A few days after Mr Edward Heath blamed the Government's economic policies for racial tension, a spectacular race riot broke out in Southall, provoked by white skinheads...

In pursuit of Roy Ferdinand Mount 10.37. Walk out of Warrington Station. Pretty lady taxi-driver smiles, nice white teeth: 'Where do you want to go, luv?' 10.47. Walk through...

Indulging in personalities Auberon Waugh There must have been a certain poignancy in the scene when Mr Foot was preparing to unveil his party's alternative economic strategy...

Sam While Paris France is now beginning its annual holiday exodus and it is not surprising that parallels Should be drawn between this one and the one which followed another...

Richard West Miami The Anglophobe Irish-Americans, of whom I was writing last week, are the last descendants of exiles from Europe who still nurture a grievance against the...

Thomas Szasz John W. Hinckley, Jr., the man accused of shooting President Reagan, is now being studied' by psychiatrists. According to press reports, his `tests' may take up to...

A man for all Ireland? Olivia O'Leary It was the best political show in Dublin for years. A fortnight after a tied election Dail Eireann, the Irish Parliament, was meeting to...

Roy Kerridge Every time I take a liking to a district, someone tries to burn it down. The latest casualty is Southall, where I stayed recently. Hearing of the riots there, I...

Brigid Brophy Not since the early years of the industrial revolution has there been a lowlier working life. During the service the net cord judge has to crouch with his head on...

The epidemic of assassination has spread to America. On the morning of Saturday, the 2nd inst., as President Garfield was leaving Washington for New York, a man named Charles...

Paul Johnson The 1981 'best campaign' prize in the Poster Advertising Awards has just gone to the Collett Dickenson Pearce agency for their Benson & Hedges cigarette series,...

The one-dollar pound Tony Rudd When the late Hugh Fraser was bidding for Harrods he had his brokers try to buy up one of the Harrods preference share issues which happened to...

Sir: Ferdinand Mount isolates an important issue when he questions the right of the state to act on the basis of the internal doctrine of any religion (4 July). But in the long...

Sir: Depends how far back Auberon Waugh wants to go (`Towards apartheid', 27 June). Because at the point where the nice new science of sociology meets up with that antiquarian...

Sir: My attention has been drawn to the fear expressed (Notebook, 13 June) that we are depriving the blind of the right to listen to recordings of books by C.S. Lewis, Alistair...

Sir: I trust that when Mr Paul Johnson (4 July) writes about the 'fantasy' of a 'group of worthies' appointing or sacking editors, and his 'gruesome experience' at Great...

Sir: In your Notebook (4 July)you expressed unease about our anti-PLO demonstration on the ground that there may be differences of opinion among British Jews about whether HM...

Sir: I feel that Tony Rudd's piece, 'Flaming June' (27 June), confuses what the Bank of England has said on wages. Far from saying that 'wages need to be kept practically...

Fantastic dreams Gavin Stamp William Burges and the High Victorian Dream J. Mordaunt Crook (John Murray pp. 423, £40) Victorian architecture has not lost its connotations of...

Jonathan Keates William Cowper: Letters and Prose Writings, Volume II, 1782-1786 eds. James King and Charles Ryskamp (Oxford University Press pp. 688, £35) Those who view the...

Philip Warner The War Between the Generals David Irving (Allen Lane pp. 446, £9.95) On the jacket this is described as 'one of the great untold stories of our time'....

Alan Gibson 94 Declared: Cricket Reminiscences Ben Travers (Elm Tree Books pp. 96, £5.95) Test Match Special ed . Peter Baxter (Queen Anne Press pp. 160, £6.95) Ben Travers's...

Paul Ableman The Meeting at Telgte Giinter Grass (Seeker & Warburg pp. 160,5.95) Does literature reflect or engender reality? It is not a question that has ever bothered...

James Lasdun Watching Me Watching You Fay Weldon (Hodder & Stoughton pp. 208, £6.95) Amateur Passions Lorna Tracy (Virago pp. 202, £7.95) Neighbouring Lives Thomas M. Disch and...

Turning the tables Peter Ackroyd Excalibur ('AA', selected cinemas) It is the best of times and the worst of times, a time of all styles and therefore no style, a time of...

Pot-pourri John McEwen The most significant aspect of Leon Kossoff, paintings from a decade, 1970-80 (Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, till 19 July; Graves Art Gallery,...

Suburban Rodney Milnes Don Giovanni (Covent Garden) The Royal Opera's Mozart Festival, an example of constructive planning that deserves encouragement and support, was...

Wet women Mark Amory Steaming (Theatre Royal, Stratford East) The Winter's Tale (Stratford) Amadeus (Her Majesty's) The Misanthrope (Round House) The Hollow Crown (Fortune) In...

About time Richard Ingrams I at last managed to catch up with the lesbians on Sunday, and about time too is all that I can say. For once they came on at the reasonable hour of...

Bad call Tab Tennis, once a civilised game, is now just another way for those Shylocks that run American television — and therefore America — to pile up their ill-gotten...

Unfair Jeffrey Bernard The annual Soho Fair, held last Sunday, was all right if you knew someone with a flat and dispensing hospitality or if you knew of a watering hole that...