M r John Major, the Prime Minister, announced that Britain would agree to a voting scheme in the EC to which he had announced `no surrender' a few days earli- er. Mr Major's own...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 SIZE ISN'T EVERYTHING J ohn Major has justified his imitation of the...

many readers will have experienced a delay in receiving their copy of last week's Spectator. We apologise for this.

An ideal time for someone to found Forza Inghilterra SIMON HEFFER H ad Mr Major and fixed principle not been such strangers, he might have found the strength to face down our...

ROBERT HARRIS 0 . ne of the great advantages of being a writer, it's always said, is that you can live anywhere. As my wife and I have two chil- dren under the age of four, we...

What sort of world order will follow the collapse of manners? AUBERON WAUGH I wonder if events in the Orient Express on St Valentine's Day this year might be used as a...

Anne Applebaum argues that the Foreign Office is hated for what it cannot help revealing: Britain's declining place in the world DOUGLAS HURD reaches a compromise about...

IT IS kind of Mr Falloon (Letters, 26 March ) to point to a 15th-century ori- gin of lynch. The trouble is that he is wrong. He suggested that the word came from the filicide...

John Simpson describes General Rose's method of banging heads together in Bosnia, and suggests a suitable reward FOR SARAJEVO, the war is over. You can see it on people's...

persist. . . ONE EVENING last week, as I was lying in bed reading about the rise of religious persecution in the 11th and 12th centuries (I have always had diffi- culty...

Andrew Kenny, a Natal resident, argues that the vicious violence of his homeland obscures a banal truth: every side believes in the Coca-Cola culture Richards Bay, Zululand...

Robert Cottrell interviews Sir Percy Cradock, and finds Mrs Thatcher's favourite mandarin crosser than ever with the Governor of Hong Kong THERE IS a short-sighted Stuart...

Anthony Sampson says that the Scott Inquiry has revealed the truly undemocratic nature of the governance of Britain FOR SOMEONE who has spent many years investigating and...

Ross Clark, continuing our series on England, describes a county no one loves, but where everyone seems contented MOST English landscapes have been doc- tored by the hand of...

THERE can be little doubt that the increasing consciousness which accom- panies civilisation increases greatly the tendency to suicide. A sort of epidemic of the crime is raging...

An elegy to a tall Highlander with whom I walked the hills PAUL JOHNSON T he worst thing about growing older is not the decline of physical powers — I can steel myself to that...

MY CAMPAIGN for levelling out summits took a step forward this week, when the Group of Fifteen nations gathered in New Delhi for a three-day summit meeting and found themselves...

A WONDERFUL week for jobsworths. From All Fool's Day onward, every finan- cial business must have a Money Launder- ing Reporting Officer. Tens of thousands of fussy letters and...

SIR JOHN Banham thinks that Members of Parliament lack the money they need for their work. The Confederation of British Industry's former director-general, now prescribing for...

ONE CATCH in Mr MacGregor's offer showed up this week, when British Rail parted with its Waterloo and City line, fondly (well, fairly) known as the Drain. I have always thought...

MacGregorail regrets the delay to its special guess who won't board the train CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he franchised train now standing on Platform One has been delayed, and will...

LATEST FROM the Underfund is a cam- paign urging us all to take the tube to Olympia this weekend, to see a flower show. The point is made with a poster showing tulips in bloom,...

Sir: John Mortimer is right to say that good dramatic plots are hard to come by (Diary, 26 March). He might have added, however, that they are sometimes there under one's very...

Sir: 'Rave reviews and true music drama' (Arts, 19 March) are mighty fine things but not fine enough to overcome the fact that the prices at Covent Garden are too bloody high...

Sir: To Dear Mary's correspondent, who recommends a dustpan and brush to clear up Lego (Dear Mary . . ., 26 February), may I make an even better suggestion? — insist that the...

Sir Tom Mackinnon (Letters, 19 March) is morally defective if he cannot distinguish between Oleg Gordievsky, who spied against a totalitarian regime, and Aldrich Ames, who spied...

Sir: Concerning Mid's offer of a bottle of retsina for the reader who can guess exactly the percentage of his liver still functioning (High life, 19 March), I suggest 12 per...

Sir: So the bilious Dr Dalrymple has made a diagnosis of 'Dalrymple's Disease' ( If symptoms persist . . . , 19 March). A young woman wishes to understand herself in order to...

Sir: I share John Plender's concern ('An unerring eye for the vulnerable', 19 March) over the mis-selling of personal pensions. Few of us thought that the pensions indus- try...

RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £77.00 D39.00 Europe (airmail) „ 0 £88.00 0 £44.00 USA Airspeed 0 US$125.00 0 US$63.00 USA Airmail 0 US$175.00 0 US$88.00 Rest of Airmail ID...

Sir: Mr Buchan is right in describing Mas- signon's work as a masterpiece (Letters, 5 March). But let non-French readers not be deterred — there is a magnificent English...

Sir: Boris Johnson ('Donnez-moi un break', 26 March) refers to `walk-in' bathrooms. There's some other kind? Hazel Threlfall 38A Rossiter Road, London SW12

In Tom Shone's review of Tony Curtis: the Autobiography (Books, 5 March) he refers to 'his lousy Roman accent in Son of Ali Baba: "Yondah lies the castle of my Fad- dah." ' The...

Sir: So Paul Johnson thinks the heroine of Northanger Abbey was called Cathleen Moreland (And another thing, 19 March). Even if he hasn't read the book for years, didn't it...

Sir: All lovers of National Hunt Racing will applaud Lord Oaksey's praise of Peter Scu- damore, i.e., record-breaking jockey (Books, 12 February). But the venerable Oaksey...

