'I still can't see anything.' B allot papers were distributed to ambulance crews as union leaders recom- mended their memberships to agree to an offer of a 17.6 per cent pay...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 WHO SUPPORTS MANDELA? f Nelson Mandela accepts the many invitations to come...

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They sought it with symbols, they sought it with care NOEL MALCOLM I n November 1988 Patricia Hewitt, the Labour Party 'policy co-ordinator' (and former press secretary to...

MARTYN HARRIS ollowing the World in Action report this week on mad cow disease, I found myself visiting a dairy farm, where I learned that the modern cow can now produce 16...

Despite the dying of communism, Mark Almond fears the renaissance of appeasement Even before the humiliation of the San- dinistas last Sunday, there was a whiff of de- cay...

Lord Salisbury is getting into arrears with his Bishops. The Bishop of Bangor is resigning, the Bishop of St. Albans is resigning, and the Bishopric of Durham has been vacant...

The Channel Tunnel is a project that will fly better than Concorde, argues Edward Whitley FORTY thousand feet above the embryonic Channel Tunnel lies one of the few flight...

Charles Moore argues that perestroika has so far brought Soviet Jews only the means of escape Moscow WE are all Eminent Persons. In the view of the Soviet and Academic...

Michael Heath

James Bowman is chilled by an example of American television censorship Washington 'IT'S NOT so much that I write well — I just don't write badly very often, and that passes...

This is the first in our Lent series on English spiritual writers. C. S. LEWIS (1898-1963) seems to have been kidnapped by two extreme camps recently. One, notably strong in...

Anne Applebaum meets the unlikely nationalists of Moravia Brno NO MORAVIAN flags were flying from the lamp-posts of Brno to mark the first meeting of the Moravian Nationalist...

John Simpson returns to Czechoslovakia and confronts a spooky seductress Prague I WALKED through the familiar double doors with a certain apprehension. This was not the kind...

Ross Clark attends the hearing of a man accused of cheating in his degree examination IT WAS a great disappointment to me when I was at university to see how academic minds...

Lewis Bessemer refuses to be worried by the weather A YEAR ago, in the middle of a winter that has been recorded as the warmest for at least 300 years, there appeared on the...

Who's for Gaia? A DESIRE to see All Creation as One appears to have dogged the human race since the year dot. In the year 1960- something it found new expression from a...

George Gale remembers the journalist, who died this week IN THE early 1950s the Clachan in Mitre Court off Fleet Street, by the side entrance to El Vino, was a dark and grubby...

The media: for Paul Johnson it is not BBC bias that hurts but having to pay for it YOU have to hand it to Woodrow Wyatt: for an old codger in his seventies who has been...

The awkward problem of seating heads of state and government JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE I t was Sir James Goldsmith who first drew my attention to the existence of the 'placement...

Sir: If Michael Cullup wants to pursue a career in journalism he ought to start by getting his facts right (`Savage Greenery', 10 February). Last year Friends of the Earth,...

Sir: Following the strange award of £1.5m damages against Count Nikolai Tolstoy in the recent libel action brought by Lord Aldington, the Georgina Tolstoy Family Fund has been...

Sir: Your correspondent Richard Wynne (Letters, 17 February) trots out yet again the old canard that most of the wealth is owned by a very few. If you capitalise the benefits...

Sir: Norman Stone (3 February) does Spectator readers a disservice in his review of Vaclav Havel or Living in Truth. Since the vision of a nuclear-free Europe prom- oted by CND...

Sir; Let me assure Jennifer Paterson (Food, 13 January) that the plough is brought to the chancel arch of Pevensey Church every Plough Sunday to begin the farming year. As the...

Sir: Now that Keith Waterhouse has im- mortalised the unwell Jeffrey Bernard, and is presumably looking about for further inspiration, perhaps I may be permitted to respectfully...

Sir: I am another ardent reader of The Spectator who, like David Astor and Steven Rawson (Letters, 13 January), would be relieved if Wallace Arnold might take his unedifying...

in the pages of your 'organ' — dread word — (Letters, 13 January) especially one who in his day wrote with such erudition and modesty. If today his wit has dimmed a little and...

Sir: I was dismayed to read `Thulium Snow' (Scenes from science, 17 February), in which William Cooper describes the work of Dreadco without giving it due credit. My company...

Sir: One hesitates to take issue with Islamic experts, but the statement (Diary, 10 February) that there is nothing in Islam to imply that the meaning of the Scripture is not...

Sir: What a lucky little chap Henry Bowen is to have such a clever Mummy to intro- duce him to The Spectator cartoons (Let- ters, 17 February). I'm a Granny and have no one to...

