Three weeks ago we referred to the nagging suspicion growing among Conservatives that they might after all lose the next election, that Mrs Thatcher might snatch defeat from the...

A few pathetic fallacies Ferdinand Mount Logic is the first casualty in election campaigns. You can tell that the election fever is for real this time by the fallacies flying...

A Very strange thing happened in Edinb urgh at the end of last week. Mr Ian Hamilton Finlay, the Scottish concrete poet and 'artist, suddenly called off an exhibition of n ix...

A man and his dog Auberon Waugh Of all the letters which have appeared in The Times since the Home Policy Committee of the Labour Party proposed that Labour's election...

)Kan Smiley Nothing is easier to mock than Rhodesia's internal settlement plan. Indeed, however things turn out, Zimbabwe will provide those with a taste for the macabre with...

Richard West Johannesburg South Africa's ace public relations man Dr Eschel Rhoodie boasted in the report of the Department of Information for 1976 that: 'The increasing...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The returns from the California plebiscite ° n property taxes have obliterated other n ews. The referendum, which significantly I reduces taxes...

Patrick Cosgrave It is just over a year sinde Dr David Owen became Foreign Secretary, following the unexpected death of Anthony Crosland. Few men in the last generation have...

Carole Caulfield How would you feel if, completely innocent of any crime, you were taken away, locked up and deprived of your freedom, without any kind of trial, and then...

Alan Gibson The sight of the England captain opening an England innings at Lord's in a crash helmet of repellent ugliness caused much shaking ( =if heads, and what B. Pleydell...

After the presentation of the prizes to the North-London Collegiate and Camden Schools for Girls last Tuesday, Lord Granville said that the objection was still entertained to...

The end of the affair Nicholas Davenport The analysts calculate that in the financial year from mid-April the gilt-edged sales to the non-bank public amount to over £2,000...

Sir: I refer to your unsigned item headed `The Press Council' and starting with the sentence 'Mr Ian Hamilton Finlay is a Scottish concrete poet who almost never leaves his home...

Sir: I read the article on Iran in your journal of 27 May. What emerged from reading it was that Mr Naipaul carries on his shoulders two enormous bags of chips which, perhaps,...

Sir: Parents, as trustees, have certainly been enriched by ,the thalidomide settlement which, in many cases, has raised their family incomes to the level of what Mr Healey...

Sir: I am exasperated but not surprised when social workers express pity for me, and instead of dealing with the content of my articles speculate about the deep motivation...

Sir: In the course of his interesting review of my book, Herod: Reflections on Political Violence, Mr Alan Watkins says: `Dr O'Brien, as a UN official, tried to coerce Katanga...

Sir: In your issue of 10 June Mr Nicholas von Hoffman refers to the year 1968 as that in which 'the students almost burned down Columbia University'. That statement is very much...

Sir: I have seen Mr Richard West's reference to the libel actions taken against my book, The Greek Passion (Dent 1969), and I am grateful for his compassionate remarks about my...

Sir: It was unfortunate for Mary Kenny (3 June) that she chose a remark of mine on which to hang her confused diatribe against what she variously and apparently synonymously...

Sir: No doubt your correspondent Robert Brooks (17 June), who reveals himself as the epitome of good-humoured English tolerance – a curious mixture of broadminded high...

Sir: As a satisfied subscriber and admirer of your excellent magazine, I nonetheless feel compelled to comment on one aspect of your presentation which frankly drives me crazy:...

Sir: Allow me to correct a hurtful misprin t (17 June): the undemonstrative Schubef t was Haydn's brother-in-art, not h ts 'brother-in-law'. Hans Keller 3 Frognal Gardens,...

Having it both ways Patrick Cosgrave The war Path David Irving (Michael Joseph E7.50) Mr David Irving is famous (or notorious) Principally for two things. The first is a...

Raymond Carr Dictatorship and Political Dissent: workers and students in Franco's Spain Jose Maravall (Tavistock Publications £7.95) This book has cheered me up considerably...

John Biggs-Davison Memoirs of a Statesman Brian Faulkner Edited by John Houston (Weidenfeld E6.95) Note the title. Impeccably edited by Lord Faulker's ablest 'young man', this...

Alex de Jonge Nicholas I W. B. Lincoln (Allen Lane 0) Nicholas I is rather popular in Russia these days, where the vogue among intellectuals is not so much for dissent as for...

Benny Green The Four Feathers A. E. W. Mason (Fon' tana P 85p) And so the old imperial warhorse galumPh s over the horizon one more time, its nostril 5 flared and its total...

Elisabeth Whipp A Barefoot Doctor's Manual (Routledge paperback £5.95) The Conquest of Pain Peter Fairley (Michael Joseph £5.50) The Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine and...

Paul Ableman Rachel, the Rabbi's Wife Silvia Tennenbaum (Gollancz £5.60) This first novel by a fifty-year-old American lady immediately establishes its author, Silvia...

With and without walls Peter Jenkins Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (Mermaid) The Jail Diary of Alble Sachs (RSC, Warehouse) The Dance of Death (RSC, Aidwych) Two plays this...

Riches Rodney Milnes Luisa Miller (Covent Garden) Just as Luisa Miller occupies a central position in Verdi's output (eighteen months before Rigoletto), separating the mature...

Fruit salad John McEwen First things first. There is a jewel of a Matisse show at the Marlborough (till 29 July) in the best tradition of their summer shows of old. The place...

Wild mercury Richard Williams Whatever motive brought Bob Dylan back to Britain last week — twelve years after he had been jeered at the Albert Hall for renouncing the...

Evil eye Ted Whitehead After, the killer shout, the killer look. The Medusa Touch (A), suggesting the Gorgon sister of petrifying aspect, is an almost per verse title for a...

Caged Hans Keller 1 don't know why the majority of the press confined itself, on Cage night last week, to the two works performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which had...

Bore-in Richard Ingrams A state of unseemly shambles now prevails in the BBC's Current Affairs department. Earlier this week it was announced that Newsday, the worthy BBC-2...

Tasteful Mary Kenny Here is something interesting about the 'pop' music station, Radio 1: although ostensibly aimed at teenagers and other young people, whole slices of...

Deadly spring Patrick Marnham The Small tarden by Brigadier C. E. Lucas Phillips was first published in 1952. It is now in its fourteenth impression and Pan claim to have sold...

Performing Jeffrey Bernard Last Thursday morning I felt more proud and grateful to be an Englishman than I have since the late Duke of Gloucester inspected me by peering...