6 OCTOBER 1979

Page 3

Heeding the Pope

The Spectator

The Pope's Irish trip was stupendous. Even if nothing comes of it and Ireland resumes its ways unaffected by the experience, the memory will persist of an amazing expression of...

Page 4

The triumph of the Teds

The Spectator

Ferdinand Mount Brighton The man on the Guardian night news desk immediately recognised the familiar treacly voice, at once genial and threatening. 'If you must write these...

Page 5

Notebook

The Spectator

Brighton Max Beerbohm once began a review of Hamlet, 'And so once again the battlements of Elsinore loom into view. Heigh ho: And so once again the platform at Brighton Centre...

Page 6

The first 155 days

The Spectator

Auberon Waugh They say it is the cruellest thing you can do to a pit pony if you take it to the surface and show it the sky, the sun and the fields. After six years of writing...

Page 7

The Pope's message to England

The Spectator

Patrick Marnham Dublin People were still trying to leave Phoenix Park six hours after the Pope had gone to Drogheda. Many of those at Drogheda did not get back to Belfast till...

Page 9

Grime and heathens

The Spectator

Henry Fairlie Washington It has long been my belief that if the Roman Catholic Church still cared to protect the secular power, it would have removed Edward Kennedy from the...

Page 10

The Washington jitters

The Spectator

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Whatever was intended when Senator Frank Church was given permission to make the announcement about Russian troops in Cuba, the whole affair has...

Page 11

A glimpse of .peace?

The Spectator

Xan Smiley The Fijians may come to Zero. The announcement sounds absurd, but fits nicely into the Lancaster House game of riddles. The sunny-tempered, even-handed, sporting...

Page 12

A hundred years ago

The Spectator

The Bishop of Manchester has made an original speech on the Burial question. He rose altogether out of trivialities about rights of interment, and asked whether interment could...

Page 13

Hungary's tame intellectuals

The Spectator

Tim Garton Ash Budapest The uniformed doorman at the 'Hungaria', the grandest restaurant in Hungary, was apologetic, He was sorry not to be able to offer me a table, but the...

Page 15

Mr Prior and the mothers

The Spectator

Mary Kenny When I gave birth to my first child, I was a staff writer for the London Evening Stan dard, and I took five months off work to have the baby. During that time,...

Page 16

Mr Healey's short memory

The Spectator

Tim Congdon Mr Healey is a perceptive politician. He knows that, although the Labour Party may not be united on what it agrees about, it is united on what it disagrees with. As...

Page 17

The crimes of war

The Spectator

Sir: Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft, in his review of Max Hastings's book, Bomber Command (29 September), would have us shed tears over the Allied 'crime' in devastating German cities...

in memoriam

The Spectator

Sir: You may be aware of the formation of The Airey Neave Memorial Trust, under the sponsorship of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Prime Minister, Mr...

Sir: In his review of Max Hastings's Bomber Command last

The Spectator

week Geoffrey Wheatcroft Says so many things which are incorrect in s ubstance or by implication that I am at a . loss to know which one to shoot at, rather like Battle of...

What about Webster?

The Spectator

Sir:Auberon Waugh admirably summarises (15 September) the weaknesses of Collins English Dictionary (which only supplies sloppy modern usage) and the Oxford (which does not give...

Something afoot

The Spectator

Sir: It would be churlish to cavil at Auberon Waugh's review of dictionanes, with its generous praise of our own ephemeral effort. All the same, I cannot suppress a nagging...

Healey's record

The Spectator

Sir: While I applaud Mr Congdon's aim in wishing to see a reduction in the Govern ment's borrowing requirements (8 September), I think that he is mistaken in believing that any...

Page 18

The case for restoring the old counties

The Spectator

Christopher Booker So many letters have poured into the Spectator offices in the past few weeks, following my article 'Restoration of the old counties', that I must apologise...

Page 20

The history of a mistake

The Spectator

Ferdinand Mount 'Too remote? No, I don't think there's any danger of that.' The Minister sounded puzzled by the suggestion, as though the possibility were itself too remote to...