CONSERVATIVE. A word now used by television announcers and in the press to describe hard-line Marxists and socialists in the Soviet Union and other communist countries. Nigel...

Time for some Mary A. N. Wilson MICHAEL RAMSEY: A LIFE by Owen Chadwick Oxford, £17.50, pp.422 MICHAEL RAMSEY: A PORTRAIT by Michael De-la-Noy Collins, L12.99, pp.268 A...

Anita Brookner POSSESSION: A ROMANCE by A. S. Byatt Chatto &Windus, £13.95, pp.528 A ntonia Byatt's publishers compare Possession with The French Lieutenant's Woman on the...

are taking Izzy Plotnik died and went to heaven And saw from the Lord's eyes that His heart was breaking. On a scale of one to ten, You expected a ten? Cried Izzy. Forgive me,...

Charles Glass THE SLOPES OF LEBANON by Amos Oz, translated from the Hebrew by Maaurie Goldberg-Bartura Ghetto & Windus, £13.95, pp.246 I n his introduction to this collection...

Philip Warner I HAVE SIND: CHARLES NAPIER IN INDIA 1841-1844 by Priscilla Napier Michael Russell, £16.95, pp.327 ARMIES OF THE RAJ: FROM THE GREAT INDIAN MUTINY TO...

Paul Barker THE END OF NATURE by Bill McKibben Viking, £12.99, pp.212 W hy are Americans so given to Mani- cheanism? There is good; there is evil; between them lies a...

John McEwen PAINTINGS IN THE MUSEE D'ORSAY by Robert Rosenblum Stewart, Tabori & Chang (distributed by Little, Brown and Co), £50, pp.686 h e conversion of the Gare d'Orsay...

J.M.A. Rees DEAFNESS: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT by David Wright Faber, £4.99, pp.201 SEEING VOICES by Oliver Sacks Picador, £12.95, pp. 186 h e titles of these two books could...

Exhibitions Thomas Esmond Lowinsky (Tate Gallery, till 16 April) William Rothenstein (Max Rutherston, till 16 March) Fifty years on Giles Auty W e will only really know...

When We Dead Waken (Almeida) Exchange (Vaudeville) On the high slopes Christopher Edwards h e ruthless sacrifice of human rela- tionships to art is a familiar theme in the...

Sans Etiquette (ICA, till 31 March) Spring Loaded (The Place, till 31 March) Chicken feathers Deirdre McMahon I n its inaugural season, Sans Etiquette, which promises to be...

The bottom line Robin Simon Let her belly be soft But to keep me aloft Let her bounding buttocks be marble. C anova's 'Three Graces', which may now be rescued for this...

Big band believers Martin Gayford A liking for jazz in any form strikes many people as a mysterious aberration of taste, but within that general incomprehen- sion there are...

A passion projected Hilary Mantel I n the small Sicilian town of Giancaldo, the Paradiso cinema is a kind of alternative church. The priest is a good customer. He sits with a...

„ra_ a,. ARTS DIARY ,_, A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics DANCE Rambert Dance Company, Sadlers Wells Theatre (278 8916),...

Ad squeak Wendy Cope h e world is full of great commer- cials,' said the actress. She was speaking to a vast roomful of advertising people, one of whom was about to receive an...

Small whirlwind in Brixton Zenga Longmore M ention the word 'half-term' to Olumba, and witness a man shudder like a faulty washing-machine on rinse. The reason for this...

Free speech Taki I'm Walking Behind You' was the name of a popular song of the Fifties, but some nasty schoolmates of mine used to refer to it as the Greek national anthem. It...

Bouts limes Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1614 you were in- vited to write a poem using given rhyme- words in a given order. The rhyme-words were from the con- cluding lines,...

Gladiators Raymond Keene h e annual tournament in Linares (Andalucia, Southern Spain) is one of the highlights in the calendar. The line-up is always impressive and the tally...

This is an old chestnut which I have resisted for nine years, but a correspondent has persuaded me. A poem, please (max- imum 16 lines), in which each line is a line of an...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers English Dictionary — ring the word 'Dictionary') for the first three correct solutions...

dedicated to (across) heathen gods (see Brewer). Winners: Charlotte, Lady Reay, Melrose (f20); R.J. Hough, London N5; Mrs P. Davies, Kenilworth. A , m i.s E4N .1 6:1. O'L L 0...

I HAD always planned to go to The Quality Chop House in the old days, when, driving to work, I would see this old- fashioned little place in the Farringdon Road. It looked like...