Cartwright has a sharp, Waugh-like way with dialogue and he is good on location: Masai Dreaming does for Africa what Look At It This Way did for contemporary London - gets it right. How often do chief secretaries to the Treasury find themselves mobbed (decorously) by autograph hunters?'I'm very impressed: I think he's super]' said Lynn Wain, a delegate from Brentwood 'He speaks directly and he's cerebral. Advocates say the method is becoming increasingly popular.A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'We have already asked the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit in Oxford to look into water birth'; pounds 85,161 has been made available for its research.Janet Balaskas, an author and the founder of the Active Birth Centre which promotes and provides birthing pools for hospital and home use, said there are between 60 and 70 pools available in hospitals and about 300 hired out regularly. The foreign correspondents flocked to interview him.'This is the ghost that was seen in Russia last week when Vladimir Zhirinovsky's party, calling itself Liberal Democratic, but in fact anti-Semitic, authoritarian and ultra-nationalist, captured 24 per cent of the vote in the parliamentary elections.Zhirinovsky has been portrayed as a buffoon, but he is no newcomer to politics. And there is a hush, an aura of solemn significance, which one wishes authors - all right, I admit it, especially non-Jewish authors - did not feel they could borrow when all other inspiration fails them. My fax from North West Water, however, suggested that the issue was a lot less clear-cut.The countryside looked beautiful as I approached from the east, driving through the village of Dunsop Bridge to pass into the Trough of Bowland. The sheer comfort of knowing, as you drag yourself out of bed on the first real day of winter that at least your feet are going to enjoy the next half hour, was enough to make up for the shame and mortification of being a slipper owner.These slippers, bought at a craft centre at Aldringham, had long since split at the seams and ceased to do their job I had idly kept an eye open for replacements No dice.

The master is then developed, to dissolve away the exposed areas to form minute pits.The operator then coats the pitted glass master with a thin layer of silver, to grow a metal master or 'stamper'. Four women - Clare Short (Tribune chair), Dawn Primarolo (women's parliamentary committee chair), Joyce Quin (trade) and Hilary Armstrong (education) - all scored 70 votes or more, providing claims for front-bench posts among the also-rans.Voting, with last year's placings in parenthesis: 1 Gordon Brown 165 (1); 2 Tony Blair 150 (8); 3 Robin Cook 149 (2); 4 Frank Dobson 140 (7); 5 John Prescott 137 (16); 6 Bryan Gould (5), Harriet Harman (-), Mo Mowlam (-), Chris Smith (-) - all 135; 10 Ann Clwyd 133 (4); 11 Ann Taylor 129 (9); 12 Jack Cunningham 124 (12); 13 Michael Meacher 122 (15); 14 Donald Dewar 121 (11); 15 David Blunkett 112 (-); 16 Jack Straw 111 (14); 17 Tom Clarke 105 (-); 18 David Clark 104 (10).(Photograph omitted). Both are roomy, four-door saloons that are more aerodynamic and, therefore, more efficient than appearances suggest.Both are powered by Porsche-developed, five-cylinder engines based on the lusty 3-litre, six-cylinder of the flagship 940 24 V. THE STOCKBROKER UBS Phillips & Drew has offered to buy back a pounds 180m debt issue that it led for a subsidiary of Leyland DAF last December, writes Jason Nisse. He plays every day and is a member of a team that is the second strongest in the United States. I still haven't managed to get a very clear idea of what existentialism actually is, what its basic principles are, where it in fact belongs. OXFORD Instruments, the advanced instrumentation company, made pre-tax profits of pounds 10.6m in the year to 28 March, an increase of 24 per cent.

Bernie Grant, the Labour MP for Tottenham, has also played an important role in representing the anger of local people and in ensuring that it is expressed in a peaceful manner. The municipal waste collection business was in its infancy and it seemed good sense to establish a recyclables processing and marketing business if they hoped to win contracts.But they could not be content with a small business with turnover of only dollars 19.9m. Mr Major, a shrewd tactician always, now seems to be rebuilding bridges there, but distrust remains.Queen's Speeches are a simple, nostalgic occasion. It seems the parents have been used as scapegoats for a series of failures on the part of institutions.'The girl nobody saved, page 17. Long bond yields have fallen about 30 basis points to 6.7 per cent since the Budget alone, underpinning the 4.5 per cent rise in the FT-SE 100 in the past seven days. Such aggressive bidding in the auction is not, perhaps, surprising, given the widely held bull view that another 0.5-point cut in interest rates to 5 per cent is not too far away, maybe after the next inflation figures on 15 December.As has been the case for most of this year, the bond markets are leading equity markets higher.

Let Mr Major go to the nation at the next election proclaiming: 'We have made things a wee bit better, and not much worse.' Such a claim would get my vote, although, I fear, that of few others.(Photograph omitted)Matthew Symonds is away.. It was 'one of those mundane, everyday tales of a man who'd gone off the rails in mid-life and left his family. If a member of Parliament is elected with 60 per cent of the votes cast in his or her constituency, that person has 0.6 of a vote in the House of Commons. A small part of the proceeds went on what is now Sherriffs, a company which had started out making biscuits, fudge and toffee in gift boxes adorned with picture postcard views and 'A Present from Salcombe' on the lid.Thornton ignored the packaging. ANYONE with an ordinary chequebook can write cheques in a foreign currency simply by crossing out the pound sign and replacing it with the appropriate symbol. In 1990, he estimates, 2,615 new cases of HIV infection occurred among them; he expects that to increase to 7,207 this year, to 15,227 in 1994 and to a peak of 19,278 in 1996.