L ord Tebbit suggested that the hopes of Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, for peace in Northern Ireland depended upon destruction of its union with Britain. The Prince of...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 A VALUABLE SERVICE B ureaucratic' is a term of abuse, and the Civil...

ALAN RUSBRIDGER A ny journalist who sets himself up as a moral arbiter of his colleagues invites scrutiny of his own professional perfor- mance. Take Martyn Lewis. Every time I...

Why does everyone hate the Unionists so? CHARLES MOORE Y ou have read plenty, and perhaps skipped more, about how to bring 'peace' to Northern Ireland, so I shall not add to...

Anne Applebaum discovers that, despite the Conservative Party's protestations, Britain is still out of step with Europe, and will go on being so Brussels FOR ANYONE accustomed...

WAS MRS THATCHER to blame? I think she had a part in it. The rot started when she (via the Queen) made her husband a baronet, and so her son a presumptive baronet. Yet she made...

Tim Llewellyn meets Yasser Arafat's landlord, a man with a big investment in the Palestinian settlement Jericho THE Hisham Palace Hotel, advertised by a rusting plaque nailed...

Matt Frei sees the state of modern Italy exemplified by a hospital in the heart of Mafia territory Palermo PALERMO'S SPRAWLING Ospedale Civico is a surrealist's dream. Enter...

A TERRIBLE gale broke over the United Kingdom on Saturday, and last- ed till Tuesday, with scarcely diminished violence. From the Orkneys to the Isle of Wight, the wind blew...

John Simpson meets some men from an organisation whose official existence is about to be acknowledged, after 80 years BUNDLED UP AGAINST the freezing rain in the Strand, I...

Theodore Dalrymple gives a doctor's jaundiced view of the exponential growth in health service bureaucracy THERE IS nothing people in positions of Power (except for us...

billion public borrowing requirement is not such a terrible thing THE FINANCIAL markets will judge Kenneth Clarke's Budget next Thursday by what it does to something called the...

Frances Neill returns to her native Ulster after an absence of 75 years I LEFT Co. Down in 1918. I am now 82. Since the Troubles which drove my father to take his young family...

Parliamentarian of the Year — the winners T he tenth annual Highland Park/Spec- tator Parliamentarian of the Year awards took place on Wednesday. The awards were presented by...

Whales waiting for feeding time in the Independent's sea of troubles PAUL JOHNSON T he future of the Independent, not indeed as a newspaper — that is assured but as a...

AS FOR the taxes on knowledge, I can do no better that to cite a classic judgment: `Taxes on the communications of minds, taxes on the distribution of information and ideas,...

I HAVE spent much of the last two week- ends on the West Coast main line, where trains were halted for hours because the electricity had been cut off. I found that worrying. In...

THIS WILL be his cue for the single malts. Every interest in the land has been pressing its pet tax reform on him, but none of them, I dare say, so comprehensive as this. At...

THE CHANCELLOR has graciously allowed the Bank of England a walk-on part in the Changing of the Interest Rate. To think that, not so long ago, the Radcliffe Committee advised...

The Gladstone test making wealth fructify in the pockets of the people CHRISTOPHER FILDES C hancellors measure themselves against William Ewart Gladstone. He sought to let...

TIP FOR Budget day from Huntingdon, where Captain Threadneedle's race was won in style by Tax The Devil. The Chan- cellor may be relieved to hear that Chiltern Hundreds finished...

Sir: I was 20 years at the Criminal Bar and then a criminologist. I refer to Paul John- son's disparagement (And another thing, 23 October) of British judges. He is right that...

Sir: How stunningly arrogant of Clifford Hughes to remark (Letters, 13 November), `After all, we Spectator readers are surely mainly male.' That's the sort of thing that makes...

Sir: My erstwhile partner in publishing, Anthony Blond, always was a bit shaky with his arithmetic — and not too hot on facts either (Books, 16 October). They Made Their Name...

Sir: As a lawyer and former regular soldier, I found Max Hastings' reply (Letters, 20 November) to Mark Urban's intelligent piece (No room for the mad squads', 12 November) not...

