'Our police are wonderful' has long been a partly jocular, Partly complacent British attitude. Like many generalisations, it had more than a grain of truth. It was of course a...

The bovine splendour of Mr Callaghan Ferdinand Mount Glasgow The Status Quo will be playing here next month, or rather the Status Qu — the 'o' has fallen off the sign outside...

Friends tell me that Mr Heath has indicated to Mrs Thatcher that he would like to serve in a Tory government, in spite of her publicly expressed preference for a Cabinet of...

The Road to Barnstaple Auberon Waugh General elections are times when political commentators are well advised to keep what is called a low profile. Passions run high....

Xan Smiley Salisbury The political aspirations of most Rhodesians and most Zimbabweans are grimly irreconcilable. Evolutionary change, not towards an awkward state of phoney...

Nicholas Ashford Pretoria About 20 miles north of Pretoria, South Africa's neat and verdant capital, there is a 'city' whose name will not be found on a map. It is called...

Tim Garton Ash West Berlin Maidanek was the site of a concentration and extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. At least 350,000 people died there. Its staff numbered over...

Valerie Riches Parents have fundamental human rights in the upbringing of their children . . . 'This principle in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is supported,...

George Gale In declining to take part with the Prime Minister in a couple of televised faceto-face confrontations for London Weekend Television, Mrs Thatcher let it be known...

Peter Paterson While the Prime Minister no doubt emitted a groan on hearing the news that the trade union leaders will appear on as many platforms as possible to support Labour...

The idea that's hatching at our refinery is a real cracker. A £150 million catalytic cracker complex, no less — replete with delights for the technology buff: alkylation,...

Patrick Cosg rave 'Because', wrote Major-General Sir William Napier in his History of the Peninsular War, 'the English Ministers, so ready to plunge into war, were quite...

Richard West The Barsetshire books which largely concern the life of Church of England clergymen, are not normally thought of with Trollope's political novels such as the...

Poor investors Nicholas Davenport Some ass in a position of authority recently said that the individual investor was finished because he did not know how to look after his...

Sir: Elizabeth Whipp is surprisingly unscientific in her dismissal (31 March) of the arguments for Creative Evolution and Lamarckism whether advanced by Bernard Shaw or...

Sir: May I commend your editorial (17 March) on the dangers inherent in state support for the Arts and endorse your recommendations that private individuals should be encouraged...

Sir: Jeffrey Bernard's chagrin at being overlooked yet again by the British Press Awards Panel is understandable. But for my crapulent friend to link me with the outsized,...

Sir: May I draw attention to another kind of differential between the income groups? Ever since the Industrial Revolution, lowpaid workers have had to rely on overtime to...

Sir: If the last Reith lecturer, Dr Norman, needed any support for his main contention that Christianity was tending to be debased by the Churches themselves it is to be found...

Sir: Richard Ifigrams has fallen over his coat Mead Ends', 24 March). The Women's Movement is accustomed to the hatred of a certain type of man, and it's usually nqt worth...

Sir: I find myself puzzled by the paragraph in Mr Ingrams's television review ('Swinging') in your issue dated 17 March, which begins: 'Sir Fitzroy, (who may be a...

Sir: Muriel Spark may be a fine novelist but she is not a poet. It is sad to see the Spectator (31 March) giving nearly a page to what is described on the cover as a 'new poem',...

Sir: For an authorised biography of Hugh MacDiarmid, the authors seek letters, unpublished materials, reminiscences or other relevant information of any kind. Please contact...

IN SERVICE OF MANKIND personal service freely given. All its members are unpaid volunteers. St. John Ambulance also runs certificated courses in first aid, nursing and allied...

Anthony Burgess The Faber Book of Nonsense Verse Ed. Geoffrey Grigson (Faber £5.95) The Children's Book of Comic Verse chosen by Christopher Logue; illustrated by Bill Tidy...

Jan Morris The Murder of Captain James Cook Richard Hough (Macmillan £7.95) One by one the sea lays its stories upon the desk of Mr Hough the Battleship Man, and one by one he...

Conor Cruise O'Brien Death in Paris Richard Cobb (Oxford £4.95) In the Archives de la Seine in Paris there is a box bearing the title `Basse-Geole de la ,Seine, proces-verbaux...

Benny Green Wit's End: Days and Nights of the Algonquin Round Table James R. Gaines (Harcourt Brace £8.40) The disproportionate attention lavished over the years on the...

Francis King When I Whistle Shusaku Endo (Peter Owen E6.00) Of all Japanese novelists, Shusaku Endo is the most accessible to Western readers. This is not merely because he...

Pope of the kingly people Peter Hebblethwaite John Paul II: A Man From Krakow George Blazynski (Weidenfeld £5.95) Man from a Far Country Mary Craig (Hodder £1.00) The Acting...

Mary Kenny In Habit: An anthropological study of working nuns Suzanne Campbell-Jones (Faber £9.95) Nuns are misunderstood people, and the institution of the convent is badly...

Postmodernism in Hillingdon Gavin Stamp The reaction of the establishment modern architects and planners to Christopher Booker's tele-documentary City of Towers was...

Make merry Peter Jenkins The Merry Wives of Windsor (RSC, Stratford-on-Avon) It was disappointing to arrive in Stratford for the new Shakespeare season to find the performance...

Prize hybrid John McEwen The work in Tony Carter's latest exhibition (Anthony Stokes till 21 April) confirms his uniquely unclassifiable status among contemporary British...

Uncertain Terence Maloon Officially sponsored 'packages' of contemporary British art always cause loud and long contestation, all the more when they Purport to be...

Dramatics Richard Ingrams I keep waiting for signs of the election to make themselves felt on the screen but, to date, it seems to have been something of a Phoney War. Partly...

Collaborators Rodney Milnes Katya Kabanova (Scottish Opera) Don Carlos (Covent Garden) Katya, the third instalment of the joint Scottish Opera-Welsh National Janacek cycle and...

Studious Taki New York Two years after taking New York by storm, the most successful nightclub in recent history has gone the way of the Labour government. In New York, where...

Sensitive Jeffrey Bernard Anyone who enjoyed the profile of Ian McEwan and the interview with him conducted by Professor Christopher Ricks on The Book Programme last week will...

Black'n'white Geoffrey Wheatcroft Do things get better or worse? You will remember the conversation on the subject between Mr Foster the optimist and Mr Escot the pessimist....

Lone Pioneer David Levy One feels mildly tempted to sympathise with the way that life has treated Korchnoi since his defection in the summer of 1976, but on reflection I think...