Since the. Second World War there has been no more Puzzling question for the student of international politics than the nature of 'world Communism'. Is Communism a monolithic —...

Unmasking Lord X Ferdinand Mount With so much goodwill still in the air, there is something distasteful about starting 1978 by laying information against a fellowbeing. But...

President Carter's translator's infelicities in Poland were a marvellous delight to read. Less so, as a piece of pure farce, was the President's own gaffe in New Delhi, where...

Thoughts on lunacy Auberon Waugh This is the time of year, I have observed, When many people go mad. My observation IS confirmed by employees of the local lunatic asylum, who...

Paul Macdonald New Delhi The village of Daulatpur-Nasirabad may lie twenty miles or so to the southwest of the Indian capital and it may, unusually for India, have a...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Most people here hadn't focussed on the fact that Jimmy had flown off to Warsaw until they learned that a translator, out of incompetence or...

Tony Geraghty Berlin Opposite the State Opera House in East Berlin, pink faced guardsmen goose-step to their posts, white gloves clutching rifles, plastic helmets undulating to...

Michael Becket Neither Britain nor the rest of the developed world will get much comfort, or any extra trade, from Japan's latest desultory trade liberalisation since the new...

Nigel Lawson In the dying days of the old year, the euphoria that Ministers are desperately trying to induce about the nation's economic prospects in 1978 seemed to receive a...

Patrick Marn ham Lord Longford's campaign to free Myra Hindle), has just reached one of its periodic climaxes, and the Parole Board has been Persuaded to consider next year...

Little gems Taki Gstaad This small Swiss village, the jewel of the Bernese Oberland and Mecca of the rich, is being torn apart by feuding merchants peddling their goods to an...

Investing and going abroad Nicholas Davenport First, I must thank the Chancellor for his Christmas card which revealed his delightfully impish sense of humour. It was a...

Arts Council policy Sir: The latest piece in your anti-Arts Council series (17 December) is concerned pre dominantly with the Council's literature policy, so perhaps you would...

Points of no return Robert Skidelsky Terrorism and the Liberal State Paul Wilkinson (Macmillan 27.95) The academic study of terrorism raises questions both of academic...

Jo Gnmond The Orkneyinga Saga translated by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards (The Hogarth Press £7.50) Considering its importance to their own history, the British pay...

John Scott The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution Simon Leys (Allison and Busby £6.50 hard, £2.95 soft) At last the English reader has a chance to read a...

Ronald Hingley Russian Thinkers Isaiah Berlin (The Hogarth Press £6.95) Russian Thinkers is the first of four volumes to be devoted to the Selected Writings of Sir Isaiah...

Peter Ackroyd Lazarus Andre Malraux (Macdonald and Jane's £6.25) Although only one third of it actually tells a story, the whole of Lazarus is fiction; the man who speaks, for...

Benny Green The Wasp in a Wig Lewis Carroll (Macmillan E1.95) Lewis Carroll Observed edited by Edward Giuliano (Hodder and Stoughton £8.50) It was the Duck who suggested it....

The year of punk Sebastian Faulks The night of July the fourth 1976, the American bicentennial, was hotter in London than in Beirut or Mexico City, and there can have been few...

Marshmallow Rodney Milnes le Fledermaus (Covent Garden) P rom the House of the Dead (Coliseum) al New Year's resolutions: give up using the ‘v . ord 'masterpiece', overworked...

Convulsive John McEwen For some years Frank Auerbach has tended to be presented as Francis Bacon's protégé, and now again they are paired in an exhibition of their recent work...

One-man Clancy Sigal The Gauntlet (Warner West End 2, ABC Shaftesbury Avenue) Clint Eastwood may be having second thoughts about law and order. All through the Nixon...

Shakin' Ted Whitehead Elvis (Astoria) Our Own People (Theatre Upstairs) It was in 1956 in Germany, where I , holding back the Red Menace and tenck the regimental latrines,...

Flutterings Richard Ingrams I seldom go to the theatre nowadays but I walk regularly down Shaftesbury Avenue on my way to the office,past the billboards and the life-size...

Sports poetry Jeffrey Bernard Watching and listening to Tom Stoppard's play, Professional Foul, the dialogue about and between the intellectual bore and the footballers and...