Getting on with the unions After an evening of portentous theatrical entertainment b)rothy Parker once observed, 'There is less to this than meets the eye.' Her words might...

Political commentary Winston and Margaret Ferdinand Mount One of young Winston's earlier oratorical triumphs was in the school competition for French recitation. The set...

Another voice 'A licence for liars' Auberon Waugh In moments of perplexity or doubt one must seize upon whatever certainties present themselves. Through all the confusion and...

The perils of factionalism rj;L . tilchard West Salisbury Te silly season opened this month in Salisury With the arrival from the United States of fifty-six practisers of...

Lies, damned lies Y-ristopher Booker 13Y making one or two unorthodox statisICaJ correlations with the aid of the new rdian Election Guide *, I can reveal that 1eain reaction...

The battered husbands Christine Verity the sad subject of divorce has always had its funny, or at least ludicrous side. In happier tmes, the mirth usually centred round those...

The press Treating gentlemen as hacks Eric Jacobs In 1926 The Times printed a slim volume, anonymously written and privately circulated, which told how the paper struggled to...

In the City An ill-timed squeeze Ks! . Nicholas Davenport The blinkered mandarins at the Treasury and the Bank of England, following the anclent rules of their money books,...

The coming of wit Nicholas Mosley The philosopher Karl Jaspers suggested that a turning point in human history occurred around 500 BC - an age in which there lived Socrates,...

The Archbishops' letter Sir: On 8 October a letter was read out in all Anglican churches from the two archbishops declaring their belief in the maintenance of a fully-ordained...

Ars Poetica Sir: In the verse you kindly published the other day to celebrate the forthcoming election of a new Professor of Poetry at Oxford, I forgot to include mention of...

Letters Daylight saving Sir: I wonder whether it might be possible to provoke some discussion through your columns regarding a radical idea which I have and which, I claim,...

Sir: How like the present 'Universitv wits' to elect a candidate for the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry who isn't even a poet! Maybe the eligibles were put off by the...

Ex Africa Sir: I was interested to read Christopher Booker's article 'Ex Africa semper id' (11 November), which may be good journalism but it is bad history. Firstly, he...

Sir: Your Contributor, Mr ChristOPher Booker, seems to be under the impresslU that Vergil wrote: 'Flectere si nequeo SUIJt bos . . . ' I should be grateful if you Wo inform him...

Causes of inflation Sir: I must take issue with Nicholas von Hoffman for asserting (11 November) that not only does President James Carter not understand what causes inflation...

Bored and brooding Sir: 'If you abhor (musical) analysis, just go away quietly instead of listening noisily.' Thus Hans Keller. I will not go away quietly. It seems that every...

Progressive Anthony Quinton Public and Private Morality Edited by Stuart Hampshire (Cambridge £6.50) These six essays. all but two newly published, by five prominent moral...

Growing up Alex de Jonge A Russian Schoolboy Sergei Aksakov (Oxford £4.50) When Professor Pnin used, as Nabokov put it, to 'get drunk on his private wines', one of the...

DUghter of Jerusalem Sara Maitland -lullu and Briaas £4 QCFP (AllPrOmising Positions Susan Isaacs Men Lane £4.95) 'pe Illusionist Giles Gordon (Harvester * 'nS t4.95)...

Arts Schubert: tune and melody Hans Keller On the surface, Sunday's 150th anniversary of Schubert's death finds the reputation of his mature output in better health than did...

Theatre Remarks Peter Jenkins Night and Day (Phoenix) The Measures Taken (Kings Head) King Lear (Old Vic) In his new play Tom Stoppard goes in for some fierce...

Opera Small beer Rodney Milnes L'Africalne (Covent Garden) The Thieving Magpie (Coliseum) People who know about these things maintain that L'Africaine is Meyerbeer's...

Cinema Preview Ted Whitehead London Film Festival (NFT) The Hound of the Baskervinles (General release) I've faced the Magic of Attenborough and the Omen II of Taylor,...

Art Mrs Picasso John McEwen Everyone knows that twentieth-century art begins with Cubism, so it is quite something when, as at present, London simultaneously has exhibitions...

Televiision In.Patient Richa;d Ingrams Ithink Iwas probably too kind to Doctor Jonathan last week. The fact is that even the likes of me who think that we are immune to Such...

Boxing Undefeated Benny Green Like most athletes of genius, Gene Tunney, who died last week in his eighty-first year. was doomed to a life with an interminable postscript. It...

Low life Out patients Jeffrey Bernard I'm pretty sure that unhappiness, as opposed to and quite different from depression, is an illness caught in childhood usually round...

High life Unlucky? I Taki As a close friend of Lord Lucan, and despite various tempting offers, I have avoided writing about him since that tragic day foui years ago. The...

Last word Saying alas fI- -- (ieoffrey Wheatcroft The last week has seen the sixtieth anniversaryf the Armistice which ended the Great War; and of several other events...