M inisters from the oil producing coun- tries, represented by OPEC, agreed in • Vienna to reduce output by 10 per cent in order to support their present reference price of $34...

Laura's party Ferdinand Mount F or many viewers, the highlight of Mr Roger Graef's series Police was the stake-out at Laura Duchess of Marlborough's Buckinghamshire home. And...

I have warm memories of Claus von I3ulow who was a friend of mine up at Cambrid g e just after the war. He gave ex- cellent parties, at which there were brilliant- IY clever...

Toy socialist in dreamland Auberon Waugh Havana, Cuba W hen I left England at the beginning of last week, it seemed reasonable to suppose that President Reagan was about to...

Murray Sayle Murray Sayle Tokyo M elting snow, the first cherry blossoms, a raging trade dispute with Europe and the United States. It's springtime in J aPan, in short, and the...

Timothy Garton Ash To anyone familiar with other countries In the Soviet bloc this achievement of Euro- pean normality (or even the appearance of n ormality) is extraordinary....

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington T he Reagan Administration is learning what the craftier masters of statecraft know by instinct. Never debate a prospec- tive war, get your...

Jason Hargreaves I n February 1980 an Arab editor named Salim Lawzi was kidnapped in Beirut. He was returning from his mother's funeral, and disappeared on the way to the...

Richard West T he hoo-ha over the sacking of Harold Evans as editor of The Times has diverted attention from what is, to my mind, the far more important sacking of Bruce Page...

Patrick Marnham veryone is diminished by their entry in the new Who's Who (£40, and 4 lbs), which has been reset in type so small that its large proportion of older readers...

The German Emperor celebrated his 86th birthday (that is, he is 85), on the 22nd inst., and made a short speech to those who attended the usual reception. He remarked that no...

A bereavement Tony Rudd THE collapse of Stone-Platt, the textile machinery manufacturers, seems like another nail in the coffin of Britain's in- dustrial body. Certainly it's...

taught at Bram- shill, the senior police officers' training col- lege, by Alderson, and 'uses the language of sociology and "preventive policing" just as fluently' as his old...

Sir: Arthur Marshall's delightful review (13 February) of Home James: The Chauffeur in the Golden Age of Motoring gives us a reminder — evidently dear to his father of the...

Sir:'You will please publish a retraction of and apology for Paul Johnson's baseless and damaging allegation (6 March) that I, who may be identified as the 'deputy' of Keith...

Sisterwrong Sir: It was refreshing to read Roy Kerridge's sensible and witty view of the dreary women's lib movement (13 March) but in describing the feminist bookshop `Sister-...

Sir: Under the Smallholdings and Allot- ments Act of 1908, six registered ratepayers are entitled to demand the right to allot- ments from their councils. The costs of fen-...

Sir: If I understand him correctly, your cor- respondent (Revd) C. V. Porter (20 March) believes that God is putting the British peo- ple (at least those who are neither dark-...

Sir: Auberon Waugh's comments about `Doctor' David Owen (13 March) reminded me of a personal experience. When I was a general practitioner I sent my thesis for the degree of...

,Sir: In your Notebook of 13 March you are ( un derstandably) mistaken about Sinn Fein th e Workers Party and its support for Mr Haughey as Taoiseach. It is one of the idi...

Sir: 'Only the public remained undeniably faithful to the gradually sinking ship,' writes Michael Deakin with reference to Whicker's World (20 March). Until now I had naively...

The secularisation of religion Edward Norman M any intellectuals seem quite unable to recognise or to appreciate the im- portance of the study of religion for an understanding...

John Braine An English Temper: Essays on education, culture and communication Richard. Hog- g a ll (Chau.° & Windus £5.50) I t was my friend Stan Barstow, who Upon being asked...

John Grigg Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler's Europe 1939-1945 Werner Rings, translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £9.95) I n its...

THE SON OF GRIEF, a cricket novel by Dudley Carew. Merritt, Blotenburgweg 12, 4030 Ratingen 6 (Mosel), Germany. SAVAGE SOLOMONS by S. G. C. Knibbs, 'Doctor in Paradise' by S....

Virginia Llewellyn Smith The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union ed. Archie Brown, John Fennell, Michael Kaser and H. T. Willets ( Cambridge University Press...

Philip Warner T t is extremely difficult, even after 40 lyears, to write a balanced account of events in Malaya and Singapore,' say the authors, neither of whom was born at the...

A. N. Wilson Victoria the Good Christopher Tower (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £9.95) H appy and Glorious was the title given to Laurence Housman's 47 plays. Col- lected in one...

Francis King A s in running, so in writing, the ability to pace oneself is of prime importance. We all know of the writers who, at the outset of their careers, outstripped the...

Barbara Trapido Levitation: Five Fictions Cynthia Ozick (Seeker & Warburg £6.95.) Children of the Dark David Batchlor (Seeker & Warburg £6.95.) C ynthia Ozick's 'fictions' are...

At the coach station in Loughborough in the freezing early morning a bare sub-zero bus stop frozen snow lying, and piled I slapped arms, walked legs - till I saw,...

Peter Levi Piro write or even read a good poem is an 1 honourable action, it is a gesture of human decency. The sense of this truth underlies most of the best modern lyrics....

Limbo dancing Bann Parry C hristopher Bruce's Ghost Dances in the current Rambert season had an extra Performance last week at a gala to aid the Chile Committee for Human...

Elevated John McEwen F or most people these days art is a matter of daring to be oneself — the more ex- otic the art, therefore, the more interesting the person and the more...

Old jokes Peter Ackroyd y ast year's was a disaster, if you remem- ber. With the remnants of the cast from Beyond the Fringe and an audience that looked as if it had come,...

Ad nauseam Richard Ingrams I have been thinking more and more in 1 recent days what a good thing it would be if the BBC was 'privatised' like Amersham and flogged off to the...

Unbalanced Jeffrey Bernard T he past few days have been just about as bad as bad can be. I'm still getting some nasty twinges because of the man who cut off his penis. Yes, if...

Poor fool Taki T he telephone rang around six in the morning, and although for once I had gcme to sleep about four hours earlier, it see med more like four minutes. Just as I...

No. 1211: Old favourite Set by Jaspistos: In pre-1970 editions of Chambers Dictionary there were some remarkable definitions of certain words, for example ozone, middle-aged,...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for a poem offering advice to a young per- son about to get married. The hook-nosed shadow of Mr Punch delivering his single-word...

Front runner Jonathan Tisdall M arathon is not a word usually asso- ciated with a chess event but the recently concluded GM tournament in In- donesia easily earns this...

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A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 13 April. Entries to: Crossword 550, The Spectator, 5 6 Doughty Street, London WCIN 2LL. MI 11...