'Let me know how you get on.' T he IRA began a bombing campaign to disrupt the operation of democracy in Britain. A bomb at London Bridge railway station in the rush hour...

The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL Telephone: 071-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 071-242 0603 INVESTING IN VOTES M r John Smith, the shadow Chancel- lor of the...

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Mr Major prepares to make his appointment with the inevitable SIMON HEFFER Unfortunately for them, it is by no means certain they will win on 9 April either, which is why...

I like to have Radio 3 on in the back- ground while I work (the Third Programme as I still call it). To this end, I have an old but entirely serviceable radio and a couple of...

No time to separate the Tory Stinkers from the Tory Heroes AUBERON WAUGH Not having heard the programme, and knowing nothing about Widdecombe, I did not see how I could join...

Damian Thompson tries to unearth the religious beliefs of our political leaders, and finds a strange vacuum 'HE'S VERY reluctant to discuss these things in public,' says his...

Anne McElvoy on the far- reaching consequences of an athlete's fall from grace Berlin THE GOOD fairies certainly visited the cradle of Katrin Krabbe 22 years ago in the...

A reader sent us the following note which came with a game bought in Hong Kong: INTRUCTION I. Hold 'Magic Dish' with your hands. 2. Turn the color wafers with thumbs from any...

LAST WEEK I admitted a patient to the ward who claimed to have taken 80 of her pills all at once. She had cropped hair dyed bright carmine and a devil tat- tooed on her...

John Simpson on how Russian society has been rotted by the rush for western currency `RAISA AND I, we pay all the bills ... As soon as I started going to the shops I realised...

Clive James reacts to anti-Australian tirades with some choice epithets of his own GRIZZLED Aussie expatriates who thought they were safely holed up in this country have been...

Jonathan Davis celebrates the 25th anniversaiy of the landing of North Sea gas THERE has always been an endearing touch of pantomime in the story of this country's North Sea...

Michael Heath

TWO IRISH STORIES (TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR") Sir, — In the village where I live, I was in the habit of visiting two poor, infirm old women, one inhabiting the single...

Inspiring courage to mitigate ferocity PAUL JOHNSON T he most moving images in the newspa- pers last week were contained in the reports of the inquest into the deaths of four...

ANYONE who is chairman of the London money market and of the Cresta Run is used to living dangerously. Calculated risk, a more pompous man than Roger Gibbs might call it....

THE ELECTION campaign was close-run when Lord Cromer intervened. Speaking with the authority of a former Governor of the Bank of England, he told a television interviewer that...

Norman Lamont must run for his life or be turned into dog food CHRISTOPHER 1 -, II DES I can now forecast with confidence what will happen at 3.30 p.m. on Tuesday of next week....

NOTE on City etiquette: a friend of mine was commissioning invitation cards from a printer who is also a friend. Engraving? Yes, certainly. Gilded edges, rounded cor- ners? The...

WHAT worries me is the prospect of cheques on posterity, drawn by a Chancel- lor prepared to spend now and borrow later. Always at this time of year the Trea- sury leaks out...

Sir: Normally I couldn't care less about being collectively insulted by Boris Johnson (Tear and loathing in Antwerp', 1 Febru- ary): I have given up reading him in the Telegraph...

to be going anywhere else after he leaves us, but curiously wants a priest to despatch him. Assuming a man of God is willing to do the job, what words will he employ? Presumably...

Sir: Your correspondent Mr Prince writes to inform you (Letters, 29 February) that I am recorded as having formally resigned from the London & Bishopsgate companies on 17...

Sir: I was interested to read your Diary of 15 February. I too saw the French version of Elizabeth R and found it accurately dubbed (the English original being audible...

Sir: I read with interest Ludovic Kennedy's Diary (8 February) addressing the fact that, whereas so many people no longer 'believe', they nevertheless require some form of...

Sir: Your article, 'Can pay, won't pay', (15 February) makes one think that NHS patients should be billed with the costs of treatment which would be stamped 'Paid on your behalf...

22 February) he would have more chance of prompt medical attention if people who are not poor go private. Does it not occur to Mr Davies, and (alas) count- less people like him,...

Sir: Esprit d'escalier (staircase wit) is what one would have liked to say but has thought of, too late, on the staircase outside. Com- ing down the staircase from The Spectator...

Sir: William Dalrymple tells us (Playing the white man', 22 February) that 25,000 Anglo-Indians emigrated to America, Canada or Australia, and that 'only the old, the lazy, the...

Sir: In Venus in the Kitchen or Love's Cook- ery Book published in 1952, Norman Dou- glas who was the editor includes two recipes from the book of Cartolomeo Scap- pi, private...

Sir: Kate Berridge's article, 'Foundation course in women' (15 February) cannot be allowed to pass without comment. We are both in our last year at Marlborough Col- lege, a...

