better off than before;...

that any polemical article, however fatuous or bilious, is a good thing (`Taboo or not taboo, that is the question', 19 November). You don't distinguish between responding to...

— unusually early. Although I also take the Economist, if The Speccie comes first I get stuck into it. The first arti- cle I turned to was Dominic Lawson's (19 November)....

12 Months 6 Months UK O £80.00 CI £41.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £91.00 O £46.00 USA Airspeed El US$130 O US$66.00 USA Airmail ❑ US$175 ❑ US$88 Rest of Airmail El £111.00...

Sir: It used to be thought quite proper to promenade with a neatly folded copy of the Times in the left hand. Is there not now a danger that people will simply assume one could...

Sir: In his article on the forthcoming legis- lation of voluntary euthanasia in Oregon ( The killing fields of Oregon', 19 Novem- ber), Alasdair Palmer quotes a Professor Rita...

The heading over John Simpson's article . I-low the KGB freed Europe' (5 November) is confusing and so is the theory that the secret police in the Soviet satellites engi- neered...

Sir: Perhaps A.N. Wilson would draw com- fort from his hatred of baseball caps were he to know they are popularly known as IQ reducers (Diary, 11 November). The simple act of...

Sir: Mr Keating does well to laud the late blossoming of Graham Gooch's batting career (Sport, 19 November) since, on the figures presented, whilst it took Gooch 15 years to...

Sir: A.N. Wilson revealed an unaccustomed lapse from his normal level of scholarship in his Diary (19 November). It was not Topham Beauclerk who divorced his wife (née Lady...

Mr Clarke believes the electorate is being economical with the truth SIMON JENKINS I n next week's budget Kenneth Clarke could easily win the next election for the Tories. All...

£12 Plain £13 Initialled The Spectator 1995 Diary, bound in soft black leather, is now available. Laid out with a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the diary is 5' x 3"....

Quartet Books have done well with Volume I of A Writer's Diary by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; 805 pages at £25 gets you to 1876, and the wild man at his worst, raving about Slav...

The finest book on the second world war which I have read for years is Christopher Seton-Watson's Dunkirk — Bologna Alamein (Buckland, £14.95) — much praised in The...

This year I seem to have read only books that people were talking about last year. They have therefore lost their dinner-party value, but some of them are still quite good. I...

A further selection of the best and most overrated books of the year; chosen by some of The Spectator's regular contributors John Osborne I rarely pass judgment on novels for...

For me, by far the best work of fiction pub- lished this year is a book of short stories: Bernard MacLaverty's Walking the Dog (Cape, £14.99). MacLaverty's pitilessly accurate...

My favourite book this year stands out from the load of ill-informed rot written about Flamenco music. It is the new, enlarged edition of Gerald Howson's The Flamencos of Cadiz...

Myron Magnet's The Dream and the Night- mare: The Sixties Legacy to the Underclass (William Morrow & Co) seeks to explain both the existence and the conduct of the American...

The best novel I have read this year (not counting Teresa Waugh's Sylvia's Lot, Sinclair-Stevenson, £14.99) was Craig Brown's The Hounding of John Thomas (Century, £14.99),...

My favourite novels were Dependence Day by Robert Newman (Century, £8.99) and Essays in Love by Alain de Botton (Macmillan, £12.99, Picador, £5.99). In an age when pop stars...

The three books I liked best have all been about time passing. Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes (Michael Joseph, £20) is the fourth and last of his magisterial Ages, which begin...

Nelson: A Personal History by Christopher Hibbert (Viking, £20). Nelson has always been one of my heroes, and that most likely applies to many others as well. In some ways he...

This has been an exceptionally good year for art books. Three in particular have won my admiration. The most sumptuous is a study of Uccello (Thames & Hudson, £60), written by...

My first choice is A Mingled Measure (John Murray, £19.99), the latest volume of James Lees-Milne's diaries. I notice that he is forever declaring that he is not clever. It is...

Alistair Elliot's Turning the Stones (Car- canet, £6.95) demonstrated all the Augus- tan virtues — clarity, lucidity, proportion — in a nicely contemporary idiom that...

I almost found myself admitting that the book I enjoyed most in 1994 was Alan Clark's Diaries (Phoenix, £6.99); this would have spoken well for my candour but hardly for my...

The best account of our calamitous century to have appeared this, or any, year is Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes (Michael Joseph, £20) an unimaginative title for a...

Ought Jonathan Dimbleby's Prince of Wales (Little, Brown, £20) to have been published? Like some others, I thought not — until I had read it. Had all those commentators who...

The novel that gave me most pleasure in 1994 was Candia McWilliam's Debatable Land (Bloomsbury, £14.99), the story of a voyage through the Pacific. The precision of its...

Forbidden by the literary editor to name any but cis-Channel productions, and anxious to show that I follow what the Wrong little, tight little islanders deem the issue of the...

The best psychological thriller I've read for years is The Last Girl by Penelope Evans (Black Swan, £5.99) who is classicist, barris- ter, wife and mother, lives in Surrey and...

Alistair Home's The Lonely Leader: Monty 1944-45 (Macmillan, £17.50) is full of intriguing insights into the character of the most remarkable of our second world war generals....

Why do human beings destroy themselves? Their predicament, which is the fundament of all true literature, rests on love, idealism, self-sacrifice, betrayal and, too late, a...

