The Rhodesian — or Zimbabwean — raid on Zambia is Proof, if proof were needed, of the confidence of black and White leaders in Salisbury in the internal settlement which Mr...

What would Roy have done? Ferdinand Mount Mr Roy Jenkins is a name not much conjured with these days. Doubtless we ought to be conjuring with it; if we were properly...

Some ingenious apologists have thought up n new excuse for Britain having forcibly returned so many Russians to certain death in the Soviet Union after the war. According to...

Two levels of truth Auberon Waugh Certain truths of our society are too obvious to require demonstration. One of them is that workers' power in industry has impoverished the...

Paul Macdonald New Delhi Back in the dark days of last year, the subeditors working on the Bombay edition of the Indian Express, searching, perhaps, for one more novel way of...

David Bonavia liong Kong China has long been hypnotised by the analogy between its present strategic situation and that of the Soviet Union in the 'thirties. The Chinese press...

Neil McLean The present crisis in the Horn of Africa is complicated by the fact that two separate problems have merged into one. The first is the old and difficult frontier...

Sam White Paris At the moment of writing it looks as though the momentum for a left victory in the French general elections next Sunday, far from slackening, is gathering speed...

F. B. Singleton During the last two years the remarkable octogenarian President Tito has conferred With all the world's major political leaders, in China, North Korea, the...

Patrick Cosgrave The other evening, at dinner, I sat opposite a middle-ranking government minister, serving in one of the non-economic departments. He is an able, civilised man...

Anthony Mockler Just a few yards from where Mrs Thatcher lives in Flood Street stands a building that epitomises much of what is. wrong with local government in London — the...

Eamonn Fingleton If the major clearing banks can summon up the courage, they could make Britain the world's first cashless society by the mid1980s. Bankers are already...

Sound money Nicholas Davenport If there is one private bank in the City which has grown steadily and on sound principles, eschewing speculation in property, it is Rea...

Sir: Alan Watkins (25 February) gives me. too much credit. I am no conjurer but a member of the audience. 'Whatever the judges do can be made to seem in support of "authority"...

Sir: Mr P. Worsthorne's article (25 February) under the heading of 'The immigrants' dilemma' did not touch on the one aspect of assimilation which is immediately open to all...

Sir: I wonder whether you would have allowed an English writer to use your space to vilify West Indians in the way in which Mr Naipaul vilified the people of Humberside in your...

Sir: Your correspondent, Nicholas Davell port, is becoming increasingly prone to iris timing his pontifications. In your issue dated 25 February a very thoughtful article oa...

Death of the soul Christopher Booker The Older Hardy Robert Gittings (Heinemann E6.95) The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, Volume One (1840-1892) edited by Richard Little...

Alastair Forbes Memoirs Jean Monnet (Collins £13) L'Etonnement d'Etre: Journal 1939-1973 Nerve Alphand (Paris, Fayard FF59) Roy Jenkins's claim, in his brief foreword to...

John Grigg The Cloud of Danger George F. Kennan (Hutchinson £5.95) George Kennan is one of the great American mandarins of our time. Though he retired from active diplomacy a...

Patrick Cosgrave Day by Day Robert Lowell (Faber £3. 95) Robert Lowell was probably the most mis' understood considerable poet of modern times. As is so often the case the...

Francis King Ackroyd Jules Feiffer (Hutchinson £4.50) Just as, by now, one tends to associate Osbert Lancaster's cartoons with the tough, toothy aristocracy of Belgravia and...

Benny Green A literary ironist as accomplished as Paul Scott would surely have savoured the subtle timing of his own death had it happened to a character in somebody else's...

Propagating Kultur Ted Whitehead 4 ,,,alf-LIfe (Duke of York's) Z i ngs and Clowns (Phoenix) "olio and Goodbye (Riverside) If Julian Mitchell's Half-Life does nothing e lse,...

Maimed Clancy Sigal Looking for Mr Goodbar (Plaza One) I'm glad I waited to read Judith Rossner's runaway best seller from which Richard Brooks has made his Looking for Mr...

Stripped bare John McEwen Lucian Freud whose new oil paintings are at Anthony d'Offay (till 18 March), has painted broadly speaking in two styles, and people tend to prefer...

Wizardry Richard Ingrams I suddenly realised last week that it is insomnia and not ambition that driyes men into politics. People who complain about our poor MPs having to...

Theatre man Finnuala O'Shannon I think I've been aware of Micheal Mac Liammoir all my life, although I didn't meet him until I was twelve. He was, even then, a legend. Ireland...

Seed sense Manka Hanbury Tenison , s 1 s aPPose, given perfect conditions and the L'erfect summer, that it might be possible to we w Peanuts, 'plate-sized broccoli' and 'the...

Boys and girls Jeffrey Bernard Rumblings of trouble and unrest at boardroom level on Tiny Tots first became apparent last November when the rumour spread that Mother of the...