Sir: It would appear that children long ago stopped learning about Wellington and Nelson (Diary, 19 March). British Rail's 1994 international tourism brochure tempts us to visit...

Sir: John Mortimer's story about Michael Redgrave and his all-hearing hearing-aid struck me as too good to be true (Diary, 12 March). By strange coincidence, a very sim- ilar...

Sir: The tone of 'Portrait of the week' of 19 March was overly flippant; I rather liked it. Kate Seal 4/5 Long Walk, Stockley Park, Middlesex

Sir: Tastes vary, but I am surprised that John Mortimer saw fit to put together that excremental anecdote about my father Basil Dean being blackballed by the Gar- rick Club...

Sir: I was interested to read Andro Lin- Mater's review of Warren Farrell's book (Books, 19 March). I had always under- stood that in the first world war the British army used...

Moorish and wild Jane Gardam CHARLO1 1E BRONTE: A PASSIONATE LIFE by Lynda11 Gordon Chatto, £17.99, pp. 418 C harlotte Brontë 150 years after her death is so familiar to us...

Eric Jacobs HOW LATE IT WAS, HOW LATE by James Kelman Secker, £14.99, pp. 374 T his novel is not reader-friendly. Its 374 pages are not divided into parts or chap- ters. The...

Tony Gould T hese two lively and entertaining books about Spain appear, by serendipity, at the same time. They overlap at several points, since both have a literary bent and...

Robert Service RUSSIA UNDER THE BOLSHEVIK REGIME by Richard Pipes Harvill, £25, pp. 608 T he October Revolution of 1917 is the crucial event of this century. It not only...

Byron Rogers THE HIPPOPOTAMUS by Stephen Fry Hutchinson, £14.95, pp. 272 T hose of you ambitious of sexual congress with an adult horse should turn at once to page 139, where...

John Wells JOAN'S BOOK by Joan Littlewood Methuen, £20, pp. 796 his is a book that anyone who works in T the theatre, loves the theatre or hates the theatre, is under an...

Christopher Potter EVEN ODDER PERCEPTIONS by Richard L. Gregory Routledge, £20, pp. 268 H a-ha and peculiar, Professor Gregory is determined to prove that it is a funny old...

Nigel Spivey MODERN PHILOSOPHY by Roger Scruton Sinclair-Stevenson, £25, pp. 611 S crutonise is not a verb that yet exists, but — at the risk of raising an already prominent...

Alan Campbell OUR ABLEST PUBLIC SERVANT: SIR EYRE CROWE, 1864-1925 by Sibyl Crowe and Edward Corp Merlin, 117.95, pp. 522 T his is the biography of a remarkable man — the title...

Architecture An everlasting pyramid Elizabeth Mortimer is startled by the Grand Louvre project which aims to ensure Paris as one of the world's most splendid cities F Paris...

Kevin Sinnott (Flowers East till 17 April) John Monks (Paton Gallery till 24 April) Roland Collins (Michael Parkin till 15 April) Purposes of painting Giles Auty T oday, as...

The sound of a girl saying 'Yes' Martin Gayford I t is quite possible to make an important contribution to jazz without blowing a horn or beating a drum. The late Eddie...

Paul Merton (London Palladium) The Case of the Rebellious Susan (Orange Tree, Richmond) Hot Shoe Shuffle (Queens) What the poodles wanted Sheridan Morley W est End theatre...

Backbeat (`15', Selected Cinemas) Softly Softley Mark Steyn N ot for the first time, the poster sells the picture short: `He had to choose between his best friend, the woman...

The worst word imaginable Martyn Harris B ugger, I discovered on Saturday bene- fit of Auberon Waugh, had nothing to do with anal intercourse in its origin but derives from...

Dust to dust Taki Charles Glass, a Speccie contributor and ex-hostage in Beirut, needs no introduc- tion. Suffice it to say that he's so good- looking, female security guards...

London from my wheelchair Jeffrey Bernard T aki came to see me last week and brought with him a beautiful roll of sirloin of beef and the Marchioness of Bristol. I am still...

The art of being rude Nigel Nicolson R udeness must be spontaneous, an explosion of annoyance couched in lan- guage so outrageous that one cannot help but envy it, like Alan...

I AM fairly sure that I have never eaten a meal cooked by Mr Marco Pierre White, Mr Nico Ladenis, Mr Anton Mosimann or the brothers Roux. Perhaps a restaurant critic should not...

Very short story Jaspistos IN COMPETITION NO. 1823 you were invited to write a very short story (max- imum 250 words) in which the last sentence contains the phrase, 'the art...

SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA CHESS 49 14 JiLL/C2M1111 SPAIN'S FINEST CAVA The top ten Raymond Keene THE ARTICLE LAST WEEK speculat- ing as to whether Karpov's performance at Linares...

w a GO The unclued lights are all WAVES of some sort or other, as the title suggests. First prize: E. Looby, Birmingham. Runners-up: J. A. M. Baldwin, Banbury, Oxon; Roger...

Beachcomber's outrageous social intruder, Captain Foulenough, often whistled or sang 'Flossie's the girl for me', but we never learn what the rest of the words were. You are...

PORT W J GRAHAM'S PORT CROSSWORD 1153: Men of letters by Doc A first prize of £25 and a bottle of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port for the first correct solution opened...

The Glasgow boys Frank Keating WHEN Manchester United beat Aston Villa just before Christmas the victory took them to a seemingly unassailable 14-point lead in English...

Dear Mary. . . Q. I have a friend who is a compulsive anecdotalist. His anecdotes are always hilariously funny and he tells them very Well, yet there is a limit to the number...