Tackling violence M r Tony Worthington private mem- ber's Right of Reply Bill was killed off in the House of Commons; the Government announced a review of the conduct of the...

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The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 JAPAN INC. S t Francis Xavier said that the Japanese were morally the most...

Just another typically unusual Welsh election NOEL MALCOLM he Vale of Glamorgan, as visitors are constantly reminded, is a very untypical Welsh constituency. It contains not a...

h en you consider how they lecture the rest of us on how to behave, British newspapers are extraordinarily bad at managing their own affairs. Their audible relief when the Right...

A meditation on Russia's reasons for inviting the Queen of England AUBERON WAUGH I spent the year 1963 in southern France and so did not visit North Yorkshire to discover...

At the beginning of the second world war, Stalin thought he could do business with Hitler. Murray Sayle finds a fascist beneath the skin THE first political slogan that ever...

Timothy Garton Ash visits the shipyard that reflects Hungary's tensions Budapest COUNT Istvan Szechenyi decided, 160 years ago, to build a shipyard on Obuda island in the middle...

Doina Cornea sends a second letter of protest to Mr Ceausescu This is the full English translation of Doina Cornea's recent letter of protest addres- sed to President Nicolae...

John Casey discovers what happened to a student he met in Burma EVERY visitor knows the irritations of arrival in Rangoon, which arise from the determination of the Burmese...

Diana Geddes canvasses French opinions of Mrs Thatcher Paris FIVE years ago, at the height of Britain's fight over its contribution to the Common Market, the French voted Mrs...

THE populace of Vienna, usually quiet enough, has been rioting this week in a serious way. The popular mode of locomotion in Vienna, where the citizens go great distances to...

Michael Trend looks at the last ten years of Labour government WHAT an extraordinary ten years it has been since Mr Healey's tremendous — and unexpected — victory at the general...

Richard Ehrman asks why planners and developers take so little trouble over design IN THE next few months the Environment Secretary, Mr Nicholas Ridley, will have to find time...

Paul Webb argues that the captain of the Bounty was not such a monster THE 200th anniversary of the most famous naval mutiny of all time, the mutiny on the Bounty falls this...

The media: Paul Johnson thinks the idea of another press inquiry absurd WHEN Harold Wilson did not know what to do about a problem, or knew what to do but was afraid of the...

WALKING a precarious tightrope while preserving an open mouth is not the obvious way to achieve a soft landing. Nigel Lawson's tightrope is a metaphor supplied by his...

I WONDER if the Abbey National has had the necessary good idea which has so long eluded the makers of a share-owning democracy. For them the good news is that Britain now has...

Queen's Awards the City is out for a duck, hit wicket CHRISTOPHER FILDES h e message from the City of London is: Happy birthday, Dick Whittington's cat. From every lamp-post...

LLOYD'S of London's eyes are every- where, even in Glumso. From this dis- couraging dateline, which turns out to be a wayside railway station in Denmark, Lloyd's agents report...

Sir: Over the past years we have grown accustomed to the not infrequent appear- ance of hostile references to Peter Wal- ker's reorganisation of local government in 1972-4 that...

Sir: Murray Sayle's 'fascist scale' (`Adolf we hardly knew you', 22 April) is limited and misses out basic points about Hitler and Mussolini and allows some dubious fish into...

Sir: It is often forgotten that until 1 January 1973 the UK formed part of Efta LETTERS It is also little known that on that same date practically all restrictions on trade in...

Sir: I fully agree with Mr Michael Lewis ('Cheque-book publishing', 15 April) when he refers to the lunacy that currently riddles the publishing industry'. But having said that,...

Sir: With all the recent restrictions on Personal liberty originating in the in- nocuous sounding 'Home Office', is it not now time for a change of title for this department....

Sir: Jeffrey Bernard speculates in his arti- cle 'Living dangerously' (25 March) about Salman Rushdie's discomforts in his hide- out and says'... your room would get very stuffy...

Sir: You share Doughty Street with the Dickens lovers (of whom I am one), so Perhaps you will have realised that much of the ill-tempered criticism of President Nicolae...

Sir: J. G. Links (Letters, 15 April) is quite observant about middle-rungers who sur- round themselves with secretaries. It's exasperating here in Hong Kong: not only does one...

Sir: May I suggest a modification of Mr Michie's list of inconsiderate behaviour (Brushing up manners', 1 April)? Con- versation thrives ill under compulsion, and stands to gain...

gallery was received by The Spectator this week. Anthony d'Offay, 9 and 23 Dering Street, New Bond Street, London W1 . 01-499 4100. GILBERT AND GEORGE RE: Reproduction and...

