There have been many depressing announcements in the House of Commons recently. Not the least dispiriting was a Written answer late last week from Mr Gerald Kaufman of the...

There was a silly storm in a teacup when the Observer suggested that Mr John Cordle, Tory MP for Bournemouth, might have enJoYed an improper connection with John Poulson, the...

Mr Callaghan's mumble John Grigg At a special meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on 13 October there was a most significant exchange between the Prime Minister and...

To get by train to Walsall, North, where a Parliamentary by-election is to be held on 4 November, you change first at Birmingham New Street station, not to be muddled with...

Thank God for the unions Auberon Waugh Is it very wicked to rejoice in our country's present discomfiture? Even the most fanatical Tories or free marketeers can generally show...

John Biggs-Davison London grows dirtier. Lisbon is filthy. A dead rat lay on the pavement in the shopPing street, Rua do Amparo. This is not . good for tourism and morale. So a...

MACHADO DE ASSIS titles wanted. 24 Cloudesley Square , London Ni LLEWYLYN POWYS, "Skin For Skin" and "Bridlegoose" especially, but others. Stephen Surrey, 14 Church Lane,...

Peter Kemp On 23 October twenty years ago, the Hungarian nation rose against its Russian masters in a spontaneous and virtually unanimous outburst of anger and national Pride....

Sam White Paris In publishing an elegantly written essay on France's present and future which has become an immediate runaway best-seller President Giscard d'Estaing has made...

Charles Foley Los Angeles Richard Nixon, accused of making many false statements in his time, was never more in error than in his bitter 'farewell to politics' in 1962,...

T. E. B. Howarth The biggest net gain for education so far as a result of Mr Callaghan's conversion to educational realism is that it has got Mr Fred Jarvis, the Jack Jones of...

Patrick Cosgrave Did you know that Attlee believed the third Marquis of Salisbury to be the best Prime Minister qua Prime Minister since he first took an interest in politics'?...

Christopher Booker Mr Bernard Levin is to be all:iwed, at this time of national apocalypse, to devote 1500 words-worth of The Times to his pillow fantasies about some...

George Hutchinson Mr Harold Macmillan's broadcast was certainly well-prepared. There was nothing casual or extempore about it. For weeks, if not months, he has been pondering...

Luck of the draw Jeffrey Bernard My run of luck came to a temporary end, as it had to, last Saturday. I worked really hard on the afternoon's cards in the morning too,...

The crisis revealed Nicholas Davenport The cause of the monetary panic which seiz ed.the Chancellor on 7 October was revealed this week. It was, as I suggested, the jump in...

Sir: Looking back on his record as prime minister Mr Heath's speech at Brighton was surely the most impudent political discourse of the century—no mean feat when one recalls...

Sir: Ten out of ten, we think, for your interview with Iris Murdoch, but nought out of ten, we think, for the caricature of Eris Murdoch (Heath!). I know Heath can play the...

Sir: I refer to Robert Blake's objective and impartial article 'War or peace in Rhodesia?', in your issue of 2 October. But I must express my reservations as to one sentence. as...

Sir: There was one paragraph in Lord Home's autobiography which Mr Powell, either out of chivalry or out of carelessness, overlooked. This was Lord Home's confession that in his...

Sir: Mrs Thatcher at Brighton : 'For them Hope has withered and Faith gone sour. For we who remain it is close to midnight.' If this is a foretaste of education under the...

Sir: Here comes Elisabeth Dunn (9 'October) launching a laudable salvo against the litter louts. She wants to tax those who provide the raw material, fine heavily those who...

Knight errant Simon Raven The Life ot Noel Coward Cole Lesley (Jonathan Cape £7.50) If, as they say, you can tell about a man from his friends, you can tell at least as much...

Asa Briggs Victorian Novelists and Publishers J. A. Sutherland (The Athlone Press £7.00) Compared with most other economic relationships, the economic relationship between...

Maureen Duffy The Uses of Enchantment Bruno Bettelheim (Thames and Hudson £6.50) When I wrote the preface to The Erotic World of Faery in 1972, I lamented the onebook space...

Ernest Gellner Critique of Dialectical Reason. I. Theory of Practical Ensembles JeanPaul Sartre. Translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith. Edited by Jonathan Flee (New Left Books...

Nick Totton Morag's Flying Fortress Jack Trevor Story (Hutchinson £3.75) The Company John Ehrlichman (Collins 23.95) Dangerous Davies, the Last Detective Leslie Thomas (Eyre...

Benny Green Unreceived Opinions Michael Holroyd (Penguin 90p) The appearance in a cheap, neat format of his casual essays will surely please Michael Holroyd, but not just for...

Max Egremont The Rockefellers Peter Collier and David Horowitz (Jonathan Cape £7.95) l} Rockefellers are one of the few families u niversally identified with great wealth and....

Peter Ackroyd Yeats Frank Tuohy (Macmillan £6.95) Biography is a substitute in this country for critical thought. If it is done at all, it should be done quickly....

Auberon Waugh Britannia Bright's Bewilderment in the Wilderness of Westminster Clive James' illustrated by Marc (Cape £1.95) On the seventy-fourth page of Clive James' s latest...

The last light show Bryan Robertson Alter Siegfried's journey down the Rhine in Gorterclammerung with streaming, billowing light projected across the steeply tilted...

It is said that a drowning man sees the Whole of his life in his last moments. Never having drowned, I don't know. But it is true, I think, that when someone Who has been very...

Kuchipudi Michael Church Bare boards. At one side a small group of white-robed musicians are playing, at the other there stands a tiny altar garlanded with flowers. Out of the...

Mechanics Kenneth Hurren Old World (Aldwych) The Circle (Theatre Royal, Haymarket) The Frontiers of Farce (Old Vic) Both Old World and The Circle are plays as carefully...

Guilt trip Clancy Sigal For me, a little of Liv Ullmann goes a long way, and 1 prefer Ingmar Bergman's lighter films—such as Summer with Monika and Smiles of a Summer Night—to...

Momentum John McEwen There are very few purely 'abstract' painters in England but anyone who doubts that John Hoyland is the best of them should visit his present show at...

Missing out Richard Ingrams A large part of the output of television seems to consist of policemen with guns chasing criminals also with guns in cars. Usuall) these policemen...