T he year-long wrangle between Britain and Kuwait over the Kuwait Investment Office's 21 per cent stake in British Pet- roleum was resolved to both government's satisfaction...

SPECTATOR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone 01-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 DOCTORS AT SEA A t a time when career prospects for doctors have...

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Green thoughts in a blue shade NOEL MALCOLM W ill 1989 be the year of the Greens, or rather, of the greening of the major political parties in Britain? I doubt it. `Green'...

ANTHONY HOWARD C learing out your desk is a thoroughly therapeutic experience. The end of a seven-year stint at the Observer meant I had to do it last week — and I kept thinking...

Tramps and vagrants have nothing to do with the housing problem AUBERON WAUGH M y first job, after the army and a brief spell at Oxford, was as a researcher for Queen...

The Mayor of Nagasaki is receiving death threats for questioning the Emperor's role during the war. Ian Buruma investigates the different attitudes to war guilt of Japan and...

SOUSA JAMBA WHILE in Africa I had always associated Atlanta with three things: Andrew Young, the killing of black children and an advert for a skin-bleaching cream, Clear Tone,...

K. L. Billingsley investigates fiscal terror in America California IN BRITAIN the Charter 88 movement is demanding a Bill of Rights to counter what it sees as the autocracy of...

Patrick Leigh Fermor remembers `Andrew Kennedy', who died last month THE waning of last year was further darkened by the death of Andrew Ken- nedy. He died in Munich on 1...

The media: Paul Johnson looks back at the last year and forward into 1989 THE past year has been a rich and varied One for the British media, with many pluses and some...

The soothsayers hedge their bets JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE But the great man was notably un- abashed. Mother Nature, it seemed, had let him down — unseasonable droughts had played...

MY pioneer work on the City's•undercover geography has been enriched by Keith Cordwell of Lowndes Lambert, who tells me of a wet-weather route from Tower Hill station to Lloyd's...

I AM old enough to have gone to the very first press conference of Hambros Bank. `Are you going into unit trusts, Mr Ham- bro?"Well, yes, we do plan to start some.' `Why, Mr...

A scaring trip by Fraser Nash through the Home-buying Counties CHRISTOPHER FILDES M y cousin once owned a 1934 Fraser Nash of which he said that the engine would do 80 m.p.h....

I LEARN from the Wall Street Journal, which learned it from the Inland Revenue, which probably wrote to me but knows that I dare not open the envelope, that Britain is refusing...

FOR the man who has everything: a knighthood for Evelyn de Rothschild. It is the last in a tradition that honours the retiring chairman of the City's most exclu- sive club, the...

Sir: The spectacular collapse of the egg industry leads me to suppose that if there had been an abundance of eggs in Ger- many during the last war the late Sefton Delmer, the...

Sir: It may be instructive that the only legislative example offered by Anthony Barnett ('Why Britain is no democracy', 17 December) to support his Charter 88 de- mand for a...

Sir: Of course Jeffrey Bernard (Low life, 10 December) is right that Mozart would have made a fart sound divine. I don't know that he ever tried, but Osmin's low D, sustained...

Sir: We four members of the governing body were most distressed to see your newspaper (`Witch-hunters sabotaged' by Mark Almond, 17 December) publish mis- leading comments about...

Sir: I entirely agree with Lord Ports- mouth's regret (Letters, 17 December) that successive British Governments have failed to hold any inquiry into the repatria- tions of...

As great as he said he was Gavin Stamp MANY MASKS: A LIFE OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT by Brendan Gill Heinemann, f20, pp.544 A rchitects, on the whole, are a pretty dull lot. They...

Philip Mansel BYZANTIUM: THE EARLY CENTURIES by John Julius Norwich Viking, £16.95, pp. 408 W hat figures are more evocative than the four porphyry tetrarchs on the corner of...

Piers Paul Read THE BOOK OF GOD by Gabriel Josipovici Yale, f18.95, pp.350 F or some time I have been curious to know what some perceptive and agnostic critic would make of the...

J. L. Carr J. B. PRIESTLEY by Vincent Brome Hamish Hamilton, £16.95, pp. 512 J ohn Priestley (he awarded himself the B for Boynton) lived most of his childhood and youth...

Christopher Clapham THE TWO ZIONS: REMINISCENCES OF JERUSALEM AND ETHIOPIA by Edward Ullendorff OUP, L19.50, pp. 238 ETHIOPIA ENGRAVED edited by Richard Pankhurst and Leila...

Paul Webb FRANK RICHARDS: THE CHAP BEHIND THE CHUMS by Mary Cadogan Viking, f14.95, pp.258 I n the March 1940 edition of Horizon, George Orwell's attack on boys' comics...

Francis King EUGENE O'NEILL: SELECTED LETTERS edited by Travis Bogard and Jackson R. Bryer Yak, f19.95, pp.601 E ugene O'Neill was an extraordinary literary phenomenon: a...

Theatre Jolly good show Christopher Edwards The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood (Duchess) I n the Christmas issue I recommended, sight unseen, the Players' Theatre annual...

The Dressmaker ('15', Odeon Haymarket) Liverpool lass Hilary Mantel T his is Liverpool in 1944; Nellie, the dressmaker of the title, lives surrounded by her dead mother's...

Now is the time. . . Peter Watson calls on the auction houses to use some of their present bonanza to save the nation's heritage N ineteen eighty-eight was the year when both...

Critics at bay Giles Auty W hile attending a sermonless and somewhat dour service over Christmas, I had occasion to recall the most wonderfully misdirected sermon I ever...

A ;357 A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics MUSIC BBC Boulez retrospective, Barbican, 15-19 January. Each evening there...

Semele (Covent Garden) Endless pleasure Rodney Milnes I can't remember when I last enjoyed myself so enormously at Covent Garden, so much so that I must stop singing, dancing...

Looking on the bright side Zenga Longmore W e may not have enjoyed the telly this Christmas', I was told by a wise and trusted friend, tut at least the kiddies did. Glued to...

Sobering up Taki New York I don't know about you, but I badly need a rest from the holidays. The nights be- tween Christmas and the New Year are known to be dangerous to one's...

Norman defrosts Jeffrey Bernard W ell, it wasn't a bad Christmas real- ly. Only two saucepans were burned and the men who came to dinner brought me a lovely slice of Mozart...

Solving the priest shortage Alice Thomas Ellis We called at a nearby presbytery and the door was opened by a lay helper since the priest was out. Then we went to another one...

IN honour of the New Year I decided to go to a new restaurant, and one with its chef from the new world. Should I really have expected anything other than new dis- appointments?...

The best intentions Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1555 you were asked for a poem about New Year's resolutions. In this very building I have just over- heard one person say to...

Sweet charity Raymond Keene A t the 1987 World Chess Federation Cohgress in Seville the Spanish Interna- tional Master, Dr Ricardo Calvo, was declared persona non grata by...

' A'PEDNT " EGRALLIY N LI Er AGTI AIDE E CITiv L I N , %UGC I N A HI ALA S B %TOOL RONE S E N S N E W ALY 1-10SANNA L EINEREDGER l tVET '7 A 2 fIRIE DIInMI Xb A L 0 0 D TI L...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 for the first three correct solutions opened on 23 January. Entries to: Crossword 890, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street,...

The modern churchyard is usually unsight- ly and untidy. You are invited to write an `Elegy on a Country Churchyard' in the metre of Gray's famous poem (maximum 16 lines)....

To enable competitors to economise on postage, entries for one or more weeks of the competition and crossword may be posted together under one cover ad- dressed 'Competition...