It is understandable that the Prime Minister should be un willing too openly and loudly to denounce the activities °f the President of Uganda, or too vigorously to oppose hIS...

is the left-centre doomed? John Grigg The British political system depends upon an alternation of governments representing either the moderate right or the moderate left. How...

One of the representative figures of our age is the highly intelligent and skilled 'expert' who Is a moral and political half-wit ; his invariable, Plaintive cry is, 'If only I...

Found under a Stone Auberon Waugh 'The pressure to conform—to do certain things that you don't find pleasant—certain things that you find downright insulting to your own...

Richard West Windhoek Windhoek, the capital of South West Africa, lies hundreds of miles from the fighting on the Angolan border, so that most of the troops one sees in the...

Alan Ross Mysore Summer has come early this year and with it the mosquitoes. The south of India has always been neglected, not least by the British since they finally overcame...

Patrick Cosgrave Picture a man large of frame, stooped, bespectacled, balding, always plainly but neatly dressed, though with clothes that seem i llfitting; a man with...

3 vols..ARCHITECTURE of Sir E. Lutyens by ASG Butler and LIFE by C. HUSSEY. Rankin, 123 Marlborough Park South, Belfast 9. IN ANOTHER COUNTRY by John Bayley. Write Spectator...

Christopher Booker In the past few weeks I have been discussing, in the fairly narrow context of architecture and the 'great mania for conservation presently sweeping the...

Alan Watkins There is a problem about as if It concerns both the mood and the tense of the verb that follow s the phrase. This is often, though not always, the verb to be. Is...

Jeffrey Bernard The review sections of both the Sunday Times' and the 'Observer' have been unable to print extracts of the 'Pre-War Diaries' of Jeffrey Bernard, but the...

Over-reacting Nicholas Davenport I have never been able to understand how ec onomics could ever be divorced from PsYchology. Economically an incomes policy can be related to...

Sir: I have only now had my attention drawn to Ferdinand Mount's vulgar comment (5 March) on my Observer piece (20 February). Mount's article is about three times as long as...

Sir: Mr Waugh's description of Lord Goddard as 'a cruel and beastly man' (5 March) will surprise not only those of us who used to appear before him at Bar, but also some at...

Sir: The Marquand references to Ramsay MacDonald in the realms of romance led inevitably to the Skidelsky comments ( I 2 March) 1 have always refused to publish the story of my...

Sir: If Geoffrey Wheatcroft's reference (12 March) to Andre Gelinas's description of Saigon under the Communists prompts any of your readers to look at the original article in...

Out of the box Geoffrey Cox Facing the Nation: Television and P olitics,1936 - 76 Grace Wyndham Goldie (Bodley Head £7.50) Grace Wyndham Goldie is one of the halfdozen most...

Shiva Naipaul The Savage Andrew Sinclair (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £5.00) Despite everything, we are still attached to the quasi-mystical notion that words—especially those...

John Sparrow S pooner: A Biography William Hayter (W. H. Allen £4.95) Every one knows what is meant by a s Doonerism,' but most people know little or nothing about the man...

Peter Ackroyd Staying On Paul Scott (Heinemann £3.90) One Last Glimpse James Aldridge (Michael Joseph £4.25) British India is now a cottage industry; the subject of...

Benny Green England versus Australia, a Pictorial History David Frith (Lutterworth Press £12.50) On 15 March, 1877, eleven cricketers of England stepped on to the field at...

Philip Howard The New Elizabethans John Colville (Collins £6.50) When the Queen acceded to the throne, a fulsome press and a sentimental public hailed the dawn of a glorious...

Christine Verity Varieties of Unbelief: Atheists and Agnostics in English Society 1850-1960 Susan Budd (Heinemann £9.50) 'And thus desperately challenged the young man's...

Replanting the cherry orchard John Russell New York rhe Cherry Orchard is a great many people's Favourite play, and every one of those people IS convinced that he or she knows...

Huon Mallalieu Recently Sotheby's have been Criticised, notably by the editor of Connoisseur, for their role in the projected disposal of the Rothschild collections at...

Mean but good Clancy Sigal Jackson County Jail (London Pavilion) The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (Rialto) Walk with Love and Death (Electric, Covent Garden) Mean...

Let's do it Ted Whitehead It's All Right If I Do It (Mermaid) A few years ago a sexual comedy with the title It's All Right If I Do It would almost certainly have been an...

Slade mark John McEwen Michael Kenny is showing sculpture and drawings at the Serpentine (till 11 April). The drawings are conventional studies for the sculpture which is...

Good books Richard Ingrarns Sometimes I wonder if the BBC ought not to have an internal Monopolies Commission to investigate the people who seem to be cornering the market on...

Candidates David Levy David Levy, who takes over the chess column this week in Raymond Keene's absence, was Scottish champion in 1968, after leaving St Andrew's University. He...