A n Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council was set up after the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, and the Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, met at Downing Street. A joint communiqué...

Experiences of an Irish PM Ferdinand Mount T here is the impatience of British politicians and there is the impatience of Irish politicians. The British variety is of the...

H aving been quoted not so long ago in the Guardian woman's page as an example of an anti-feminist (it has a column called 'Naked Ape' for exposing this sort of thing), I seized...

Timothy Garton Ash 'It is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world; a land whose coastlines would inclose half the countries of Europe; a...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington T he Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, speaks something called near-English. Apparently his mother tongue is Fortran or Cobol or one of the...

Sam White Paris R epublics pass away, governments come and go but the reaction of France's rulers to a threatening scandal is always that of a nervous housewife who hears the...

Bohdan Nahaylo A t the end of October at least 300 dissenters imprisoned in Soviet labour camps went on hunger strike or refused to do forced labour as part of their...

Richard West Liverpool A ll the candidates in the Crosby byelection say there is little industry in the constituency; but even those few workers appear to be on strike — in true...

SIR, — As to mental exercises in dreams, this happened to me one morning, not very many years ago. I found myself at Eton again, at my desk, in Mrs Holt's (my dame's house),...

Apostolic Paul Johnson D oes Fleet Street overdo spy stories? Is the public tired of them? My usual answer to both questions is 'Yes'. It's bad enough being buttonholed in a...

Optimism? Tony Rudd M orale in the City has taken a marked turn for the better. Two cracking new issues have contributed substantially to the change in atmosphere. They give...

Sir: Auberon Waugh's articles are, I am sure, always enjoyed by readers of the Spectator, but may I ask him to pay a bit more attention to the facts? His piece on the Civil...

Sir: I notice that your Greek correspondent Mr Taki has the effrontery and impertinence to refer to the London CND marchers as 'mugs' and 'our people' and proposes 'beating...

Sir: 'Planning for apartheid' (31 October) provided Gavin Stamp with a twin target of publicly-accepted `beastlies' on which even a marksman blind with prejudice could not fail...

Sir: Clearly Richard West shares with most British journalists the urge to indulge in a 'hate Ken Livingstone' item from time to time (31 October). As this is so universal,...

Sir: When it comes to Christmas food and Christmas pud in particular we must discount Alexander Chancellor's sniffy Notebook remarks (31 October) about the usual expensive...

Sir: I am utterly astonished by Richard Ingrams's criticisms of Brideshead Revisited (24 and 31 October); my own views are very different. Brideshead is a great romantic novel...

Sir: Richard Brent in his article of 31 October entitled 'CND: as bourgeois as ever' states that 'the Father of St Francis Roman Catholic Church in Notting Hill carried the...

Mark Amory Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart Vol 2 ed. Kenneth Young (Macmillan pp. 800, £30) 4 W ell, Mr Lockhart, here you are in the thick of it again,' said Jan Smuts in...

Caroline Moorehead The Terror Network Claire Sterling (Weidenfeld & Nicolson pp. 357, £7.95) The New Fascists Paul Wilkinson (Grant McIntyre pp. 179, £7.95) I t has become...

C. M. Woodhouse The Slave State Albert Speer trans. Joachim Neugroschel (Weidenfeld and Nicolson pp. 384, £10.95) 1 -4 % uring the last 20 years of his life, L./Albert Speer...

Hugh Massingberd By Jove, Biggles! Peter Berresford Ellis and Piers Williams (W.H. Allen pp.306, £8.95) Flying Colours Laddie Lucas (Hutchinson pp.303, £8.95) T hese two books...

J. G. Links Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable revised edition Ivor H. Evans (Cassell pp. 1213, £9.95) C W hat he doesn't know would go on a postcard', said a lady in the...

Michael Hulse Collected Poems Sylvia Plath (Faber pp. 351, £10, £4.25). T am writing the best poems of my life,' I wrote Sylvia Plath on 16 October, 1962, four months before...

A. N. Wilson Lost and Found Julian Gloag (Secker and Warburg pp. 206, £5.95) A while ago, a novel called The Cement Garden achieved a succes de scandale when it was alleged...

The life of mirrors Peter Ackroyd Mephisio ('AA', Gate Camden) M ephisto opens appropriately enough with a figure, crouched like a demon, howling in a corner. But in fact we...

False friends Mark Amory Timon of Athens (Warehouse) Another Country (Greenwich) F our men in sandals and what I took to be Japanese kit walked onto the bare wooden stage,...

No winners Rodney Milnes Louise (Coliseum) Un giorno di regno (Wexford Festival) Tosea (Covent Garden) Partenope (Sadler's Wells) I ouise was recently described as the first...

Plain and fanciful John McEwen T here are a great number of contemporary shows worth a visit at the moment, perhaps none more so than that devoted to the paintings and...

Brian Sewell T o any independent observer the continning dispute over the buyer's Premium between representatives of the art and antiques trade on the one hand and Christie's...

Tasteless Richard In grams C ome readers have complained to me that the last historic issue of the Spectator consisted entirely of one contributor attacking another and vice...

Nerves Taki W hen I recently saw a picture of Dave 'boy' Green, the English welterweight boxer, crying after his manager announced his retirement to a sentimental crowd that...

Damaging Jeffrey Bernard Po Manchester last week to see the European Karate Championships and in particular to watch the captain of the Greek team and my personal bodyguard ,...