Louise Levene on the Prime Minister's move to take lessons from Paco Pena

Swimming

RUGBY UNION

Paco Pena, the mild man of flamenco, makes a low-key entrance 10 minutes into his new show, Arte y Pasion, and, apart from a few guitar solos of quicksilver artistry, takes a back seat to his company. The show at the Peacock is an attempt to display the various elements of flamenco and the wide range of moods within it, presenting it without fuss or artifice on a set whose atmosphere rests (wisely) on a simple lighting design and three arches that hint at Andalusia's moorish past.

Paco Pena (right) is a flamenco artist with a mission. To take back the initiative from the fashionable crop of flamboyant dancers and bring the voice to the fore.

Granada, Spain

A couple dancing the tango are clasped together as one and move with a single snake-like intelligence; a couple dancing flamenco merely occupy the same cage. ''In flamenco you can dance with a man, with a woman or with a guitar,'' says Isabel Munoz whose five-year photographic study of the dance demonstrates that while flamenco may be about passion, it isn't really about sex. People think it is, and it's an easy mistake to make: buxom ladies lifting their skirts in the direction of handsome young bloods in dangerously tight trousers cause the uninitiated to assume that horizontal desires cannot be far away. Not a bit of it. Flamenco at its best is a solo performance, a celebration of the selfish passions of pride and joy and despair. The dancers may occasionally perform in mixed pairs but only so that one monologue may interrupt another. There is no chemistry, no exchange.

WHEN I win the lottery I shall buy a house on the Mapesbury estate, Brent, and gladly run the risk of a £20,000 fine in order to paint my property Costa del Sol white, build a very large UPVC porch (and even bigger UPVC conservatory), replace all wooden doors and frames with plastic (and mock leaded lights) - oh, and if I can find space, some Vera Duckworth cladding.

Falstaff famously belittled the idea of honour: 'What is honour? A word. What is in that word honour? What is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning] Who hath it? He that died a' Wednesday. Does he feel it? No. Does he hear it? No.' - considerations that prompt the fat knight to end his mock catechism by saying he'll therefore have none of it. When you've sat through two hours of Pierre Corneille's Le Cid, Falstaff's cynical, easy-going attitude may begin to strike you as a wonderfully refreshing alternative to the sort of tortured, unrelaxing extremism on display there. Taking place in Seville, at the court of the King of Castile, the play shows you a society where both sexes are trapped in a rigid male code of honour and torn apart as their ideals battle with their desires.

Sir: I was surprised by the puzzlement which greeted William Waldegrave's reference to the 'owl of Minerva' which 'flies only at dusk', during a speech on the Civil Service reforms reported by Andrew Marr (14 July). He was of course alluding to a famous passage in G. W. F. Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The 'owl of Minerva' stands for philosophy itself. Hegel uses the metaphor to illustrate the point that philosophy is merely its own time comprehended in thought, a necessarily limited conceptualisation of temporary actuality. Hegel proceeds to highlight the perils which confront philosophers in 'issuing instructions on how the world ought to be' from a position of such relatively premature understanding. Doubtless Mr Waldegrave is aware of such dangers as he prepares to remodel the Civil Service along what he deems more 'efficient' lines.

UNDER normal circumstances, the Spanish Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, would be likely to survive the predicted hammering for his ruling Socialists in tomorrow's European vote. Unfortunately for Mr Gonzalez, he also faces the prospect of a historic setback in simultaneous regional elections in Andalusia, his home region and traditional stronghold.

Hooded penitents carrying a huge crucifix yesterday in a traditional Holy Week procession.

HE WAS the power behind the throne, a shadowy eminence grise who shielded, advised and, some say, manipulated President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. There had even been talk, since Jose Cordoba Montoya was born in France to exiled Spanish parents, of changing the constitution to allow him to hold the nation's highest office.

THE tension always mounts when a grand slam has been reached. Even if you have a tempting alternative, a trump lead (assuming your opponents know what they are doing) is often best. On this deal from the recent Marbella tournament, it certainly gave declarer a few problems.