Sir: I have two small children, and whole- heartedly endorse Emily Smith's sentiments regarding children's radio (Letters, 13 November). Thirty years ago the last ever...

Sir: Mr Julian Critchley is proud of his cam- paign to prevent Aldershot and its environs being reassigned to Surrey, but after read- ing his eulogy of the county of Hampshire...

spEcnToR SUBSCRIBE TODAY RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £77.00 0 £39.00 Europe (airmail)._ 0 £88.00 0 £44.00 USA Airspeed 0 USS125.00 0 US$63.00 USA Airmail 0 USS175.00 0...

Sir: Thank you for the mention in the arti- cle 'Still fading away' (6 November), via the medium of Tabby Troughton, to whom I award 5 out of 10. She has quoted me as saying...

Curtain call Sir: James Buchan reviewing Rolf Georg Keith's book Goebbels (Books, 13 Novem- ber) mentioned an article on 25 February 1945 in Das Reich by Hitler's propaganda...

Sir: I wish to register my shock, horror and disgust at the appearance in your columns of the word 'asshole' in James Simmons' review of Paddy and Mr Punch by R.F. Fos- ter...

Sir: One must surely sympathise with Baron von Franckenstein, who feels rightly incensed if William Cash has demeaned a `very ancient European title' with a pair of quotation...

Sir: I was saddened that Mr lain Burgess did not address the content of my letter about the late King of the Belgians (Let- ters, 11 September), but instead saw fit to indulge...

Sir: What a shame that Damian Thompson should so misrepresent the issue of sus- pending presentation to benefices in the Church of England (`I\lot so divine inter- vention', 23...

Sir: I have just read Adam Nicolson's arti- cle on Greece CA fall from cultural grace', 13 November) with much interest. Whilst I agree that press criticism of Greece has often...

Sir: Having recently discussed the place of architecture in general education, I found your review of the Architecture and Child- hood exhibition interesting (Arts, 13...

A further selection of the best and most overrated books of the year, chosen by some of The Spectator's regular contributors P. J. Kavanagh Youn g Jason Goodwin, fascinated by...

The lists from Yale University Press are Consistently interestin g . I do not know the chief commissionin g editor at Yale, but he or she would be a soul mate if I did. Two Yale...

So much has been written about Dr John- son that one mi g ht have supposed there was little useful left to write, but Richard Holmes' Dr Johnson & Mr Savage (Hodder, £19.99) is...

Having cast it aside myself, I seem to have spent most of the year readin g autobiography. Streets ahead of the pack is Dirk Bogarde's A Short Walk from Harrods (Vikin g ,...

I hardly ever read autobiographies — well, usually a load of cunningly crafted lies, don't you think? — but Jill Tweedie's Eating Children (Viking, £15.99) attracted me and...

Sarah Toynbee, one of six sisters of that intelligent ilk, has compiled The Penguin Book of Games (£4.50), mainly for grown- ups, which are variously cruel, sexy, boister- ous...

Two books, each horrifying in its own way, rest in my memory, Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning (HarperCollins, £7.99) recounts in laconic detail the activi- ties of Reserve...

John Davies' A History of Wales (Allen Lane/Penguin £30) is a learned, thorough, unvainglorious, sensitive and subtle book, originally written in Welsh. It contains everything...

Fidel Castro by Robert E. Quirk (W. W. Norton, $35). The definitive biography of Castro and his regime. Or all you wanted to know about the Maximum Leader and were afraid of...

Blake Morrison's And When Did You Last See Your Father? (Granta, £1499) is partly a record of his own childhood and youth, partly an agonisingly unsparing account of his...

The Great Age of Watercolour by Andrew Wilton and Anne Lyles (Prestel, £48). Superb memento of a wonderful exhibition which should be produced every time someone says the...

Richard Mabey's nightingale book (Whistling in the Dark, Sinclair-Stevenson, £9.99) is enchantingly fresh and strange; it is a triumph of curious information and of...

The first volume of Martin Gilbert's The Churchill War Papers (Heinemann), covering his spell at the Admiralty from September 1939 to May 1940, is a tremen- dous mine of...

