ritain claimed to have landed 5,000 La troops on the East Falklands, unop- posed although in subsequent air strikes a destroyer and two frigates were lost and the merchant ship...

Tories home and dry? Charles Moore T he pigheadedness of General Galtieri has saved the Conservative Party. Only a little more flexibility and the professional negotiators...

A t the time of writing, the British Task Force in the South Atlantic has already lost five ships and at least 63 seamen. On the very day that Alexander Haig was Predicting a...

6 months: One year: UK Eire Surface mail £15.50 111E17.75 £18.50 £31.00 1R£35.50 £37.00 Air mail £24.50 £49.00 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made payable to the...

The New Spirit Auberon Waugh S orry to be writing about the Falklands 1.-3 yet again. I know, I know. It seems to me there are some important points to be made. The first...

Patrick Desmond W hat seemed impossible seven weeks ago, and still improbable last Satur- day, has been done: the Task Force has got its embarked battalions ashore — and...

Olivia O'Leary Buenos Aires ' W e must now throw the bathpipes at the British,' said the Air Force spokesman in Buenos Aires. He was somewhat distraught at British gains in the...

Bohdan Nahaylo F or the Soviet Union the Falklands conflict has been a godsend. With inter- national attention diverted from the s mouldering Polish crisis, not to mention...

Peter Nichols Rome T remember asking the Pope, on the out- ward flight to Turkey in November 1979, when he was coming to Britain, and he replied, eyes steady with...

Timothy Garton Ash `T he "Polishness" of the Pope is essential to his papacy,' the good Lord (Longford) instructs us. We may safely assume that on this point the Holy Father...

Denis Mack Smith aiibaldi during his lifetime was more /1/4—I widely admired in our country than in his own. When half a million Londoners gathered to greet his arrival in 1864...

David Marquand S o the crisis over Britain's contribution to the EEC Budget has been settled after all. Having marched their troops bravely and defiantly to the top of the hill...

Tim Congdon W hile the fighting has intensified in the South Atlantic, there has been a curious lull in hostilities on the home front. Critics of the Government's economic...

Richard West T he 'Days of May', of exactly 150 years ago, were the nearest that Britain ever came to revolution. The cause of the agita- tion was the refusal of the House of...

Battle honours Paul Johnson W hat was striking about Fleet Street's handling of the British re-entry into the Falklands was the deep cleavage bet- ween the pessimism of the...

The St Gothard Tunnel was opened for traffic on Wednesday, May 24th, a heavy train, conveying forty-three members of different Embassies and some five hundred visitors, of every...

Self-help Tony Rudd A nother practical aspect of the Ameri- can way of bankruptcy has come to my notice recently which seems once again to show that their way of going about...

Private war Sir: If James Fenton doesn't want or need my compliments (Spectator 14 May) then I withdraw them with relief. After all, he wrote on 1 May that 'we are going to war...

Sir: Harold Wilson, for all his political subtlety, is unlikely really to believe that he won the 1966 general election on a 'wave of patriotism after England won the World Cup'...

Sir: Mr Waugh should have realised that those who read The Times and Spectator may also read the Observer. No wonder he blustered so about a straightforward profile of one...

Sir: Elisabeth Luard's knowledge of Israel's scientific and technological achievements ('Hybrid vigour', 22 May) obviously does not extend to the current situation in the oc-...

Summertime blues and greens John McEwen T he 214th Annual Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy (till 15 August) has an illustrated catalogue (L3.95). This gives the Academy...

David Wakefield S everal of London's leading art galleries have recently opened new exhibitions for the summer season. Though there are no sensational shows to rival some in...

Gavin Stamp y first visit to the Barbican Arts Cen- tre shortly after one of its openings in March irresistibly recalled a science-fiction novel of my schooldays called Level...

Arthur Marshall Graham Sutherland Roger Berthoud (Faber £12.50) T he sense of shock and outrage occasion- ed by the wilful destruction of the superb Sutherland portrait of the...

Bryan Robertson A ustralian films like My Brilliant Career, Gallipoli, Sunday Too Far Away or Newsfront have been grabbing us all lately but it is not generally know that an...

Kenneth Garlick T he reputation of Richard Payne Knight has always suffered from the fact that his errors of judgment were of greater publicity value than his achievements....

Christopher Wood T his book is the very model of a modern art-historical. It is scholarly, thorough , copiously illustrated, and expensive. It s author spent a lifetime...

Richard Francis D ore Ashton's problem is that there are too many artists in 20th-century American Art to deal with them properly in a relatively short book. The result is an...

Richard Shone A major expense these days of putting on an exhibition is, of course, the c atalogue. People expect one, they expect Colour plates and informative essays; c...

Many happy returns? Mark Amory A rash of revivals makes my poor memory a positive advantage this week. Each new production of supposedly familiar plays contains lines that...

Diabolerie Rodney Manes old virtuoso's first European concert for over 30 years, in which he gave his services to one of the Prince of Wales's favourite charities, the Royal...

Penny dreadful Peter Ackroyd T hose who expect a recognisable version of the television series will, I think, be disappointed. Although Dennis Potter's script is in places as...

Cold and frosty Richard Ingrams T he Duke of Edinburgh in the BBC God Slot on Sunday seemed to offer an op- portunity for some satire. He was being in- terviewed at Buckingham...

Over-anxious Alan Gibson A new season is supposed to bring lifting to a cricketer's heart, the la' in the sky, the linnet on the hawthorn , th e prospect of salmon mayonnaise...

Honour Taki O nce again, within the short space of seven months, I find myself reluctant to write about High Life while brave Argen- tinian pilots and valiant British seamen...

Titbits Jeffrey Bernard T don't know why, but recently I've been I wondering what on earth it must feel like to be a guide dog. I don't much like dogs but I do love labradors....

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked to feature five out of twelve given names as dramatis personae of a play (title supplied), with descriptions of appearance,...

No, 1220: Juvenilia Set by Jaspistos: In his youth, apparently, Leonid Brezhnev was a keen and fertile poet. You are invited to provide a transla- tion of a poem he might have...

A Prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 14 June. Entries to: Crossword 559, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. a min 111...

Black death Raymond Keene W ith the Phillips and Drew over, several of the players transferred directly to the next super-tournament, at Bugojno in Y ugoslavia. True, Karpov...

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