Parkinson's law N elson Mandela visited Britain to meet the Prime Minister amid controversy over his statement that the Government should hold official and unconditional talks...

Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071 - 2420603 A MAN, NOT AN ICON M r Mandela's triumphal progress t irough the United States before coming to Britain was...

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GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT W ell before Ascot and the Lord's Test, this year's Silly Season seems to have been and gone in the shape of Mr Hesel- tine's bid for greatness. He can still...

Mr Bush has broken with Reaganism by nice mess he has got himself into Washington 'OUR long national nightmare is over,' said Gerald Ford on the day that Richard Nixon resigned...

MODERN historians distrust the stor- ies of the Roman poisoner Locusta, and of the women who in Italy sold aqua tofana as the best means of satisfying jealousy, or hate, or...

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Michael Heath

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Sir: When your father was Chancellor of the Exchequer and said fascinating things at a private dinner party at my house no one present would have dreamed of re- cording them...

Her Majesty Queen Eli- zabeth the Queen Mother was, as your readers will have realised, no such thing. Rather it was an intolerable betrayal of a privileged and private...

Sir: Mr Ormond's reply (Letters, 30 June) to Gavin Stamp's justly severe criticism (Restoration farce', 9 June) of the Queen's House restoration is no more than a whitewash of...

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Sir: P. G. Wodehouse would not have contemplated going to tea with Hitler in 1939 (Competition, 30 June). According to Frances Donaldson's official biography he wrote, in 1939,...

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Sir: In his very interesting account of life under Quebec language laws (30 June), Murray Sayle states that 'McDonald's are getting away with their sign because it's a proper...

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Sir: I was outraged by the cheap vulgarity of Auberon Waugh's description of me as 'a militant Australian homosexual' (Another voice, 30 June). I know he is the Benny Hill of...

Greene's desk drawer James Buchan THE LAST WORD AND OTHER STORIES by Graham Greene Reinhardt Books, £11.95, pp. 150 G raham Greene has written half a dozen great short...

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Pocket Diary. Offering all the facts and figures that are essential to any Spectator reader, bound in soft black leather. Dates of major sporting events and festivals of arts...

I HAVE just returned from Tuscany, in the midst of the chianti classico country, where I was staying with my old Candid Camera mate Jonathan Routh and his wife Shelagh. They...

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the solutions to the unnumbered clues, in the order printed and without excluding the Ds to provide the unclued lights, are IN(D)1A (A), wEitt(D)s 18), (D)tuvEN (35), EN-...

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