Reading, as a Booker judge, 115 novels this year has not in the least spoiled my appetite for fiction, but I will discreetly confine my comments here to non-fiction books. Three...

Two excellent memoirs: John Rae's Delusions of Grandeur (HarperCollins, £16.99) and Alistair Horne's A Bundle from Britain (Macmillan, £17.99). Rae, who was headmaster of...

The most enchanting book I read this year was the re-issue of Cecil Lewis's Sagittarius Rising (Greenhill Books, £15.95), a poetic memoir of his first world war experiences...

I much enjoyed and admired No Mosley's The Green Book of Poetry (Frontier Publishing, £14.95), not so much for its message as for its remarkable selection of poetry from a wide...

Of the many interesting books that were published this year, the one I would most like to have read is Sir Isaiah Berlin's The Magus of the North: T. G. Hamann and the Origins...

I enjoyed Joan Brady's Theory of War (Deutsch, £14.99), a first novel drawing on the author's own family history. Brady's hero is her grandfather, sold into slavery as a...

The most interesting book I have read this year is Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life by An drew Motion (Faber, £20). How surpris- ing Larkin's life turned out to be. Some- times I...

Give a gift subscription of The Spectator to a friend and we wi I give you a full size bottle of ten year old Glenmorangie Single Highland Malt. But hurry, we have only a...

My great favourite this year is unquestion- ably Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, her first novel (Black Swan, £5.99). It is a wonderful story, part magic, part...

The book I have most enjoyed this year (I have to say that I haven't read A Suitable Boy yet. It is so heavy to lift off the table) is In the Place of Fallen Leaves by Tim...

Two outstanding biographies: one fatly complete, stuffed with irresistible gossipy detail; the other elegantly concentrated on a single relationship; both superbly read- able....

The longest — and best value between hard covers — book that came my way in 1993 was without doubt Gore Vidal's collected book reviews (United States: Essays 1951-1992,...

My love, my softy, my brown swan, swimming now in the brimming river of my affections . . . Will you swim on forever and forever? My love, my freckled gardener busy with balm...

Robert Oakeshott BRITISH IMPERIALISM: VOLUME I: INNOVATION AND EXPANSION 1688-1914, VOLUME II: CRISIS AND DECONSTRUCTION 1914-1990 by P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins Longman,...

Anne Applebaum FIRE WITH FIRE by Naomi Wolf Chatto, L. 11.99, pp. 378 F ire With Fire is an odd work. Neither fiction, nor journalism, nor criticism, nor autobiography, it...

Edward Chancellor THE RED QUEEN: SEX AND THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN NATURE by Matt Ridley Viking, L17.99, pp. 405 Mankind is a self-domesticated animal; a mammal; an ape; a social...

Next door to me lives Don Henriquez, Dubbed 'The Blade' by one and all; In fact between my room and his There's just one thin dividing wall. The Salamancan ladies swoon To see...

David Montrose PRONTO P ennies only started dropping re Elmore Leonard when he struck paydirt, with Glitz, in 1985. His 14 previous crime novels, mostly excellent, had earned...

Karan Thapar ZULFI BHUTTO OF PAKISTAN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES by Stanley Wolpert OUP, £25, pp.448 A good biography is one that reveals its subject in a new light This certainly...

Andrew Barrow FOXHUNTING IN PARADISE by Michael Clayton John Murray, £19.99, pp. 276 I have always been fascinated by hunting folk. As a child I was taken to various meets of...

Felix Pryor THE CANDLEMASS ROAD by George MacDonald Fraser Harvill, £12.99, pp, 156 I must confess to having something of a problem with the Flashman books for which George...

John Gross THE COLLECTED AND RECOLLECTED MARC edited by Mark Amory Fourth Estate, £25 M ark Boxer was a vivid personality in life, and he remains one in death. To recall him...

Alan Coren I t is a bit bloody peculiar, reviewing books which will never be read by the per- son to whom the review is addressed. Normally, when a hack sits down to assess a...

