The debate about Great Britain's economic decline has been going on for a long time. This year has seen some notably stimulating contributions. The Times has continued...

The unkindest Coutts of all Ferdinand Mount Blackpool All morning, drizzle falls on the Winter Gardens. Outside, there are crush barriers but no crush, apart from a few...

Mackpoo/ When you consider how electorally valuable an asset is Labour's alliance with the trade unions — for all the brave talk from the new Conservatives about individualism...

Peter Nichols Rome I enjoy listening to Poulenc at the time without very vividly remembering much about it later. With the exception of that theatrically effective last scene...

Sam White Paris Five by-election defeats in swift succession and devastating ones at that — have taken a good deal of the glow out of President Olseard's victory in the general...

Tom Bower Munich To be powerful, ambitious, adulated by millions and yet denied office, is a frustrating predicament for any politician. For one as ambitious as Dr Franz-Josef...

John O'Sullivan Rangoon The monsoon was in full spate when I arrived here. So, assisted by an eager taxi-driver, I set off at once in search of an umbrella. My first stop was...

George Gale 'It's time now that we were given the chance to be unions in our own right, rather than continue being zombies of the state.' Joe Gormley, President of the National...

Patrick Cosgrave Nowadays, one gets entirely different messages about British politics, and about what Is happening to the country, from the Conservative right and the Labour...

Sir: In your issue of the 28th ult. you draw attention to the Act recently pased prohibiting any newspaper reports of weights and measures other than Imperial, and you rightly...

Christopher Booker I am haunted by a phrase reportedly used on Monday by Mr Clive Jenkins. Explaining to the Labour Party Conference why his union would have to vote against...

Nasty stories Alexander Chancellor The Sunday People started, I am told, as an organ of the Primrose League. However much it may since have changed, it still contains one or...

The poor, the rich and the IMF Nicholas Davenport The most boring assignment for a financial writer would be to attend an annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund....

Sir: Those of us who are on the side of Rhodesia may draw some satisfaction from the revelation that oil sanctions have for years been successfully and massively broken. We may...

Sir: However much teachers' organisations may fulminate and the numerou,s other guilty parties find convincing reasons why it must be so, the public at large have reason to be...

Sir: I am shocked by the brutality of Richard Ingrams's onslaught (23 September) on Lord Longford, and particularly on his work among prisoners. It is of course very irritating...

Sir: How timely and welcome — in the truest sense of that trite phrase — to find Nicholas Davenport (30 September) coming out so wholeheartedly in favour of the 'simple idea of...

Sir: How can any state be other than a corporate state? The term you should be using (as in your leading article of 30 September) is the corporative state: the reference is...

Sir: On the whole I believe that journalists should be prepared to take the kind of criticism which they themselves dish out, and I have not therefore replied until now to the...

Sir: Mr Worsthorne's review (23 September) of David Caute's The Great Fear is, I am sure, just. In one detail I suspect he is wrong. Surely the title does not refer to Robert...

Sir: 'What does the Liberal Party. . stand for? What is it saying? It stands for nothing and it says nothing' — but your editorial of 16 September, gloomily accurate though it...

Sir: It is reported by your contemporary the Daily Telegraph — and for all! know elsewhere in the national press— that the Prime Minister expressed his willingness, at the Kano...

l h i s in your 150th anniversary number (congratulations) Mr Auberon Waugh writes: 'Incompetence is, as I say, the moving spirit of the times. A few professions are still...

Hearing the call of the east Richard West Rudyard Kipling Lord Birkenhead (Weidenfeld E7.95) Rudyard Kipling Charles Carrington (Macmillan £8.95) The biography of Kipling by...

Alan Watkins Things Past Malcolm Muggeridge Edited by Ian Hunter (Collins £4.55) This is the third volume of Mr Muggeridge's collected journalism that has been published; the...

Desmond Stewart The Cyprus Revolt: An Account of the Struggle for Union with Greece Nancy Crawshaw (Allen & Unwin £12.50) Since this expensive book must have involved its...

any policy work in Opposition because if so you may find yourself in a rigid position when you become the Government. I don't believe that's anything like as big a danger as...

Anthony Nutting Conspiracy of Silence Anthony Pearson (Quartet £4.95) The attack on the American spy-ship Liberty by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats during the Six Days War...

Benny Green The Doyle Diary Michael Baker (Paddington £5.95) Students of Conan Doyle will be aware of two striking aspects of his genetic com position, that he was the child of...

Francis King 1985 Anthony Burgess (Hutchinson £4.95) Since it is as a reviewer of fiction that I am retained by this paper, I hope that there will be no demarcation-dispute if...

Resistances to Brahms Hans Keller Brahms's 'A German Requiem' will be broadcast on Saturday 7 October at 7.40, simultaneously on BBC-2 and Radio 3, in a recording of Giulini's...

Nasty stars Peter Jenkins The Double Dealer (Olivier, NT) A preface to a 1948 edition of Congreve's plays held it to be 'unlikely that The Double Dealer will ever be...

Monochromes John McEwen Alan Green has two fine shows on at the moment. His latest work — two large, multi-canvas paintings; two sets of four, much smaller painted panels; six...

Wholemeal Richard Ingrams Late on a Sunday night after an exhausting day trying belatedly to tidy up the marrow patch before the advent of winter is no time to come to grips...

Young women Ted Whitehead Girl Friends (Gate 2 and ABC Fulham Rd) Just when I've trained myself to discriminate between the use of 'girl' and 'woman' in exactly the same way...

Fungus time Patrick Marnham Since the village has three witches and only one third of a vicar it is hardly surprising that the Harvest Festival is the best attended church...

Ira author Talc' Phony books for fast profits by ghost writers are making good writing redundant and bringing about the greatest change in publishing since Gutenberg's...

Maurice Jeffrey Bernard As Maurice Richardson would have a ppreciated, it's bad enough having to write at all, but to have to write about him in the Past tense is a horribly...

Fun last Sunday? No, neither did I. In fact it might have passed me quite by had I not come across the official leaflet, doubtless thrown away by a disgruntled jogger. It is a...