Sir: So my old friend Claus (no Santa he) von }Mow, whose company I have so often enjoyed on both sides of the North Sea, Channel and Atlantic since long before his fairy-tale...

The valley of the shadow of Liberalism Hugh Thomas THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN by Francis Fukuyama Hamish Hamilton, £20, pp. 418 h e present time may one day be...

J.L. Carr THE FABER BOOK OF SOCCER edited by Ian Hamilton Faber, £14.99, pp. 335 Q uite often, sitting through a parish church council meeting, I think that if an earnest pagan...

Raymond Carr L atin America is a boom and bust continent. Now you see it, now you don't. It was highly visible in the 1960s when Castro was the Messiah of the European left and...

David Nokes JAMES THOMSON, 1700-1748: A LIFE by James Sambrook Clarendon, £40, p.340 h e author of 'Rule Britannia' was born and raised in the bleak border country between...

Celestria Noel D avid Melrose won his rich American wife by making her bend her head and eat from a dish like a dog and later subdued her by making her eat overripe figs from...

The poet, trying to surprise his God composed new forms from secret harmonies, tore from his fiery vision galaxies of unrelated shapes, both even & odd. But God just smiled,...

William Scammell THE MAN WITH NIGHT SWEATS by Thom Gunn Faber, £11.99,5.99, pp.90 T om Gunn's early poetry was an engaging mix of up-to-the-minute subject matter and formal...

David Wright THE EMPEROR'S LAST ISLAND by Julia Blackburn Secker, .06.99, pp. 244 B arring Tristan da Cunha, the island of St Helena is perhaps the most remote, least visited,...

Small significance now for a long time. No terrible crisis. What I mean to say Is one friend or another fails to satisfy my needs For friendship (what, anyway, Are they?), fails...

Frederic Raphael MARCEL PROUST: SELECTED LETTERS, VOLUME III edited by Philip Kolb, translated by Terence Kilmartin HarperCollins, £40, pp.434 at writer more frequently...

Exhibitions 1 Kings over the water La court des Stuarts a Saint-Germain-en- Laye au temps de Louis XIV (Musee des Antiquites nationales, Chateau de Saint-Germain, till 27...

Cape Fear ('18', Empire Leicester Square) Dirty deeds Vanessa Letts R obert De Niro, as a witty and venge- ful psychopath, gives a great performance in this film, but we are...

Money, money, money Marcus Berkmann T he power of the cheque is a wondrous thing. When you're very young, you think little of cheques and cogitate instead on more serious...

Sarah Chalmers (New Grafton Gallery, till 14 March) Art of the Ancient Andean Cultures (Accademia Italiana, till 15 March) Communal arts Giles Auty I n the past week I have...

Uncle Vanya (Cottcsloc) All passion spent Christopher Edwards Y et another production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Why do the English like this particular play so much? Is it...

Back to Africa Martin Gayford W hat jazz actually is, though not beyond all conjecture, is a fairly puzzling question. These days old-fashioned Dix- ieland, bop and swing...

John Nash: Essex and Suffolk Landscapes (The Minories, Colchester, till 28 March) In a green shade John Henshall I began to tell myself, this is no place at all,' said John...

Open house Taki A Gstaad s everyone who has heard of Cartier, Van Cleef and Bulgari knows, Gstaad is the small, picturesque Alpine village that serves as winter home to the...

Back chat Martyn Harris S elf-consciousness came to television comedy with Monty Python's spoofing of newsreaders and continuity announcers ('And now for something completely...

Remembering Vita Nigel Nicolson O n 9 March 1892 my mother, Vita Sackville-West, was born at Knole. She might forgive me if I celebrate her cente- nary in what was always her...

A load off my mind Jeffrey Bernard I turned on the radio this morning at the crack of dawn as I always do to hear that an organisation called Mind has declared that millions...

cardboard boxes, a restaurant col- umn written in 1985, my first year of office, in which I lamented the impudent expen- siveness of restaurants. 'It has become almost...

Old fox Raymond Keene B ehind every great player there is a great second, or at least a supporter who boosts the champion's morale. Before the days of Soviet domination of...

12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY COMPETITION CaVAS RE 12 YEAR OLD SCOTCH WHISKY Lovely list Jaspistos I n Competition No. 1717 you were in- vited to supply a lovely list. I was...

of these two words: 24, 13 & 15 and 1A, 11 & 27. 24 can also be BRITSKA. Winners: Wilfrid Miron, Halam, Notts (£20); Miss D. Frances Milne, Shepton Mallet; Mrs K. Fowler,...

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...

A Times leader-writer recently proposed that the duel should be revived as a means of settling quarrels. Would it be swords or hypodermic syringes? Would women join the fray?...

Colour conscious Frank Keating THE PATRONISING cricket establish- ment continues to smirk into its whiskers over the World Cup players in Australia being decked out in...

Q. I attend a very well known public school. The fact that this school is in London means that almost everybody that my moth- er meets, when they hear that I go to this school,...