Nirvana U nemployment figures for August fell by over 40,000 to 2,865,802, the lowest level since July 1982. Other figures showed that productivity in manufacturing industry has...

LAST Friday, the Independent gave Nicho- las Garland's cartoon the place of honour on its front page. His picture derived from the photograph of Mrs Thatcher standing among...

NUCLEAR INEVITABILITY T he superpowers' supposedly 'historic- al' joint statement issued last week pro- claimed their intention to 'pursue as the first priority the reduction...

Hoping that nothing much will come of the agreement FERDINAND MOUNT `A historic turning point'? Not bad, but it needs a bit more oomph. 'A victory for common sense' then? No,...

CRAIG BROWN L ast week at the Liberal Assembly I wrote in the Times conference sketch that David Steel's adviser Mr Richard Holme looked like the kind of bogus major who cons...

Heartbreaking expense of municipal bed and breakfast AUBERON WAUGH T hey wash in the usually cold water of the room's small sink, piled high with dirty plates,' wrote John...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard finds his neighbours sunk in poverty and apathy that no one knows how to solve Washington I HAD been warned. Nobody leaves their car for more than a...

Paul Barker meets the men who sleep out in London RATSO lives in what he calls, wryly, Tennis Court Boulevard in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He has big eyes and a scarred forehead....

Alexander Norman asks what an INF agreement will do to the balance of military power in Europe Fallingbostel, W. Germany GENERAL Crosbie Saint, commander of 111 US Corps,...

Michael Trend on Mr Livingstone's plans for power at Brighton and beyond WRITING in the fourth century BC, using an image taken from nature, Aristotle repeated the following...

Gavin Stamp argues that Mercury should make use of Telecom's rejected boxes THE news that Mercury Communications Ltd are applying to be allowed to operate a public telephone...

THE electricians have at last given us what will prove an invention of infinite- ly more utility than the telephone — a writing telegraph. The telephone is absolutely useless...

Roy Jenkins pays tribute to the zest of Christopher Soames, who died last week CHRISTOPHER Soames was a man whom it was difficult not to notice but easy to misjudge. The...

"Spectator fever" hit the markets yesterday as thou- sands of hopeful investors queued to subscribe to the special £12 discount on Spectator futures. Trading in 12, 24 and 36...

SPECTATOR Become a subscriber to The Spectator and save £12 a year on the regular UK newsstand price — that's 76p a week, or less than 71p if you take out a three year...

The media: Paul Johnson notes the unwelcome arrival of the new sub-tabloid THERE are now not two but three kinds of British national newspaper: qualities, tabloids and bonks....

When the books don't add up JOCK BRUCE GARDYNE T he world is out of joint. As the commercial bankers, central bankers and finance ministers of the non-communist globe descend...

Sir: Paul Johnson's useful ability to think clearly deserted him when he was consider- ing television violence CA halt to vio- lence?', 5 September). 'Whatever the programme...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for £...

Sir: There has come to light, and merits the severest condemnation of the international community, a new and flagrant example of the obscene hypocrisy of Thatcher's Bri- tain...

Sir: I must correct you (Diary, 15 August). The Times has not recently banished the name of the Persian Gulf under Arab pressure. Quite the reverse. Under Amer- ican influence...

Sir: In the war against the criminal Nazi regime, `no British interest was involved'! (Diana Mosley, Letters, 5 September.) Only a fool or a Nazi fanatic could think such...

Sir: Since John Huston's death I have read three of his obituaries, two of which gave different versions of Huston kneeling by a corpse and exclaiming variants of the phrase...

Sir: Touching upon your reviewer's column `Fun of the Fair' of 19 September, one can only feel sorry for a writer who appears to be incapable of distinguishing between what he...

ability in the matter of opening dictionaries, but in mine glasnost is listed under glas or eye, not golos or voice. Anne Kirkness 55 Hyndewood, Bampton Road, Forest Hill,...

Sir: Noel Malcolm was delightful about Radio Moscow (`suspicious behaviour', 5 September) but surely the Russian for `voice' is golos? The word glaznost must derive from glazur...

Alastair Forbes TEARS BEFORE BEDTIME by Barbara Skelton C hatting flirtatiously in Montparnas- se's Dome on their way to their first 'sweet night and adorable morning' (Cyril...

Your concern to preserve identities of immigrants suggests a man who cares. And yet, Professor, not a single word about the natives slowly losing theirs. Raymond Tong

Deryla Murphy OVER THE HIGH PASSES: A YEAR IN THE HIMALAYAS by Christina Noble Collins, £12.95 O n every continent they are proliferat- ing; in the most unlikely corners one...

