The great American bore is over at last, and we can all feel thankful for that, whatever our view of the outcome. The Presidential campaign has gone on too long. The...

The American election proved the cliffhanger that wasn't : after last-minute poll forecasts that President Ford might after all come back, the ghastly, grinning Governor Jimmy...

The miners' heavy tread John Grigg In his Panorama interview on 25 October the Prime Minister said: 'I think . . if the IMF were to try to force us into policies which would be...

A few years ago I coined a law of election prediction. I had observed that most recent election campaigns had seen such a narrowing of the gap on the opinion polls that, by...

Timing the Counter-revolution Auberon Waugh Browsing idly among the papers in my wife's desk last week I came across a letter from Stanley Baldwin to her paternal grandfather....

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Within two hours after the state of Mississippi had definitely gone into the Carter column, and won the election for him, the pundits were...

Xan Smiley Geneva Whatever the outcome of the Geneva conference there will be war in Rhodesia. The aim of the conference should therefore be to limit the scope of that war....

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Dublin On Saturday three people were shot dead in Belfast, a succession of favourites was beaten at Clonmel and Miss Dublin became Miss Ireland : an average...

Evelyn Sharp The second volume of the Crossman Diaries* covers the twenty months from August 1966 to April 1968 during which he was Lord President of the Council and Leader of...

Brian Inglis When Granada Television opened in 1956, the management planned two current affairs Programmes of a kind not previously offered to viewers. One was Under Fire,...

First time out Jeffery Bernard The Night Nurse–Lanzarote race at Sandown Park last Saturday was the best race I've seen for ages. The only complaint I've got is my usual moan...

Harry G. Johnson Keynes himself was a British economist and economic policy operator, concerned with the economic and policy problems of the British economy, of Britain and the...

The equity future Nicholas Davenport By those listening to the roar and thunder of Britain's 'approaching economic Niagara' the still small voice of economic truth is not...

Sir: Stuart Holland (16 October) in his assessment of Keynes and socialism, thought the failure of the falling pound to produce rapid export-led growth was partly due to the...

Sit: John Biggs-Davison, in an interesting article on post-colonial Portugal (23 October), makes several favourable allusions to the dictatorship of Dr Salazar (1930-1968) Which...

Sir: It was sad to hear that Richard West was forced to suffer the indignity of slow travel along the 'ancient, warped, narrowgauge' railway track between Euston and Birmingham...

Sir : In your issue of 16 October you carried a mixture of a book review and an article in the form of a most intemperate diatribe by Mr Richard West entitled 'The PR humbug'....

Sir : If you are going to devote a page of your precious space to literary parody, oughtn't it to be funnier than Peter Ackroyd's effort 'A Case for English Poetry' (16...

Sir: T. E. B. Howarth goes over the edge when he says that Mr Fred Jarvis of the NUT secured pay scales for teachers, so inflationary that teacher employment has had to be cut....

Public taste and public auction Huon Mallalieu Nowadays it is seldom possible to take Carlyle's advice and 'forget for a moment. .. the learned babble of the sale room and the...

Eugene Victor Thaw The 'Big Bands' are finished On both sides of the Atlantic it looks as if the big art gallery may become as extinct as the dinosaur. The most successful of...

Bevis Hillier When you are in the throes of organising one big exhibition it is not the best time to be asked whether you will organise another for little over six months'...

Peter Conrad The Heritage of ApeIles E. H. Gombrich (Phaidon £9.95) Art history is a creation of German culture. Philosophically, it derives from Hegel's notion of a cultural...

Quentin Bell B loomsbury Portraits: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Their Circle Richard Shone (Phaidon £8.95) This is the book that we have been waiting r °r --- or perhaps it...

John McEwen David Hockney David Hockney (Thames and Hudson E10.00) Books transcribed from taped conversations —in this case twenty-five hours of them dutifully edited by Nikos...

Anthony Burgess iz ) Ya and the Impossible Revolution GWYn A. Williams (Allen Lane £7.00) SPain is the country where things have °Nays gone too far or, which is the same t i l...

Benny Green Artists on Art: From the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century Compiled bY Robert Goldwater and Marco Treyes (John Murray £3.50) Whether or not the creative artist...

Helen Smith Richard Norman Shaw Andrew Sain t (Yale University Press E19.50) The reversals of Norman Shaw's posthutn' ous reputation would make an interesting chapter in the...

Richard Shone P ablo Ruiz Picasso Patrick O'Brian (Collins £6.95) P leas Timothy Hilton (Thames and Hudson £4.50) t _ s he Silent Studio David Douglas u uncan (Collins £5.50)...

Venice crumbling to the shore Richard West This week's flooding in Venice, ten years to the month since the flooding that almost destroyed it, lends grim topicality to a new...

Ted Whitehead II Campiello (National Theatre) Antony and Cleopatra (The Young Vic) T he programme for II Campiello by Carlo Goldoni tells us that the toughest critics of t he...

Naked arrows Clancy Sigal Naked male bodies of bored Roman soldiers make love to each other in Sebastiane (Gate, X certificate.) Writer-producer-director Derek Jarman's boast...

Provincialism John McEwen C amden Town Recalled, an exhibition in c elebration of the Fine Art Society (till 12 November) gives a good airing to that rather innocuous version...

Blinking eye Richard lngrams There is a large number of producers at the BBC whose aim in life is to cut things up in little pieces and stop anything being made...