The hypocrisy of the law No doubt the member of the House of Lords, the Eire MP, the vicars, barristers, solicitors, accountants and businessmen who found their Christmas party...

Political commentary It takes two to pussyfoot Ferdinand Mount The nickname which the Daily Express has drummed up for the Employment Secretary fails to ring true....

Notebook The Annual General Meeting of the National Council for Civil Liberties was held in London last weekend. The NCCL should in theory deserve the support of anYone who...

Another voice Another voice One Denis too many Auberon Waugh A few years ago, in a last desperate attempt to prove I was young at heart, I rejoined the Denis the Menace Fan...

The world after Pennsylvania Henry Fairlie Washington VY gU'L~lurl What is emphasized by the fascinating results of the Pennsylvania primary is the heads-down arms-locked,...

Will Sihanouk return? Richard West Bangkok In Saigon, where I spent last week, the food trucks destined for Cambodia were massed behind the old parliament building, much to...

Chad: gore and gloire Xan Smiley These days it is fashionable to take Africa seriously. Each of the 50-plus countries which the Organisation of African Unity considers part of...

Sartre: a moralist at heart Raymond Aron When Jean-Paul Sartre received the Nobel Prize Pierre Brisson asked me to write a few Pages for Le Figaro Littgraire on my...

Growing up atYork and Essex Charles Clover In Square 4 of Essex University, there is a fountain in the form of a mobile sculpture. A faltering spout fills a brightly coloured...

'Insiders' and the law Anthony Rudd It now seems that legislation making 'insider trading' illegal is finally to reach the statute book. The necessary provisions, which...

Refugees from Afghanistan Sir: Karan Thapar, in a fine article, 'The men of the Khyber' (12 April), has stated that the Government of Pakistan was compelled to reduce the daily...

'Sir: Richard Ingrams's comments on the Benjamin Britten television programme include a statement to the effect that, in his view, the mere fact of two men living together in a...

Hong Kong's good fortune Sir: The article 'The lesson of Hong Kong' (19 April) omits to mention the two major factors in Hong Kong's success - geography and politics. Put that...

Letters Ingrams on Britten Sir: Why should many viewers of A Time There Was ... be distressed to learn thatBritten and Pears lived together? I had to read twice the appalling...

Le Fanu fan Sir: Where did Jonathan Keates acquire the impression (12 April) that Sheridan Le Fanu lived in 'neurasthenic evangelical gloom', and that the society he belonged...

In defence of public servants Sir: Your editorial 'Paying for inflation' (19 April) was more in keeping with the editorials of some of our cheaper so-called 'newspapers'...

Books Coming the old acid-bath Alastair Forbes Somerset Maugham Ted Morgan (Cape 9-95) - - --- I- . The Scandal of Syrie Maugham Gerald McKnight (W.H. Allen £6.95) 'For...

Lost victory Hugh Fraser 1943: The Victory That Never Was John Grigg (Eyre Methuen £7.95) As a questioner of the conventional wisdom and disrespecter of persons, Mr John...

Fateful years Nicholas Bethell Moscow Diary Veljko Mifunovi6 (Chatto £1 2.50) Veljko Micunovi6, such was his communist faith and natural (for a Montenegrin) proRussian...

Historian Robert Blake George Macaulay Trevelyan: A Memoir by his Daughter Mary Moorman (Hamish Hamilton £9.95) One of my most vivid memories is of staying at Trinity soon...

Much 'appier Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd Affectionate Cousins Sylvia Legg (Oxford The kissing cousins featured in this literate love story are Thomas Sturge Moore and Marie...

As told to . Francis King The House of the Prophet Louis Auchin- cross (Weidenfeld £5.95) Postwar English journalism has produced a gaggle of 'serious' commentators who...

A Month in the Country J. L. Carr (Harves- ter £6.50) The Sweet Shop Owner Graham Swift (Allen Lane £5.95) A Soldier's Embrace Nadine Gordimer (Cape £4.95) Remembering the...

Arts Art as departure Hans Keller On Friday, 25 April, at 7.30, Andr6 Tchaikowsky's Friday Concert at Pebble Mill (in the BBC's Studio 1 in Birmingham) will be relayed live...

Art Ironist John McEwen Ties between American and English cOntemporary art are today much closer thani those between English and European, so it was both surprising and...

Cinema Scene painting Peter Ackroyd 1941 ('A' Leicester Square Theatre) Mirror ('U' Camden Plaza) 1941 is announced as 'a Steven Spielberg film'. We didn't need to be...

Theatre Rhubarb Peter Jenkins Three Sisters (RSC, Warehouse) Creditors (New End) Trevor Nunn's small-scale production of Three Sisters, the deepest and darkest of the...

Television Waffle Richard Ingramns Graham Greene, as we all know by now, won't go on the telly. I am not sure whether he has ever given his reasons for his refusal to...

High life Having a go Taki At 2.15 p.m. London time last Thursday afternoon, there was an attempt on my life in the resort town of Glyfada, near Athens. Perhaps the phrase...

life Lowr life Good girls I.- Jeffrey Bernard I Was quite fascinated to read about the man Who got a divorce because his wife wouldn't mfake love with him more than twice a...

Postscript Old hats Patrick Marnham Sometimes an old press cutting picks out a forgotten life with uncomfortable brilliance, so that one wonders how it was that such an...