The best books I've read this year share a theme but not a subject. One was the Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age by Simon Schama...

My favourite weird and wonderful book of the year is The Bachelors by Henri de Mon- therlant, translated by Terence Kilmartin (Quartet Encounters, £4.95). Really crazy account...

I liked David Kynaston's The City of London: A World of its Own (Chatto, £25), for it brings literacy to a part of town aban- doned since the time of Keynes. James Grant's...

Alastair Forbes REMEMBERING MY GOOD FRIENDS by George Weidenfeld HarperCollins, £20, pp. 484 t oughing conscientiously through this formidable volume for the third time — as...

Andro Linklater THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE by Lawrence James Little, Brown, £25, pp. 704 T o judge by his photograph on the dust cover, Lawrence James belongs, as...

Nigel Spivey WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP: THE EMOTIONAL LIVES OF ANIMALS by Jeffrey Masson and Susan McCarthy Cape, £14.99, pp. 192 A nthropomorphism is what it is some - times...

Stephen Bradley THE PRIVATE LIFE OF CHAIRMAN MAO by Zhisui Li Chatto, £20, pp. 682 P rocopius in the foreword to his Secret History offered the classic justification for all...

Mary Keen T o ny Lord is a horticultural boffin. He started life as a research chemist and has an impressive list of initials after his name, but he abandoned the laboratory at...

Michael Coren AS MUCH AS I DARE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Arnold Wesker Century, £18.99, pp. 578 I . am not frightfully interested in any- thing, except myself, says one of Tom...

David Ekserdjian ROSSO IN ITALY by David Franklin Yale, £45, pp. 326 omebody — it should have been Berenson — once observed that art history is a game, and he who has the...

Tom Hiney THE OFFICIAL SLACKER HANDBOOK by Sarah Dunn Abacus, f6.99, pp. 116 As youth movements go, slackers are hardly worrying the National Guard. In fact no one seems to...

Julie Burchill wow! by Amy Auden Mainstream, £9.99, pp.256 H ere's a little story about modern fame. Quite recently I wrote a review of Jeanette Winterson's latest novel for...

Ballet Celebrating a national treasure Julie Kavanagh L ast summer in the town of Clare in Suffolk there was an auction of the con- tents of Chandos Lodge, Frederick Ash-...

The Turner Prize 1994: short-listed artists (Tate Gallery, till 4 December) Testing your taste Giles Auty I magine a room in which five identical, cast-iron figures lie or...

I Love Trouble (`PG', selected cinemas) Second Best (12', selected cinemas) Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (PG', selected cinemas) The Shadow (`12', selected...

Scoring the same goal Peter Phillips W histler's decision to give his paintings titles which were associated with music was not lightly taken. Behind much of his think- ing...

Iw) r M'Eg P ARTS ;17.: DV 010 A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics OPERA The Yeoman of the Guard. New Theatre, Cardiff...

Three Tall Women (Wyndham's) The Merchant of Venice (Barbican) Andrea Marcovicci (Pizza on the Park) Who's Afraid of Maggie Smith? Sheridan Morley dward Albee's Three Tall...

My old man's a millionaire Ian Hislop I t couldn't have been me. I didn't buy a ticket. But I did watch The National Lottery Live (BBC 1, Saturday 7 p.m.) in order to find out...

CHRISTMAS GIFT SUBSCRIPTION Give a gift subscription of The Spectator to a friend and we wi I give you a full size bottle of ten year old Gleninorangie Single Highland Malt....

Rushed off my feet Taki New York A though I had nothing to do with the by now infamous William Cash article, a few Bagelites have gone out of their way to call me an...

Running out of friends Jeffrey Bernard W eek eight. I am still counting and this trip on the wagon is still a far from smooth ride. My visitors get fewer and fewer and 1...

Pride of place Nigel Nicolson I t is good to see that in the Eng. Lit. sec- t '" of Mrs Shephard's new curriculum , Jane Austen still occupies pole position. Sc arcely a week...

Small Expectations Holly Budd I am one of the fortunate for whom most things work most of the time. Shops are generally open, restaurants and flights rarely absolutely booked,...

so many journalists become once they've had children. Well, actually, that's not quite true: there was no dread, because I felt shudderingly sure that was one thing I would...

SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA • Dati411 5 3 CHESS Goodwill in season Raymond Keene SINCE I LAST TOUCHED upon the thorny questions of chess politics concern-...

I i U RA SINGLE MALI SCOTCH %HMI ISLE OF COMPETITION mU RA ...E.„..„„,., Carry on Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1857 you were given two opening lines of a poem and...

GRAHAM'S PORT GRAHAM'S CROSSWORD PORT 1 187: Cold comfort by Mass A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution...

You are invited to provide, without com- mitting libel (no real names or means of identifying the original), a prose portrait of the most dislikable or irritating person you...

Definition of title (from radial 22): A ROTATING FIREWORK IN MEMORY OF A SAINT'S ORDEAL, with PYROTECHNY around the centre. First prize: Donald Godden, Shirehampton, Bristol....

Making a meal of them Frank Keating THE WINTRY CLOUDS, reflecting the phosphorous tinge of the street lights, hur- ried across a watery sun as it dropped west- erly behind the...

Q. You recently advised readers on how to cover up the fact they they have forgot- ten someone's name at a party or other social event. Yet what can be done when one is openly...