An old Irish joke — from before the days of the 'Irish joke' — has a man in the countryside being asked the way to BallYglasheen: 'Sure, if I was going there I wouldn't go from...

End of the ortolan season Ferdinand Mount The noise of the lawnmower is the sound of suburban summer. For millions of us, that throaty whirr is what the moan of doves was to...

Dr Eschel Rhoodie, South Africa's former Information Minister, is being tiresomely reticent on one thing — the names of those Members of Parliament who, he alleges, were to be...

Not mad, not mad Auberon Waugh In the same week that Mr Christopher Booker asked us to consider whether local authorities had gone mad because they were spending so much...

Edward Mortimer "Wake up. Wake up. They're going to Sign!" "Who?" "Begin and Sadat." "Oh yes. What are they going to sign?" "The Treaty." "Ah. Which treaty is that?" "The...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The old bulls of the Democratic Party were out at the airport to hug President Carter upon his return from the Middle East, but you only get one...

Tim Garton Ash West Berlin Berlin was in a state of civil war. Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere, at street corners, in restaurants, cinemas, dance halls,...

Sam White Paris Jean Monnet, who died last week at the splendid age of 91, was fortunate to have had General De Gaulle as his foil for the latter half of his life. The two men...

Patrick Marnham 1 11 1977 the headless body of an uncircumcised Caucasian was found in the Western Sahara by a detachment of Moroccan troops engaged in the battle with...

Charles Douglas-Home Nairobi In June, ten months after the death of President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, his successor, Daniel Arap Moi, will arrive in London on a state visit....

Richard West Belfast Two curious newspaper stories emanating from Northern Ireland may turn out to be interconnected, in rather a nasty way. The one concerns the efforts by...

One of the most interesting features in the Report of the Lords' Committee is the evidence produced that drunkenness appears to vary, up to a certain point, in direct proportion...

J'accuse Bank or Treasury Nicholas Davenport One of the chores for the writer of this column is to wade through the thick bulletins of the Bank of England and the National...

Thomas Szasz In the four months since the death of the Reverend Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre — even before the release last week of the tape-recorded last moments at...

'Times' methods Sir: Nicholas Davenport and Auberon Waugh say that managers are not allowed to communicate with workers, but must deal through trade union apparatchiks. I don't...

Poetic precision, prose breadth Paul Ableman The Coup John Updike (Deutsch £4.95) This strikes me as the finest American novel since Lolita, a work which is, of course, about...

Christopher Booker Einstein: The Life and Times Ronald Clark (Hodder Stoughton (paperback) 26.95) Einstein, A Centenary Volume Ed. A.P. French (Heinemann for the International...

sense Kenneth Lindsay Prologue to Education John N. Wales (Routledge £4.75) In Britain and the United States there i5 always a plethora of books about Education. Following on...

Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd Maria Pasqua Magdalen Goffin (Oxford 24.95) Lady Blessington at Naples Ed. Edith Clay (Ham ish Hamilton £8.50) When Evelyn Waugh was sent the first...

Douglas Johnson Philippe, Duke of Orleans Regent of France1715 - 1723J. H. Shennan (Thames and Hudson E8.50) It is sometimes said that Napoleon was always in a hurry, as if he...

Benny Green Lewis Carroll: A Biography Anne Clark (Dent £6.95) Carroll presents one of the subtlest biographical challenges of the 19th century, a riddle at least as...

The player's creative role Hans Keller This little essay isn't making life easy for itself — but that's its problem. The musical (but untechnical) reader must not be allowed...

Brief lives John McEwen Commenting on a recent flag-waving exhibition of British contemporary art in Paris an eminent French critic wrote that some of the participants were...

Suite and sour Ted Whitehead C alifornia Suite (Columbia) Autumn Sonata (Classic, Haymarket) i nvasion of the Bodysnatchers (London P avilion) C alifornia Suite (AA) might be...

Generic Peter Jenkins The Fruits of Enlightenment (Olivier) Normal Service (Hampstead) Tolstoy's seldom performed jeu cr esprit could have been written for the National...

Dead ends Richard Ingrams The BBC continues with its interesting experiment, first noted in a dialogue between Clive James and Gore Vidal, of turning people towards religion...

Success story Talc' New York Although some of you might be surprised to hear this, Anthony Haden-Guest is alive, well, and living in New York. I say this because there are...

Face-lifts Jeffrey Bernard It's always nice to stay in a house where they Put Malvern Water, Vogue and a bowl of fruit on the bedside table. It makes such a change from an...

After, because? Geoffrey Wheatcroft Last. week we noticed the attacks on pornography by Messrs Martin Amis and Richard West. Their thrust was that pornography was corrupt and...

No. 1057: Sci Fi tiros Set by Robin Chase: Now that science fic tion is all the rage, one wonders what the classic authors might have made of the genre. Competitors are asked...

Oscars David Levy For several years the International Association of Chess Journalists (AIPE) has carried out an annual poll amongst its members for an award known as the...