Anita Brookner HOW I GREW by Mary McCarthy Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.95 M ary McCarthy has told the story of her terrible upbringing in another volume, the superb Memories of...

Anthony Daniels ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH by Chinua Achebe Heinemann, £10.95 W ole Soyinka once spoke of Chinua Achebe's 'unrelieved competence'. It seemed to me a peculiarly...

Anita Desai KINGDOM'S END AND OTHER STORIES by Saadat Hasan Manto, translated by Khalid Hasan Verso, £11.95 T hose whose idea of India is taken from her art and literature, the...

J. Enoch Powell LORD LLOYD AND THE DECLINE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE by John Charmley Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £18 T he break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the first world...

Harriet Waugh HOT MONEY by Dick Francis Michael Joseph, £10.95 YOUR ROYAL HOSTAGE by Antonia Fraser Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £9.95 CHILD'S PLAY by Reginald Hill Collins,...

Evelyn Jo11 THE NATIONAL GALLERY COLLECTION selected by Michael Levey National Gallery Publications, 04.95, f9.95 T h e National Gallery was founded 163 years ago; for 35 of...

Hugh Lloyd-Jones ERIC, 1963-1986 by Eric Mitchell Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.95 T his handsomely produced book con- tains a collection of the writings of Eric Mitchell, a...

Good Apple, a name for a horse? (The stress comes first, As you'd say Godalming, Doncaster) Good Apple — and people smile. They'd like Red Prince, Firebird, Gold Touch. `Good...

A. L. Rowse WILLIAM BORLASE by P. A. S. Pool Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro, £14.95 O ur leading authority on archaeologic- al matters, Professor Charles Thomas, tells...

hopeful investors queued to subscribe to the special £12 discount on Spectator futures. Trading in 12, 24 and 36 month options, Spectator dealers were delighted at the...

Become a subscriber to The Spectator and save £12 a year on the regular UK newsstand price — that's 76p a week, or less than 71p if you take out a three year subscription....

Indian films Demons and courtesans Anatol Lieven urges Westerners to sample the colourful world of Indian popular cinema in a new television series J ust as in the...

NY Art Now (Saatchi Gallery, till February) Donald Baechler (Mayor Rowan, till 2 October) Confounded chic Giles Auty W ithin radical art circles in Britain, the standard...

The Goddess is pleased Last Saturday at Southwark Cathedral, one of the great masters of Indian classical music, Imrat Khan, gave a concert of devotional ragas on sitar and...

Macbeth (Lyttelton) Banzai Macbeth Christopher Edwards T his production of Macbeth, by Yukio Ninagawa, marks the arrival of the Japanese at the National Theatre's Inter-...

Hope and Glory (15', Odeon Haymarket) War of liberation Hilary Mantel D irector John Boorman was six when the second world war broke out, and he remembers the moment of the...

Eastern approaches Rodney MIInes O ne or two eyebrows have been raised at the English National Opera's staging Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures and hoping to generate some...

Water sports Taki A Athens s everyone who has visited this hell-hole during the last 15 years or so knows, the `nefos' is the permanent cloud of noxious fumes that hangs over...

Ghoul appeal Wendy Cope A drunken man is being buried alive in a graveyard. This is a bit much, so I go and get another cup of coffee. By the time I come back it's the...

Cat brought in Alice Thomas Ellis T his is for the attention of Matthew, who is currently travelling round Ireland (or maybe he's gone somewhere else by now) talking to people...

Keeping the peace Jeffrey Bernard Peace. It is heady stuff to contemplate. How on earth can you stop the brain from teeming? I thought I had found it momen- tarily yesterday...

ONE visit to L'Ortolan (0734 883783) in Shinfield, just outside Reading, and my faith in English restaurants is restored. Responsible are John Burton-Race and his French wife,...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) for the first...

Montreal memories Raymond Keene C ontinuing my series on the great tournaments, I come to Montreal 1979, which was billed by its organisers at the time as the outstanding...

Genre horrible Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1490 you were in- vited to supply an opening page of the type of book you most dislike. `Alexandra Pavlovna Karasikov sat in her...

BURGUNDY is not easy to get to know. Only in parts of Germany and Alsace are strips of vine-land so intricately divided up among families themselves so intricately ramified. The...

Under this title Justin Richardson once wrote a poem beginning: 0 to scuttle from the battle and to settle on an atoll far from brutal mortal neath a wattle portal . . . and...

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