The Gang of Three,enlarged,with the arrival back on these shores of Mr Roy Jenkins, into the Gang of Four, has now attracted to its members, its ideals, its plots and its...

Down the perspex tube Ferdinand Mount Wembley At a quarter-to-eleven, we were photographed by Mr Clive Jenkins. Clive was rushing around in his shirtsleeves snapping everyone...

The 'Council of Social Democracy' seems an awfully dull name. I was going to suggest that the Jenkins—Williams group should be called the League of Agweeahle Fellows Incommoded...

The case for a military coup Auberon Waugh One of Mr Murdoch's first worries at The Times must be what to do about Mr Peter Jay. For those who missed last Monday's newspaper I...

Tim Garton Ash Rzeszow, south-eastern Poland There are three classes of road in rural Poland, bad, very bad, and impassable. The road to Lowisko is very bad. At one point, the...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington President Reagan has his well-publicised 'job hiring freeze' in force but there must have been one exception made. The White House staff have...

Peter Paterson One of Chairman Mao's sayings concerned the folly of lifting up a rock only to place it down heavily on your own foot. And that indeed is what Mr Tony Benn, Mr...

We know few things more cruel than the way in which lion-tamers like those at Sanger's menagerie . at Birmingham deal with their victims, in order to give the public the trivial...

Jo Grimond 'Forward by the Right'. 'A Better Tomorrow'. And now Face the Future* (haven't we had this title before somewhere?) — all manifestoes of all parties aspire to sound...

Roy Kerridge 'As I was a-walking down Paradise Street, To me way aye, blow the man down, A multi-storey car park I happened to meet „ This indeed was the sight that met my eyes...

Murdoch's poisoned chalice Paul Johnson In accepting the poisoned chalice from Lord Thomson, Rupert Murdoch reserves the right at any stage to dash the damned thing to the...

Market leadership Tony Rudd Among the numerous band of investment experts on Wall Street who sell their wares to the big institutions is one, Stanford Calderwood, who offers a...

Sir: Benny Green's article (24 January) on the death of Alec Wilder-which incidentally occurred last month, not 'last week' inspired in me a sense of deja vu; I seemed to have...

Sir: Mr Phillip Hodson (Letters, 17 January) is of course entitled to defend his paper but his effort does not say much for his judgment. His comment on the BBC World Service...

Sir: Mr Paul Johnson's 'Quantity not quality' (24 January) is informative because it passes Hume's test (which appears to be becoming yours also, I am glad to see) and avoids...

Sir: I was delighted to read Rupert HartDavis's retort (24 January) to Simon Raven's criticism of Siegfried Sassoon's post-war character. I agree wholeheartedly with Hart-Davis....

Sir: In protest at your new cover I shall next week deny myself the pleasure of purchasing and reading the Spectator. If other readers who are unhappy with it will do likewise,...

Sir: I would like to echo Mr Courtauld's complaints about the Royal Opera House (Notebook, 17 January). Not only is it a near-impossibility to obtain seats without being a...

Sir: Daniel Johnson's letters are getting longer (3 January), mine shorter. 1945 was his date, not mine, while the facts are mine, not his: without compunction, he continues...

Louis the largest and the last Douglas Johnson Louis XVIII Philip Mans& (blond and Briggs £20) One of the foremost authorities on 19thcentury French history, who taught in the...

Nicolas Walter A Way to Die: Living to the End Rosemary and Victor Zorza (Deutsch £5.95) Death Ed. John Prickett (Lutterworth £4.95) Letter to a Younger Son Christopher Leach...

Gavin Stamp I'll Fight You for It! Brian Anson (Cape e8.95) This book should be regarded as complementary to Robert Thorne's Covent Garden Market, reviewed in these pages last...

Jonathan Keates Show People Kenneth Tynan (Weidenfeld £8.95) Tallulah Darling Denis Brian (Sidgwick £6.95) Much has been made, during past decades, of the potentially...

Paul Ableman Consenting Adults or The Duchess Will Be Furious Peter De. Vries (Gollancz £5.95) What's to be said? You, gentle reader, have been doubled-up, splitting your...

Evelyn Waugh in Africa Richard West In his introduction to a new edition of Black Mischief, (Folio Society £6.75) William Deedes has once again raised the question of how...

Marathon 'Man' at the National Peter Jenkins Man and Superman (Olivier) Acts of cultural reverence on a grand scale are among the duties of national theatres and now that we...

Oddball John McEwen In art, as in dress, fashion is not very fashionable at the moment, so artists whose work defies categorisation. are much acclaimed. H.C. Westermann is one...

Old times Peter Ackroycl Atlantic City ('AA', Curzon) ' The Atlantic Ocean was something then. You should have s.emthe Atlantic in those days. ' Burt Lancaster looks very old...

Textbooks Rodney Milnes Whole operatic genres can sink almost without trace; opera of the French Revolution is one, and 17th-century Italian opera was another, until Raymond...

Lugubrious Richard Ingrams The speakers on Did You See...? this week were an Irish psychiatrist who is often on the box, Lady Vaizey the Sunday Times art critic, and a don...

Hypocrite Taki New York Imagine what the vultures of the press would have written if Richard Nixon had decided to leave Patricia after the gubernatorial race of 1962, the one...

Dirty Jeffrey Bernard There seems to me to be a touch of spring in the air. Yesterday, the 1981 Barclaycard arrived in thpost and in the afternoon I escorted a lady to a sex...

Unappealing Patrick Marnham Following his victory over Michael Gillard in the Court of Appeal last week, Sir James Goldsmith wrote to The Times to complain that his side of...