But the revelation of his party's support for Mr Ashcroft while it was in

But the revelation of his party's support for Mr Ashcroft while it was in government will come as a far greater embarrassment. Although he was not party treasurer at the time, he has been a donor since the 1980s.Last night the Labour MP Peter Bradley, who has questioned the Foreign Office about the affair, called on Mr Hague to remove the businessman from his party post.Mr Bradley is expected to receive confirmation of the intervention from Tony Lloyd, the Foreign Office minister, within the next few days. Mr Ashcroft has already been criticised for keeping much of his business offshore in Belize, where he owns the main bank and stakes in utility companies.Yesterday Mr Hague stood by his treasurer after leaked Foreign Office memos revealed deep suspicion among officials of the businessman and his methods. Inquiries by The Independent have established that the Foreign Office under Douglas Hurd asked the former colony's government to exempt the businessman's private bank from new tax laws. The revelation will cast new doubt on the Tory leader William Hague's relationship with the man who has given his party pounds 2m in the past two years. JOHN MAJOR'S government put pressure on the Central American state of Belize to save millions of pounds in tax for the billionaire Tory treasurer, Michael Ashcroft.

Sir: Why is most of the talk among politicians and in the media about IRA weapons decommissioning, as a condition of admitting Sinn Fein to the power-sharing executive, and very little, if any, about the Unionist equivalents (the loyalist paramilitaries and, some might say, the RUC)? Aren't Unionist paramilitaries "connected" with Unionist political parties, at the very least in the sense of being in support of their policies? Why should the IRA give up its weapons when Catholic/nationalist communities seem to be under constant attack by loyalist extremists, with more than 150 bomb attacks and at least three murders since January alone? Don't the Unionists just want republicans excluded from power-sharing now and for ever?CIARAN IRVINELetterkenny, Co Donegal. "Falx", as I'm sure you know, is "the sickle-shaped fold of the dura mater on the midline of the brain between the cerebral hemispheres" Alas, I can find no trace of "phose" Any offers? ZOe POWERS Hitchin, Hertfordshire. At the end of the second and most recent book, The Subtle Knife, it was beginning to look as if the universal villain was God We're still waiting for the cuddly editorials on that one.. Sir: Bill Bryson is baffled by some of the words thrown up by his computer spell-checker (Bryson's America, 12 July).

"Internat" exists in French and German, and means "boarding school" What it's doing on his spell-checker, I cannot imagine. Many, it is to be hoped, will turn to the true genius of contemporary children's fiction, Philip Pullman, whose astonishing His Dark Materials trilogy is currently reworking the story of the fall in a weird inter-galactic setting. Short of appearing on TV with Stephen Fry for a self-mocking little item for Comic Relief, no author could be a more ideal role model.Add to this perfect blend, the new and oddly Victorian obsession with children, with ministers increasingly favouring schools for photo-opportunities, and the hunger among adults for fiction that tells a story in the old- fashioned way, and one begins to see why Potterism has so many sentimental, kid-struck journalists in its grip.None of which should detract credit from JK Rowling, the success of whose books will encourage thousands of children to read. Could there be a more inspiring setting for a story in an age of Blairite social conservatism with a smiling liberal face?The author of the book is as perfect a contemporary hero as her creation. Unlike Dahl, a grumpy old sod with dodgy opinions and a controversial family life, or the mysterious and over-productive RL Stine, Joanne Rowling is attractive, divorced, a single parent who has known hard times and has come though, and who even, at one point, worked for Amnesty International. Like the children of Tony Blair and Harriet Harman, he faces the bleak prospect of going to his local comprehensive until a better opportunity appears - not a smarter establishment in another borough, but Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to all intents and purposes an old-fashioned boarding-school - but with magical added ingredients.It's perfect: the under-achieving child, his talents unrecognised by his foster parents; the school where modish non-conformity and traditional values can, with the help of a few spells, co-exist. Roald Dahl was adored in spite of parental worry and critical snootiness, as were American-produced series such as Babysitters' Club or Goosebumps.Unlike those books, the child-led success of JK Rowling's books has been matched by the enthusiasm of parents and it is this that has caused such excitement in the press and bookshops.What explains the appeal to adults? Why have newspapers devoted so much space to Harry Potter and his admirers?Potter, it turns out, is the perfect hero for the late 1990s, a time when readers are looking for reassurance and a certain nannyish moral certainty.

Unwittingly, Rowling has invented the perfect protagonist and set-up for the age. A downtrodden orphan, growing up unhappily in the grinding suburban conformity of Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Harry Potter turns out to be the most gifted wizard of his generation. The most honest and uncorrupted of readers, children can no more be persuaded by advertising to like a book than they can be dissuaded by adult disapproval. The success of Harry Potter among young readers is utterly genuine and owes nothing to publishing hype.