Ilse silly season used to end in early autumn. Nowadays it eems sometimes to run the whole year round. There is s ontething to be said for paying the Kingsley Read trial the l...

Union-bashing is also an art Ferdinand Mount His grandchildren love to climb upon his knee. Senior civil servants are deeply satisfied by his style of decision-making. City...

High Littleton, to which I have recently Moved, is in that part of the county of Avon Which used to be Somerset. I have now lived In all the counties of the beloved West...

A joke in very bad taste Auberon Waugh 'I know a lot of coloured people who don't mind being called niggers or wogs,' said Mr John Kingsley Read, of the Democratic National...

Paul Macdonald New Delhi Anyone who doubts that our Prime Minister it a philistine, would have done well to be at the Taj Mahal last Sunday morning. There was Jim Callaghan...

Sam White Paris One has to go back to the early 'fifties to find the kind of de facto alliance that is being forged between Gaullists and Communists on the eve of the French...

Edward Mortimer He wasn't a maverick. He wasn't an outsider. He had more courage than the rest of us.' That was the tribute paid to Said Hammami last Sunday by Dr Issim...

Patrick Cosgrave Jerusalem On 23 July 1968 a young Palestinian terrorist, having taken part in the hijack of El Al flight 707 from Rome to Tel Aviv, and having shot the first...

Christopher Matthews Rome My office overlooks Piazza di Spagna, arguably the most beautiful square in the world. The Piazza di Spagna is one reason Why one lives in Rome rather...

Anthony Mockler In 1924 a British consul in a remote hill town of Ethiopia wrote to the Foreign Office: 'The act of King George V in returning the Ethiopian crown to the...

Colin Bell Edinburgh 4 . 41 's Thatcher has been leader of her party '. °1 ' not quite three years, yet the visit she has l u st made to Scotland was her ninth. That t e h v el...

Ian Waller One of Sir Harold Wilson's more baffling characteristics as Premier was, as his Honours Lists showed, a taste for very rich businessmen often Jewish and self-made,...

Germaine Greer The recent uproar about the activities of Dr Sopher who artificially inseminated twelve women designated 'lesbian' highlights the disgracefully irresponsible use...

The dollar crisis Nicholas Davenport The capitalist system is at risk not so much from the attacks of the Marxist revolutionaries, or from the disruptions caused by trade...

Sir: Sir Alec Clegg (31 December) attempts to draw attention away from the failure of so-called 'modern' educational theories and practices by invoking an 'educational...

Sir: The tragic and senseless murder of Mr Said Hammami, the London representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, is a severe blow to all those who wish to see a just...

Sir: I am surprised that you should publish a review which seems to me to be the written equivalent of the irrational cry of 'Fascist' so often used against powerful...

Sir: I enjoyed Talking turkey by Philip Hope-Wallace (24 December) and like him have always been baffled when, watching an American film, someone says 'take a rain check'. The...

Sir: May I protest at the billious [sic] green colour of today's cover (24 December). (Dr) D G Eastham, New Wortley Health Centre, Green Lane, Leeds

Sir: Ferdinand Mount (31 December) argues that the electoral tide 'is running too strongly in the Tories' favour to be turned back.' He continues by suggesting that merely...

In defence of party politics Michael Foot Revolution Principles: Politics of Party 1689-1720 J. P. Kenyon (Cambridge e9.50) A mere mention of the term 'party politics' can...

Alan Watkins Lady Unknown: The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts Edna Healey (Sidgwick and Jackson £7.50) One of the best Goodies programmes is about a team of formation dancers....

Richard Ingrams The Knox Brothers Penelope Fitzgerald (Macmillan E4.95) Few people are exceptional enough to inspire a full-length biography. At the same time there are hosts...

Alex de Jonge Reviewing science fiction is a bit like working in a chocolate factory: you don't lose your taste for the stuff but regular doses actually kill the addiction. One...

Peter Ackroyd The Season of the Machete James Patterson (Secker and Warburg £4.50) James Patterson spends his days as an advertising copywriter, in other words as a kind of...

Benny Green Exit Sherlock Holmes Robert Lee Hall (John Murray E3.95) There has developed rapidly in the last few years a rigid procedure for impersonating Sir Arthur Conan...

Towards another art world John McEwen Towards Another Picture (Nottingham Castle Museum till 25 January) and Art in One Year: 1935 (Tate till 28 February) are neither of them...

Red-lipped Ted Whitehead The Kreutzer Sonata (Theatre Upstairs) The Guardsman (Lyttelton) Penny Whistle (Hampstead) It was a relief, in a lust-ridden Catholic adolescence, to...

My fathers Jeffrey Bernard Now that the whole business of lesbians having babies by means of artificial insemi nation is well and truly out and into the open, I suppose I can...