Here comes the sun — shining hope of the alternative energy movement. And rightly so: it's the prime mover of most of our planet's energy. At present, the world is largely...

Lord Soames is in Rhodesia. Legality is restored. Sanctions are lifted. His arrival in Salisbury and the acceptance of his authority as Governor by the existing regime brings to...

A fairly dishonourable retreat Ferdinand Mount The logic-choppers at Oxford used to set great store by the Law of the Excluded Middle. Under this law, an assertion was either...

A policy for the North-East Auberon Waugh As it happened, I was in Newcastle on Friday night, addressing an angry crowd of Sheffield steelworkers and Durham min ers, when we...

Robert Blake Lord Carrington has achieved a notable triumph. Even if the Patriotic Front withdraws at the last moment, as is possible even now, and the British Government after...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Hisses could be heard from the audience at Kennedy Centre watching the MiddleEastern sequence in a holiday performance of the Nutcracker Suite....

Sam White Paris After the end of the war and, finally, the elimination of de Gaulle, the Fourth Republic, like its predecessors, began to lookaround for a 'safe' general —one,...

Desmond Stewart Cairo The mosquitoes in Maadi are more Constant than the settlers. In the Nasser years businessmen, pashas, press-kings made room in their leafy suburb for...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Dublin The Irish make a useful distinction between two kinds of humanity: 'He's a hard man', or 'he's a desperate chancer'. In the case of Mr Charles...

Mary Kenny It is generally estimated that there are about three million women in Britain who are at present taking the contraceptive pill. Most of these will be under 35, since...

Yesterday week the Probate Court, acting with a jury, invalidated two wills of Mr William Henry Ray Smee, on evidence that the testator was under a delusion at the time of...

Gavin Stamp The largest category of letters sent to the Times in the year before its suspension dealt with conservation, transport and environmental issues. But if the Sunday...

Richard West Who could have guessed, even as little as a year ago, that female circumcision was to become the latest liberal cause? Until recently one would have thought that...

Sir: Roy Kerridge sees Rasta, reggae, etc, as nervous tics which stop English blacks from reaching fuller expression (1 December). Agreed, they don't always help. Jennings's...

Sir: At least Alexander Chancellor was honest enough to announce in advance his sinful intent (Notebook, 17 November). But alas this was only half a confession. Discussing our...

Sir:It was nice of Peter Basell to allege that Jeremy Thorpe; A Secret Lift was 'a highly readable, entertaining book that moves along at a cracking pace' (1 December), but I...

Sir: I have to confess to some surprise that the Spectator invited Nicolas Walter; the radical editor of the New Humanist and hardly typical, I would have thought, of the...

Sir: Your interesting and important leading article of 8 December omitted one crucial consideration in its examination of (and strictures on) the performance of the National...

Sir: The frequency with which Mr Auberon Waugh criticises, sneers at or just mentions the Sunday Times in his writing suggests that he is as much obsessed with the subject as...

George Gale Final Term Harold Wilson (Weidenfeld; Michael Joseph £8.95) On his 60th birthday Harold Wilson, hoping that nothing untoward would get in the way of his resignation...

Michael Horovitz Who is Eddie Linden Sebastian Barker (Jay Landesman £5.95) The McJazz Manuscripts Sandy Brown (Faber £6.95) Some of my Best Friends are Blues Ronnie Scott...

Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd Queen and Country David Sinclair (Dent £7.50) Is the Queen Mother incandescent? A highly intelligent American friend attests that the Queen Mother...

Francis King And Again? Sean O'Faolain (Constable £5.95) This novel might be regarded as a set of variations on two themes. One is Henri Estienne's famous `Si jeunesse savoit;...

Mary Kenny In choosing a book for a young child, one should never be nervous or squeamish. Indeed, the whole problem with modern versions of traditional stories for children,...

Benny Green If it is contradictory evidence which brings resilience to a child's mind, then this season's publications have been most ingeniously co-ordinated to produce the...

John McEwen Why do museums hide away three-quarters of their collections in storage? Why do modern art galleries never show anything of the slightest interest to nice, normal...

Peter Ackroyd Radio On ('X', Screen On The Hill) Eraserhead (X', Cinecenta, Baker Street) So this is England. It is always twilight here; the air is full of nerveless sound —...

Richard Ingrams Reflecting, at the behest of the Sunday Telegraph, on the Seventies, I have again been struck by the ephemerality, if that is the right word, of most television...

Taki The recent death of Merle Oberon and the revelations about Anthony Blunt's extracurricular activities bring to mind Sir Alexander Korda. The sultry, mysterious, sloe-eyed...

Jeffrey Bernard The Taller gave a party at the Ritz the other night and it looks as though it's going to be Parties all the way until Christmas Eve from now on. They're mostly...

Patrick Marnham It was while sitting in a pew at an Anglican wedding, brooding about the appearance of the choir, that I became aware of the connection between the two major...

Raymond Keene Considering the enormous variety of chess literature on offer at the moment, prospective purchasers of chess books as Christmas present should carefully consider...