People in the West should not be thought meddlesome or Patronising when they deplore what is now happening In India. Rather, their concern for the survival of Indian democracy...

The shades of the Regency glared at the Plebeian assembly called the Trades Union Congress, gathered at Brighthelmstone. Mr Albert Booth, the Minister for Employment had his...

Band of brothers John Grigg Lloyd George said of the 'queer people' staying at the Metropole Hotel, Brighton, that he did not know where they came from but knew very well...

.Pakistan's request for the return of the Koh1 -Noor diamond is one of those nice, irrelevant issues which people gratefully seize Upon as an opportunity for a lively debate...

Me and my savings Auberon Waugh For the first thirty-five years of my life it was a point of pride with me that I had no savings, no investments, no wealth of any description...

Henry Scott Stokes I sometimes wonder whether my comPatriots have the faintest idea what a tough lot the Japanese are—in business. The other day 1 read that A. J. P. Taylor was...

Patrick Cockburn Nazareth Nazareth is not much to look at. Houses sprawl down the sides of steep hills and on the lower slopes are crushed together north of the modern...

In this interview with George Hutchinson, Deputy Editor of the Spectator, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, warns that Pakistan's relations with the West will...

Charles Foley Los Angeles Americans have always regarded sex as a kind of King Kong that must be shackled a nd caged, lest, in his rampage through the streets, he causes the US...

Amit Roy Joseph Oliver Louis, a 48-year-old Jamaican London Transport bus cleaner, strode angrily into the North London offices of the Westindian World last week, clutching a...

Patrick Marnham One of life's keenest pleasures in a time of crisis is provided by the window of a carpet shop. People spend more money on a broadloom Kidderminster than I...

Richard West So much has been written of the United States in 1776 that it is pleasant for a change to read something of England during that same year, as seen through the eyes...

Ian Bradley There is nothing like an economic crisis for producing radical new initiatives and fresh thinking on old, unchallenged assumptions. Our current difficulties, and in...

Neil Sinclair There is a simple answer to our national malaise, a panacea so breathtaking in its simplicity, a remedy so gentle in its side effects, that I feel I must rush it...

Crowing over the Leger Jeffrey Bernard •••■• I think the French horse Crow will win the St Leger: let that be a warning to you. The l ongest winning run I've ever had on the...

Lament for equities Nicholas Davenport Is the equity dead ? Stockbrokers, trying desperately to cover their expenses, must be wondering whether the business of buying and...

(4 September) of Michael Davie's edition of the Waugh diaries, Mr Auberon Waugh had yet another stab, before staggering back to the drawing-board, at mastering what Jean Cocteau...

Sir: Mr Auberon Waugh contributed an amusing review of his father's Diaries. I regret, however, that he weaves such a fantasy about the Sunday Times and its late Associate...

Sir: Who wrote the miserable Notebook piece about Archbishops Lefebvre (4 September)? It has an uneasy smell of the Foreign Office's Misinformation Department. Journalists of...

Sir : Reading Mr West's article on devolution (14 August) I find it difficult to believe that all those involved in the devolution controversy, whether Nationalists of one sort...

Sir: To judge by the examples chosen, Patrick Cosgrave (28 August) gives the impression that 'instant books' are a strictly modern innovation. It depends of course how...

Sir: I am astonished that Sir Peter Kirk (of whom I have known relatively little but respected what I knew) should refer to my own MP, Sir Derek Walker-Smith, in such effusive...

Sir: Mr P. M. Kingston (31 July) put up a classic case for free floating—although his preoccupation with 'excessive' imports of foreign cars (which, according to him, are one of...

Sir: Would the mystery author of the letter on Jewish war dead (31 July) who signs himself 'F. P. Yockey, Box 76062, Los Angeles, California' care to reveal his identity ?...

Sir: Mary Kenny may have discovered a new law, and Auberon Waugh brilliantly developed it; but I would challenge its newness. It was surely anticipated by Sir James Baillie in...

Why not look at other possibilities? London already possesses a fast through transport system, the Underground. I suggest that all through goods traffic could be carried on the...

Sir: Let us leave aside questions about the merits of Terry Eagleton's new book: they are questions on which Mr Conrad's review (21 August) is studiedly silent. But what on...

The rule of silence Germaine Greer Mafioso Gala Servadio (Secker and Warburg £4.90) In the summer of 1967, I was living on a farm near a small seaside town on the southern...

Margaret Drabble The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome, edited with an epilogue and prologue by Rupert Hart-Davis (Jonathan Cape £5.95) The name of Arthur Ransome summons up an...

Peter Conrad Violet Trefusis: Life and Letters Philippe Jullian and John Phillips (Hamish Hamilton £5.75) For Whom the Cloche Tolls Angus Wilson and Philippe Jullian (Penguin...

Nick Totton A Fringe of Leaves Patrick White (Jonathan Cape 4.50) Still Waters Stanley Middleton (Hutchinson E4.25) A Fringe ()/Leaves is, of course, magnificent. Once more, Mr...

Benny Green Growing Up in Hollywood Robert Parrish (Bodley Head £4.95) Now that the Hollywood studio system is dead forever, the compiling of its obituary Proceeds, and already...

THE GREASY POLE. by Reginald Bevins, Hodders 1965. Single copies Or up to three wanted. 37, Queens Drive, Liverpool. MACBEAN, Dictionary of Ancient Geography. Mainertzhagen,...

Ronald Hingley The File on The Tsar Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold (Gollancz £5.50) As every historian or intelligent reader of history knows, there is nothing more elusive...

Peter Ackroyd The Devil Finds Work James Baldwin (Michael Joseph £3.95) At its worst the American cinema is an elaborate and colourful repository of social codes and beliefs,...

Richard Shone The Restless Years: Diaries 1955-63 Cecil Beaton (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £4.95) It is hard to discover in what spirit Cecil Beaton writes his diaries beyond the...

Travelling players David Perry Towards the end of 'The Travelling Players' (Academy I from 9 September) one of the acting troupe — Orestes — who has been executed for his...

Edinburgh John McEwen There is nothing very festive in the way of exhibitions this year in Edinburgh except for William Johnstone's flood of recent work at the Talbot Rice...

Kindred spirit Kenneth Hurren The Worst of Kenneth Robinson (Mermaid) Highway Shoes (New End, Hampstead) I doubt whether there's anything Kenneth Robinson says in his show...

Cashing in Richard Ingrams Like boys returned to school, the old faces are back on the screen after their summer hols—Doctor Who, the two Ronnies and the smirking Michael...