P resident Sadat of Egypt was murdered at a military parade in Cairo, apparently by soldiers although several dissident groups claimed responsibility. Libya, Syria and Iran...

Oh for the firm smack Ferdinand Mount Bradford The man in the brown jacket came and sat down opposite me, very carefully as though not wishing to unbalance the train. 'I...

Allan Massie Perth As Robert McLennan (Caithness and Sutherland) finished outlining the SDP constitution on Sunday, a bearded thug in a black plastic jacket seized the...

I n Perth on Sunday, in Bradford on Wednesday, in London on Friday, Shirley Wiliams and Roy Jenkins addressed the brand new Social Democratic Party on the policy document to be...

After the Bomb Auberon Waugh At the Harvest Festival in Combe Florey Village church last Friday the Bishop of Taunton urged us to consider the harvest as an opportunity to...

Roger Cooper Rarely has a political assassination set off such divergent reactions as that of the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on Tuesday. President Reagan called it...

Timothy Garton Ash 'This year when I talk to my students about the French Revolution', a young don at Cracow University told me in the spring, 'I feel for the first time that...

The following inscription has been placed on Professor Clifford's tomb in Highgate Cemetery:— "I was not, and was conceived; I lived, and did a little work; I am not, and grieve...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Commerce being what it is, when the American commercial media turn their attention to the topic of religion the subjects are usually crackpots...

Michael Davie Melbourne It has been odd to be British in Melbourne this past week. One is accustomed these days to the notion that Britain has no importance at all in...

Murray Sayle When I was a young lad at school in Sydney, and knew a lot more than I know now, we had the Great War, as we called it, pretty well sized up. The day to remember...

Olivia O'Leary Dublin When Garret FitzGerald, the Irish Prime Minister, attended an official mass last week to mark the second anniversary of the papal visit he heard a sermon...

Illusions Paul Johnson The signs accumulate that this will be a lean and anxious winter for Fleet Street. The Sunday Times affair has been patched up temporarily. But the...

In and out Tony Rudd Now that the immediate shattering impact of the drop in market values has been absorbed, the participants in this great drama have an opportunity to...

Wandering ethnic persons Sir: The Commission for Racial Equality has judged that 'gypsies' are entitled to special rights under the Race Relations Act as 'an ethnic minority'....

Sir: I am sorry to read of the tiresome wear on your shoes (Notebook, 26 September). It is difficult to diagnose at this distance, but I fear you are suffering from a subtle...

Sir: Tom Sutcliffe's arguments set out in 'The arts and the nanny state' (19 September) could easily be refuted one by one, which would take a letter twice as long as his...

Sir: Michael Davie's generous enumeration of at least some of Melbourne's civilised amenities (3 October) is of course welcome, but should not `Tintoretto' have read `Tiepolo'?...

Sir: I must disagree with Mr Chancellor who wrote on .19 September about 'the thankless and disagreeable job' of the Northern Ireland Secretary. It appears that in this period...

Sir: Auberon Waugh writes (19 September) that Nicosian rioters, who had no terror of armoured cars 'knowing that we would never use machine guns', nevertheless 'for some reason...

Genius for description John Stewart Collis George Orwell: The Road to 1984 Peter Lewis (Heinemann Quixote Press pp.' 22, £7.95, £4.95) This biography of George Orwell by Mr...

Gavin Stamp A Broken Wave: The Rebuilding of England 1940-1980 Lionel Esher (Allen Lane pp. 326, £12.95) 'Lionel Esher' — as he now chooses to call himself, so nicely...

Douglas Johnson The Bon Marche: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store 1869-1920 Michael B. Miller (Allen & Unwin pp. 266, £12.50) There was a time when Paris was famous...

Eric Christiansen The Wars of the Roses Anthony Goodman (Routledge pp. 294, 12.95) The Wars of the Roses John Gillingham (Weidenfeld pp. 274, £12.50) Nowadays history books...

Hugh LawsonTancred Ordering the World: A History of Classifying Man David Knight (Burnett Books pp. 215, £7.95) To what extent do the phenomena of the extended world in which...

James Hughes-Onslow Mucking Around: Five Continents over Fifty Years Naomi Mitchison (Gollancz pp.147, £7.50) Here is a travel book that breaks all the rules. Well, the rule...

Victimised • • Francis King The Temptation of Eileen Hughes Brian Moore (Cape pp.211, £.6.50) Brian Moore must always be a cause both of bewilderment and of envy to his...

Simply for pleasure John McEwen Marlborough Fine Art with the stops out is about the closest London has come to having an equivalent of New York's Museum of Modern Art; and...

Novelties Mark Amory Mephisto (Round House) The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (Duke of York's) Tibetan Inroads (Royal Court) Roll On Four O'Clock (Lyric, Hammersmith)...

A cold light Peter Ackroyd The Constant Factor ('A', Gate, Bloomsbury) This is a remarkable film to have come out of Poland: it is a film without a message. This is perhaps...

Argumentative Alan Gibson There are illusions about the Yorkshire character, shared by Yorkshiremen. I appreciate the dangers of talking about a collective 'character' for a...

Miscast Richard Ingrams Jonathan Miller, as we all know, delights in seeing what no one else has seen before. It was the Doctor who decided after a close study of Alice in...

Topsy-turvy Taki Athens Although it seems perverse, if not downright sacrilegious, to write about a neurotic rich woman while one of the bravest and noblest of men lies...

Going West Jeffrey Bernard I'm still smarting a little over a totally inaccurate line in a recent copy of this journal which said 'Jeffrey Bernard is on holiday'. Now, I ask...