The clubbable outsider Duncan Fallowell WILLIE: THE LIFE OF SOMERSET MAUGHAM by Robert Calder Heinemann, £15, pp.429 T d Morgan's Maugham (1980) gave us the man's essential...

Mark Amory BRIDGE: TRICKS OF THE TRADE by Terence Reese and David Bird Gollanez, £8.95, pp.144 R eading about bridge has several advantages over playing it: no waiting, no...

Cold lapis lazuli, Rocks hung above a cove, A harbour that the sea Labours to remove, And day by day succeeds. All that was long ago: Time changes, and times change; Only an...

Xan Fielding CAIRO IN THE WAR by Artemis Cooper Hamish Hamilton, £14.95, pp.354 hen I heard that Artemis Cooper was writing a book about wartime Cairo I asked myself (I was too...

Richard West A BRIGHT, SHINING LIE: JOHN PAUL VANN AND AMERICA IN VIETNAM by Neil Sheehan Cape, 15.95, pp. 880 I n Graham Greene's novel, The Quiet American, a brave and...

Fiction: The Stories of Edith Wharton, Volume I, selected by Anita Brookner, Simon & Schuster, £5.95 Stray by A.N. Wilson, Walker Books, £3.95 White Boy Running by Christopher...

Steven Runciman THE OXFORD BOOK OF ROYAL ANECDOTES edited by Elizabeth Longford OUP, £16, pp.546 W hat is an anecdote? In her introduc - tion to this entertaining anthology —...

This, said the poet, is the Muses' bower, The best address, as Milton thought, of any: That was before the poets were so many; The sweetness of the Muses has gone sour....

Anne Chisholm RULING PASSIONS by Susan Crosland Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £10.95, pp. 376 I t is not as easy as you might think to write a good bad book. Susan Crosland,...

Art history The jargonmongers' ball A university colleague of mine in the 1970s described American Studies as 'an academic dustbin'. If the recent Annual Conference of the...

M. Butterfly (Shaftesbury) An Ideal Husband (Westminster) Who breaks a butterfly? Christopher Edwards T he American playwright David Henry Hwang heard the surprising story of...

The Burning Secret (PG', Cannon Shaftesbury Avenue) Secret silliness Hilary Mantel S tefan Zweig, who died in 1942 and was extremely famous in his day, is now as unread as if...

regular cr i t i cs. OPERA hada, Glyndebourne (027 354 1111), 19 May. The Festival opens with a new production of Janacek's opera by the team that gave us last Year's Katya...

Peculiarly nasty Rodney Milnes here is a peculiarly nasty virus that can afflict otherwise perfectly sane production teams — those embarking on Wagner's Ring are especially...

Awash with Impressionists Peter Watson ponders the effects on the sale-room environment of a flood of high-priced works of art 0 ver oysters and sancerre at Green's champagne...

The uses of royalty Taki G New York lenn Bernbaum is the benevolent owner of Mortimer's, a gracious host and a man known for having rescued many an upper-class Brit with a...

Breakfast titbits Wendy Cope T he old television set in my bedroom, as I have mentioned before, only receives Channel 4 and BBC 2. Until recently I hardly ever watched...

Health food horror Jeffrey Bernard I have spent the last four days in bed, getting out of it only to heat up tins of soup or to make cups of tea. In that time I've used no...

Over- Alice Thomas Ellis 0 ne cannot really say that spring has come because it's been around since last November if I read the signs aright. I've seen the gorse in bloom for...

THE Gasworks is an extraordinary res- taurant. And it serves the most terrible food. Not bad good food, the sort you might get in any number of restaurants, but the real thing,...

is looking for someone with initiative, enthusiasm and commonsense to sell Classified Advertising to our expanding readership. He/she will also be working on the development of...

I HAVE received many letters following thy appeal for accounts of what the British actually eat — as distinct from what they bay — and how they eat it. There were also several...

Campo cornered Raymond Keene E r several months confusion has reigned over the outcome of the long running battle for control of world chess between two competing bodies....

Close encounter Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1571 you were in- vited to entertain us with an imaginary account of meeting a long-lost or mislaid parent in adult life. I'm...

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A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of 00 (or, for UK solyers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

be sung by any couple who are household names — Hengist and Horsa, Laurel and Hardy, Saatchi and Saatchi, Hobbs and Sutcliffe, for example. Entries to 'Com- petition No. 1574'...