A paradoxical election: on the one hand it is both boring and depressing. It was depressing enough before the events of Monday night. We now know that for the foreseeable future...

Ferdinand Mount If Nehru or Jinnah walked into this room, he would turn on his heel and walk straight out again. There is no sea of faces here, no dust or heat or passion, only...

I am becoming increasingly sceptical about opinion polls. Either the wide differences between them indicate that those asked for their opinions are deliberately kidding the...

Auberon Waugh Not far from Barnstaple, North Devon I was nearly stopped in my tracks by Alexander Chancellor's stinging rebuke to the Daily Telegraph in last week's Notebook....

I am to public Speaking, I offer myself as your Member of Parliament in the General Election on behalf of the nation's dog lovers to protest about the behaviour of the Liberal...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft In the old land of the Picts, the north-east of Scotland, an interesting sideshow battle is being fought during this election. Surprisingly, the last party...

Tired of hearing hard-luck stories about C ompanies which need assistance from the t axpayer? Here's a good-luck story for a Change — worth £40 million a year to Britain. When...

Ian Bradley Oxford The rest of the world may still go on thinking of it in terms of scholarship, marmalade or bags, but for politicians and pundits, until after 3 May at least,...

Annabel Ferriman If Labour is to have a hope of securing an overall majority in next week's general election, one of the key seats it will have to win is Pembroke, lying in the...

Christopher Booker Is the last year of the drab, drifting Seventies really about to mark a historic turning point in our national affairs, as a number of commentators (e.g....

Stephen Fay Margaret Thatcher did not spend much time in Ipswich, but it was an important moment in her campaign. It was day three, and she had visited an insurance broking...

Peter Ackroyd The church hall has that unmistakable Musty smell, as though dust had become a Part of its fabric, and the familiar objects are all still here: the scratched...

Christopher Walker Banbridge, Co. Down It is one of the great ironies of the present election that the Rt Hon. J. Enoch Powell. A man whose views on race are too well known to...

Richard West Salisbury At one of the briefings for the observers and the reporters at last week's general election, the military spokesman, Brigadier Rich, offered this...

The need to tinker Xan Smiley Bishop Abel Muzorewa has recently been Wing effusive in praise of Dr Hastings Banda, the despot who presides over one of the more efficient...

Peter Paterson There is a smell of subversion in the air. Les clercs, you might say, are in a state of trahison. Mrs Thatcher's support among the journalists of the Right who...

A negro 'exodus,' as it is called, has commenced in the Southern States. In Louisiana and Mississippi particularly, the negro labourers declare that they cannot get land, except...

Nothing but the truth Nicholas Davenport You can deal unofficially in election majorities' on the Stock Exchange and a friend of mine bought them last week at 60 Thatchers. I...

Police and public Sir: Your editorial of 14 April under the heading 'Arming the police by stealth', as you quite rightly assert, raises a subject of considerable importance....

Sir: In your last issue you printed two letters and two apologies in connection with MY recent comments about Ronald Harwood , the compere of the BBC programme Read All About...

Sir: For the sake of the record (no pun intended) I feel I must take mild issue with Benny Green about the 78 rpm HMV records of the great 'Fats' Waller. For the home market,...

Sir: David Steel's call for an end to Punch and Judy politics is, for his party, the tattered end of a false beginning! No Shavian nonsense about his campaign, whereby the...

Sir: I am euphorically grateful to Lorc Boyle and Misha Donat for confirming my submission and, with their deep and con crete musical knowledge, forcing me to spell it out. A...

Ronald Hingley The Yawning Heights Alexander Zinoviev translated by Gordon Clough (Bodley Head 29.95) At the time when Alexander Zinoviev wrote The Yawning Heights he was still...

Philip Warner Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War ll Ian McLaine (Allen & Unwin £9.95) The title is misleading, for the Ministry...

Alan Gibson 2 Co 6. I 9 e 5 r ) idge Katharine Cooke (Routledg" While Coleridge was not the best of di e Romantic poets, many people find hull , the most interesting and...

Benny Green Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack 1979 (Macdonald £5.75) In 1864 the Sussex cricketer John Wisden, frailest effective fast bowler in the history of the game, decided to...

Ted Whitehead The Actor's Life: Journals 1956-1976 Charlton Heston (Allen Lane £6.95) 'It's something of a mystery to me why I'm all but the sole survivor of my generation of...

Francis King Territorial Rights Muriel Spark (Macrn il " Ian £5.95) From Thomas Mann to Patricia sig h. smith and from Henry James to Daphli e du Maurier, Venice has not mere)...

Masolino d'Amico The Tree of Wooden Clogs ('L'albero degli zoccoli'), Ermanno Olmi's 190-minutelong film which opened this week at the Curzon, won the first prize at the last...

peter Jenkins tOdies (Ambassadors) ne Family Reunion (Roundhouse) ,MY dusty copy of The Family Reunion has "ebruary 1952 written on the flyleaf. It t 4 9°k me back a bit seeing...

Rodney Milnes Rigoletto (Scottish Opera) Rigoletto (Kent Opera) Both these productions ignored the recommendation `Epoca, il secolo XVI' printed at the front of Verdi's score,...

Ted Whitehead The Riddle of the Sands (Plaza 2 from 3 May) Battlestar Galactica (Empire, Leicester Square) The boys of the bulldog breed return in The Riddle of the Sands (U),...

John McEwen This year marks the bicentenary of th e Derby and to celebrate the event Coutts , the Financial Times, Moet and Chando n and Sotheby's have sponsored an exhibitio n...

Patrick Marnham A detached bystander, watching Mr Callaghan and several television crews pro ceeding around Cardiff last week might have wondered whether any of those involved...

Although no contemporary Greek will admit it, one cannot ignore the Greeks' virulent misogyny. The philosophers judged women inferior, the myths made them out to be insidious...

No. 1062: Supper with Tupper Set by Harrison Everard: In The New Oxford Book of Light Verse there is Anthony Brodd's 'Breakfast with Gerard Manley Hopkins'. Can we have other...

Charles Seaton reports: Competitors, asked for the reactions of any prominent woman of the past to the idea of a woman Prime Minister, came up with a smallish but quality entry...

I Was verry sory indeed to heer of yor sad plite w , hen you were vanqished in the Genrul Election. !IMust be verry hard to leave yor costly residense in Downing Street and hand...

Raymond Keene following his splendid opening spurt of 31/4 in the category 15 World Cup tournament, c u rrently in progress in Montreal, Portisch is n ow pursuing the Fabian...