Where is Afghanistan? The Soviet Union's aggressive thrusting of 40,000 troops into Afghanistan in the last days of 1979 confronts the West, and the world, with the first...

Political commentary The Seventies: a last goodbye Ferdinand Mount In the summer of 1964 1 often spent the afternoon reading the British Medical Journal. Its lead-grey covers...

Notebook The death of Rudi Dutschke last week at the age of 39 recalls the shabby treatment which he suffered at the hands of the then Home Secretary, Mr Reginald Maudling,...

Another voice Triall bi Joory Auberon Waugh If Mrs Thatcher had had a sense of humour, the temptation to find room in her New Year's Honours for Mr Bill Sirs, general...

America's plastic decade Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The first nostalgia party of the Seventies was held last October. Everybody was in a hurry to see these ten years...

The decline of Edward Kennedy Henry Fairlie Washinpton Although much of the increase in popular support for President Carter may be due to his handling of the situation in...

What future for Giscard? Sam White Paris The Canard Enchatne' permitting, 1980 should be a year in which Giscard steadies himself for the triumphal run-up for his re-election...

On the Indian hustincis Karan Thapar Bhiwani, north-west India One hundred and forty miles from New Delhi, in the state of Haryana, Bhiwani lies in the heart of a dusty, arid...

A decade of horrors Richard West Much of the misery of the past decade stemmed from two events in the first quarter of 1970: the collapse of Biafra, a largely Ibo state which...

Socialism without the state Jo Grimond Our politics are conducted by the Government and Parliament upon the assumption that the liberal notions of the last 200 years are still...

A week on the shop floor Charles Clover There is no such thing as graduate unemployment', the careers-person told me, 'only idiots with naive and inflexible ambitions'. I...

Irish army records Sir: Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft is entitled to his own opinions about Mr Charles Haughey, the new Prime Minister of Ireland (15 December). He is not entitled to...

Letters The Commonwealth bubble Sir: Robert Blake, commenting on Rhodesia (15 December), suggests of the Commonwealth that the 'pricking of that meaningless bubble would do no...

Sporting life Sir: John Mortimer writes (22-29 December) about sport in a curious way and one that does little justice to total truth. This morning (Christmas Day) I spent two...

Misquotation Sir: So the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding rides again. Your reviewer of The Rabin Memoirs (22 -29 December), David Gilmour. who also...

Artists and Mr Haughey Sir: In your issue of 15 December you published an article by Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who apparently is based in Dublin, entitled 'Haughey: hard - or...

Books Misguidebook to pop sci Horace Freeland Judson The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics Gary Zukav (Hutchinson £8.95) A joyous clarity of the mind, a...

Nude emperor - | Jeffrey Meyers Ideals and Idols E.H. Gombrich (Phaidon £9.95) E.H. Gombrich's disparate collection of 11 essays on values in history and in art - the fifth...

Sideshow Patrick Cosgrave Operation Sunrise Bradley E. Smith and Elena Agarossi (Deutsch £5.95) Alexander's Generals Gregory BlaxIand (William Kimber £9.95) Like the...

Poor Cowper Jonathan Keates The Letters and Press Writings of William Cowper James King and Charles Ryskamp Vol. 1 (Oxford £20) Popular images of the 18th century die very...

Buffers David Cardiff Governing the BBC Asa Briggs (BBC £1 0) Recent events have highlighted the dilemma faced by those who govern the BBC. Allegations that the Corporation...

Grand scale Francis King Rivers of Darkness Ronald Hardy (Hamish Hamilton £5.95) After I had recently lectured to a group of undergraduates on 'The Art of the Novel', one of...

Arts An eventful decade Rodney Milnes Were the Seventies the decade of endeavour? Did they strike out into the unknown? Expansion and consolidation? All I know is that...

Music Prophet Hans Keller Next Monday (7 January), the BBC Lunchtime Concert at St John's, Smith Square, London, will comprise Mozart's C minor Serenade and Schoenberg's...

Art Hopeful John McEwen Few artists honestly believe that their efforts and methods are adequate to these urban and technological tines, but in the continuing absence of a...

Cinema The waste land Peter Ackroyd Apocalypse Now (X') Marlon Brando, playing Captain Kurtz and looking uncannily like Aleister Crowley in his last days, tries very hard...

Theatre Spirited Peter Jenkins She Stoops to Conquer (Greenwich) Dick Whittington (Richmond) Oliver Goldsmith's box office social comedy today needs a light touch. There's...

High life Forecasting Taki Keeping in mind Jimmy Carter's famous promise of 1976 that he would never tell a lie, here are High life's fearless forecasts for 1980. The Pope...

Television Surfeited Richard Ingrams Christmas/New Year (as the long Winter Solstice Holiday should in future be known) nowadays involves a surfeit not only of food and drink...

Low life Banalities Jeffrey Bernard From a strictly personal point of view the last decade was one of fairly unrelenting horror. How otherwise could I have blocked so much of...

Postscript The system Patrick Marnham Benny is dead. He lived life to the full but finally succumbed to the sharp teeth of a hungry vixen in the last days of 1979. You could...