John Colvin R epulse and Prince of Wales, unsupported in the air, were sunk off Malaya by Japanese bombers on 10 December 1941. Among those killed was Captain John Leach, Flag...

John McEwen SIR JOHN LAVERY by Kenneth McConkey Canongate, 130, pp. 232 T his is a worthwhile book about a worthwhile artist, 'modest and retiring' in character but who enjoyed...

Erica Wagner SLOW WALTZ IN CEDAR BEND by Robert James Waller Heinemann, f9.99, pp. 197 R obert James Waller is clearly a man With a knack for sniffing the zeitgeist on the...

anything to read'. Compared with, say, films or music, modern literature is suprisingly ill-served with overviews for the man in the street. Yet a good deal of information to...

His garden was filled with wings that summer. There were birds and insects of all kinds and colours. He did not, for months on end, hanker after angels. In fact that wasn't...

Architecture David Hamilton, Architect, 1768-1843: Father of the Profession (Stirling's Library, Glasgow, till 26 Novem- ber; Matthew Gallery, University of Edin- burgh, 30...

Angels in America (Cottesloe) Angels in disguise Sheridan Morley A t a time when our leading home- made dramatists are still on the run from anything which might even...

A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics MUSIC Berlioz's grand opera The Trojans will be given three complete concert...

Lohengrin (London Coliseum) Die Zauberflote (Covent Garden) Lohengrin and bear it Rupert Christiansen T o be quite honest with you, I think Lohengrin is a terrible bore....

Oracular wit Giles Auty O ne of the more depressing aspects of exhibitions by thrusting young artists is the number of lost-looking art students they attract. The students'...

The Kentucky Cycle (Royale Theater) Kentucky epic Douglas Colby ' T he small incident in 1775 that begins Robert Schenkken's The Kentucky Cycle is the archetype of all the...

Cool castaway Taki A New York hack from the diary section of the Times rang earlier this week and asked me whether I was surprised to be appearing on Desert Island Discs this...

A first-rate bastard Martyrs Harris I f you did not know such a thing was impossible you would think that Prince Charles was actually conducting a public relations campaign on...

Eminently suitable Nigel Nicolson I f today I walked into a London club dressed exactly as I would have dressed in 1938, nobody would give me a second glance. But if in 1938 a...

A breath of fresh air Jeffrey Bernard I went out last week for the first time in a month. I hobbled on someone's arm to L'Epicure for lunch, tasting cold but fresh air at...

Guinea and The Piggy in Leices- ter Square where you could eat as much as You liked for a guinea. They kept the place frightfully hot (to 'maximise bar profits'), but an uncle...

DIARY 1994 T he Spectator 1994 Diary, bound in soft burgundy leather, will shortly be available. With a new layout and a whole week to view, Monday to Sunday, the diary is 5" x...

CHESS SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA THE WORLD CHESS FEDERATION (Fide) has suffered a terrible crisis this year. Its version of the world championship between Anatoly Karpov and Jan...

dozen given words, in any order, into a plausible piece of prose. As ever, this old favourite elicited a big response. I am left with only enough room to fit in a request to...

t k i rOCIAL 4 1 , 11.1 U V ERR A 43 2 t'SYCHE B 9 R I i EEALL IS E 't N V SI I 19 AI R S U P E P' P A 0 2 1 , R 0 I. 't 2 i- 7 A M 3 11 A' D DI I I UlAJI El N 3 tNOS IIS N...

You are invited to compose a drinking song (maximum 16 lines) in praise of, and to accompany the consumption of, a par- ticular drink. Entries to 'Competition No. 1809' by 9...

[ j GRAHAM 9 S PORT CROSSWORD W&J. GRAHAM'S PORT 1137: Stem by Mass A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct...

An awesome victory Frank Keating THE ALL BLACKS of New Zealand were awesome at Murrayfleld on Saturday in posting a unique half-century of points in the 120 years that...

Q. My predicament is this. I have a wonder- ful, patient and competent secretary. Her one fault is invariably to arrive five to ten minutes late every morning, past the agreed...