A well-ordered operation The Government, the police and the army emerge with great credit from the successful end to the occupation of the Iranian embassy. The two dead...

Political commentary Is it later than she thinks? Ferdinand Mount A year gone already. In fact a year and a day or two. We seem rather to have missed the Anniversary bus. Not...

Notebook - I always hope when I go abroad for any period of time that I will return home to find that something has changed, or at least happened. It is a hope in which I am...

Another voice The road to Ekaterinburg Auberon Waugh The day after the International Olympic Sports Federations, meeting in Lausanne, issued their statement criticising...

Bull moose Muskie Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The appointment of Edmund Muskie as the Secretary of State may have left the United States with a bi-Polar foreign policy....

Who will succeed Brezhnev? Kenneth Sharp The Soviet Union is not rencowned for its democratic institutions, any more than Imperial Russia was. 'The British should understand'....

The fall of Saigon, revisited Richard West The bright young American who wants a career as an author should join the Central Intelligence Agency, serve a few years in a...

Mission accomplished David Leigh As darkness was falling on Monday night, the cordons down Knightsbridge suddenly parted and the buses grinding round the Kensington diversions...

Love in a mysterious way Roy Wallis In May last year, Arianna Stassinopoulos extolled the virtues of something called Insight in an article in the Obseri.er- Just recently I...

Profile Peter Hall at the National Wilfred De'Ath 'My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theatre business,...

Tito, the pragmatist Duncan Wilson Marshal Tito's outward appearance and manner were not designed to overwhelm, much as he liked smart uniforms and clothes. As a diplomat with...

Letters Rescuing hostages Sir: Simon Courtauld, in his Notebook of 19 April. refers to the successful rescue of European hostages, including diplomatic representatives, from...

Gay battles Sir: Readers may themselves like to reflect on the possible infantile trauma which continues to bite your television critic. I would just like to point out that the...

The Last Enemy Sir: Patrick Cosgrave's perceptive and sympathetic review of 11T Lavs Etiwm nv by Richard Hillary (3 May) was surely in error in one important fact. He says that...

The d'Estaing family Sir: With reference to Simon Courtauld's otherwise excellent Notebook ( 12 April), I should like to bring to the attention of your readers a few facts...

Doing the Lambeth work Sir: Jennifer Monahan's article ('The police and the public', 19 April) may have given a wrong and unfortunate impression of how the Working Party into...

The role of social work Sir: Mr Pickering, presumably a social worker, asks mc (Letters. 19 April) *why people besiege him with requests to intervene in their lives - to sort...

BBC perversity Sir: Some current decisions and programme timings by top BBC management are so Perverse and in such patent conflict with both viewer/listener interest and the...

Ernest Rhvs Sir: I am preparing a biography of Ernest Percival Rhys (1859-1946). author and. editor of Everyman's Library. and I would be grateful for any information. letters....

Festivals 1980 For every brow Rodney Milnes We all know that there is no money any more, yet somehow festivals remain a growth industry. Many have this year expanded their...

Books A lovable scamp Alan Watkins The Prerogative of the Harlot Hugh Cud- l"pp (Bodley Head £8.50) Lord Cudlipp's previous books, Publish and Be Damned, At Your Peril and...

The two Katherine Mansfields Jeffrey Meyers The Life of Katherine Mansfield Antonv Alpers (Cape £9.50) The first biography of Katherine Mansfield, written by Ruth Mantz and...

Vault echoes Jonathan Keates The Reign of Sparrows Roy Fuller (Lon- i don Magazine £3.95) The Venetian Vespers Anthony Hecht (Oxford £3.95) The Star-Apple Kingdom Derek...

Unlikely Benny Green A. J. Wentworth B.A. H. F. Ellis (Weiden- feld £5.95) In the early stages of his confessional, the hapless A. J. Wentworth finds himself yet again...

Imaginings Francis King Letters John Barth (Secker £7.95) I sometimes feel that novel-writing has ceased to be an art and has become an epidemic. The most common form that...

Arts Arresting lines and parallels Peter Jenkins The Dresser (Queen's) Hay Fever (Lyric, Hammersmith) The Hothouse (Hampstead) In a loving tribute to the days of the...

Dekorative John McEwen Art is commonly held to reflect life, so anyone on the anti-American band-wagon who wishes to have their worst fears luridly confirmed should head...

Cinema Hard acts Peter Ackroyd Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack (Cu Empire) The Tempest ('AA' Screen on the Hill) I saw Mission Galactica in the middle of the...

Cricket Best man Alan Gibson In the last few years I must have written more articles about the England captaincy than any other cricketing subject. We are off again....

Television Newsworthy Richard Ingrams All television, said Bernard Levin, during the second of his series of interviews, comes down to a matter of selection. True. And I was...

High life Pleasure trip . Taki I keep being attacked for calling people vegetables. First Mrs Christina Onassis takes umbrage. now a certain Mrs Ghikas. mother of a certain...

Postscript Overflow Patrick Marnham New York 'He will never be a human being again. He will always be a vegetable. BeaMY has split his head in two. It happened last night....

Low life Good company Jeffrey Bernard Donald Trelford's piece in last Sunday's Observer about the dinner given by Lord Longford for former President Nixon was pretty...