According to the familiar Welsh tale, the sorrowing guest at the funeral who asks the chief mourner, 'What did he die of, then?' is immediately comforted by the cheerful reply,...

The Italians are always first with everything. Last month, as the newspapers have reported, the Fiat motor company in Turin dismissed '61 Derek Robinsons. Well:not exactly Derek...

Tim Garton Ash Bonn Nevertheless, she is still a better bet than Labour. That is the bottom line of many West German officials' observations about Mrs Thatcher. They are...

Henry Fairlie Washington Anything is possible. It is possible that by the time these words are read, the Jihad which the Ayatollah Khomeini has tried to proclaim will have...

Charles Douglas-Home We have to thank the Korean War for the myth of the Yellow Peril. A whole generation — or two — have been nourished on the image of the human wave of...

Richard West The centenary of the birth of Patrick Pearse, one of the two men who led the Easter Rising of 1916, has stirred a debate in Ireland on whether that rising was good...

Alistair Home Fifteen years ago Peter Fleming, who knew and loved Russia and the Russians as well as could any sane westerner, observed to me that every people had their own...

Roy Kerridge The blacks in the inner city are, apparently, readily identifiable. They have their own music called Reggae, and their own religion, Rasta, and their own customs,...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Until the 18th century there was no law against obscene publications. That is one of the interesting points made in Appendix 1 of the Report of the...

The Press has grown singularly easytempered. We remember the time when a code for newspaper correspondents such as that published in The Times of Tuesday, would have produced a...

Jo Grimond The debate in the House of Commons last week on Blunt was almost wholly misdirected by the Opposition front bench. There may be doubts about the efficiency and...

Sir: The fact that Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt were all at Cambridge in the Thirties might lead people to believe that all young Cambridge people felt as they did. This...

Sir: 'There are things', Raymond Chandler wrote, 'that are facts, in a statistical sense, on paper, on a tape recorder, in evidence. And there are things that are facts because...

Sir: Alexander Chancellor (Notebook, 17 November) rightly castigates the misnamed Campaign for Press Freedom, with its declared aims of challenging 'the myth that only private...

Sir: On the subject of this union and 'Ancient Music', Mr Booker can burble on as long as you are prepared to pay him for his contributions (24 November); he may afford harmless...

Sir: John Mortimer (Postscript', 24 November) refers to the 'erotic voltage' of the works of the best writers and painters, contrasting it with the negative effect of...

Sir: What has happened to Mr Mortimer (to whom I am devoted)? He writes that Mozart produced works that are unforgettably erotic (true), but that Brahms seems dull. Has Mr...

Sir: John Mortimer, in his article 'In cold blood' (10 November), makes a strong case for the inhumanity and barbarism of the death penalty. This is fine, and as far as it goes...

Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft's lament about the price of wine ('Claret crisis', 17 November) is a futile exercise without comparable pay figures. It is no use saying Ch. Lafite cost...

One of the dark places Richard West A Bend In The River V. S. Naipaul (Deutsch £5.50) The protagonist and narrator of this book is a young man named Salim from the east coast...

Peter Bessell Jeremy Thorpe: A Secret Life Lewis Chester, Magnus Linklater and David May (Deutsch £5.50, Fontana £1.50) Watching Presidential hopeful, Governor Jerry Brown on...

Gavi n Stamp John Loughborough Pearson Anthony Quiney (Yale £18.50) Over ten years ago the author of this biography of the Victorian church architect J.L. Pearson was warned by...

James Michie The Oxford Book of American Light Verse Ed. William Harmon (Oxford 27.50) Last year's New Oxford Book of Light Verse, edited by Kingsley Amis, had a glaring...

Lord Lambton Border Reflections Lord Home (CollinS e4.95) Lord Home follows his younger brother William into print with a slim book of unpretentious sporting recollections of...

Benny Green P. G. Wodehouse: An Illustrated Biography Joseph Connolly (Orbis £6.95) The problems of Wodehouse biography are gradually emerging, and may now be divided into two...

Emma Fisher Selected Poems Elizabeth Jennings (Carcanet £3.95) Moments of Grace Elizabeth Jennings (Carcanet £2.95) Field Work Seamus Heaney (Faber E3 hard, £1.65 paper) Lies...

Francis Xing Visitants Randolph Stow (Sacker £5.50) With Patrick White and Thomas Keneally, Randolph Stow is one of a trio of Australian novelists who make most of their...

Exploding the myth John McEwen Post-Impressionism (Royal Academy till 16 March) is an exhibition in the grand manner, choc-a-bloc with insights and masterpieces and displaying...

Gershwin Hans Keller At the Free Trade Hall, Manchester next Friday (7 December) at 7.30, the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra's concert under Raymond Leppard will include...

Blood money Peter Ackroyd Martin (Cinecenta X') A Little Romance (Classic 'A') 'How old are you Martin?' A sullen and unattractive American teenager, looking like a cat on a...

Perfect fit Peter Jenkins The Glass Menagerie (Round House) Stage Struck (Vaudeville) Rookery Nook (Her Majesty's) I have to declare an interest in Gloria Grahame, I knew her...

All amiss Richard Ingrams There seems to be no stopping Ian Curteis. Following hard on the heels of his Churchill and the Generals we had a three-hour Suez blockbuster on...

A la Chaplin James Hughes-Onslow On 4 December, Le Cirque Imaginaire comes to Britain for the first time —performing for two weeks at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith —...

Whose ashes? Alan Gibson I think, on the whole, that England were right to go to Australia this winter, though I doubt if it will be a happy tour (by 'happy' I do not mean...

Travel light Jeffrey Bernard In an averagely insane week I was struck Particularly by the news item about the man who tried to hijack a Japanese jumbo jet. He made his attempt...

Low treason Patrick Marnham 'There were 12 days to go. I disconnected the door bell and buried the telephone under a mountain of cushions. My mother forbade me to unscrew the...