Page 23

Secrecy and corruption

The Spectator

Richard West When I worked as a reporter in Yorkshire more than 20 years ago, it was customary, if one was doing a local government story, to call on the Clerk to the Council...

'Who took away

The Spectator

Who took away our counties So rolling, wild and wide, And called them after posh hotels, Thamesdown and Humberside? And where on earth is Avon? Can it be holding yet The lovely...

Page 24

Westmorland men

The Spectator

Michael Wharton 'Retain your Loyalty; Preserve your Rights': these are the words inscribed on the old High Cross in front of the Castle gates at the upper end of the wide main...

Page 25

What should be done?

The Spectator

The delegates to next week's Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool will include a great many people who would probably be by no means unsympathetic to the general tenor of...

Page 26

A writer and his critics

The Spectator

Alex de Jonge The Nabokov-Wilson Letters 1940-1971 Ed. Simon Karlinsky (Weldonfeld £12.50) Vladimir Nabokov: A Tribute Ed. Peter Ouennell (Weidenfeld E6.95) I have always found...

Page 27

Ulster devolution demolished

The Spectator

John Biggs-Davison The Factory of Grievances: Devolved Government In Northern Ireland 1921-39 Patrick Buckland (Gill & MacMillan £13) 'The six counties were hardly handed over...

Page 28

Imposture

The Spectator

Benny Green Sherlock Holmes: thoMan and his World H.R.F. Keating (Thames and Hudson £5.50) By far the most revealing thing about this latest biography of Sherlock Holmes is...

Page 29

Random gossip

The Spectator

A.N. Wilson The Sickle Side of the Moon: The Letters of Virginia Woolf 1932-1935 Ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (Hogarth £12.50) Letters not addressed to oneself are...

Impressionist

The Spectator

Francis King The Skaters' Waltz Philip Norman (Hamish Hamilton £5.95) Carrying an epigraph from Baudelaire, 'PM plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mule ans', this book...

Page 30

Offshore Penelope Fitzgerald (Collins £4.50) Brothers at War Oliver Knox

The Spectator

(Collins £4.50) Penelope Fitzgerald prefaces her new novel about houseboat-dwellers on the Thames with a slyly apposite quotation from Dante; it comes from the point where Dante...

Page 31

Public and confidential

The Spectator

Hans Keller I 3 eethoven's Ninth will be heard under Solti in a live relay from Chicago next Wednesday (October 12) at 8 p.m, on Radio 3. An article on the Ninth at this point...

Page 32

Spectacles

The Spectator

Rodney Milnes Aida (Coliseum) Orontes (Riverside Studios) The last new production of Aida in London was 11 years ago at the Royal Opera. It cost around £80,000, which was...

Sliced life

The Spectator

Peter Jenkins Ecstasy (Hampstead) Men's Beano (RSC, Warehouse) The Passing Out Parade (Greenwich) Somebody once said that art consisted in leaving things out, or something like...

Page 33

Abstractions

The Spectator

John McEwen The unenviable lot of the successful middle-aged artist is that ordeal by fire, the mid-career retrospective. Currently it is the turn of John Hoyland (Serpentine...

Page 34

Beast in man

The Spectator

Ted Whitehead Woyzeck (Paris Pullman) Buchner's Woyzeck (AA) is astonishingly modern for a play written in I 836, resembl ing in its form and tone the work of today's younger...

Shirley's show

The Spectator

Richard Ingrams After months of sloth and ineptitude the BBC has at last been showing some signs of life. A whole host of new programmes was launched last week and I even found...

Page 35

Tina talk

The Spectator

Taki Peregrine Worsthorne once defended gossip in the Spectator's Notebook by pointing out that recounting gossip, and describing salon life, seemed far more socially relevant...

Basically

The Spectator

Jeffrey Bernard I returned to Soho this week after 18 months of self-imposed exile to bless what is left of my pathetically sheep-like flock. Frank Blake is still descending...

Page 36

Tal triumphs

The Spectator

David Levy After his magnificent result in Montreal earlier in the year, it comes as no surprise that Mikhail Tal has scored an outstand ing victory in the Riga Interzonal...