Taking Ulster seriously For a long time now successive British governments have been failing to take the Irish problem seriously. Whether one likes it or not, Ulster is part of...

Political commentary The British Isles solution Ferdinand Mount One leave early in the war, mv father went fishing in Ireland. Htaving heard on the radio that Neville...

Notebook Why, one asks oneself, did Mr William Rodgers stand for election to the Shadow Cabinet in the first place? He could hardly have expected that Mr Michael Foot 'Would...

Another voice Shrimsley's end Auberon Waugh Mv last Easter was spent reading back numbers of the News oft the World and cutting out all the most salacious or prurient pieces....

A fascist to the last ?I Sam White Paris At some point in the early Fifties, the late Frank Owen was staving with me when he announced one morning: AIm off to have lunch with...

Putting up with murder Nicholas von Hoffman Wo~ashingtfon Even before the murder of John Lennon in New York. this citv was in one of its minor uproars over the murder of...

Oh Calcutta! Alan Stewart 'We work,' said the banker, 'in a state of permanent chaos'. He looked morosely out Of the window of his fourteenth floor office in the centre of...

New hope for Clydebank Allan Massie Yiou drive down Clycdeside from Central Glasgow on a dual carriagewav that hecomnes rutted as vou travel west. To the left stands a forest...

Stirring the spaghetti Richard West Birmiingliam The famous Spaghetti Junction of crisscrossing roads on stilts is literally falling to bits and may soon be closed for...

The abuse of power Jo Grimond Lord Denning's Dimbrlehy Lecture, which Was broadcast on 2(0 November. was a beautifully lucid discourse on the abuse of Power. It followed this...

In the City The City and South Africa Tony Rudd Ilvl\'ill Lilst r'c t LiIrnc 1 C dfr'll c i c wek-Iong h as ti cv say'. aIcti on-packed) visit to South A\rica, I have' been...

In defence of Hiss Sir: I find your remarks concerning Alger Hiss (Notebook, 29 November) extremelY distasteful. To say that a man can 'capitalise even on disgrace' suggests...

Spluttering Sir: Mr Auberon Waugh accuses me of faulty logic in 'lifting a forceful if hyperbolic statement of personal principle from one context and dumping it in another' (6...

Pound stable Sir: Whether or not fears of an inverted J-curve prove, as Tony Rudd is inclilled tO believe (6 December). as false as did hlolol of its opposite earlier on....

Old stations Sir: I am not persuaded by T. Warburton's claim (Letters, 22 November) that the British Rail Property Board has a concern for the environment. I refer to the...

Standing the test Sir: Your item about the visit which the headmaster of Charterhouse received from the police investigating the Yorkshire Ripper's alleged Sunderland...

Letters Judgment on generals Sir: Mr Scrivenor's letter (29 November) admirably expresses one of the most enduring of those myths about the first world war that I have...

Books The battle cruiser bounder Max Hastings Beatty: The Last Naval Hero Stephen Roskjil (Collins £12.95) When the First Lord of the Admiralty Visited the battle cruiser...

Funny ha ha Alan Watkins Pick of Punch Ed. Alan Coren (Hutchinson £6.95) The Bedside Guardian 29 Ed. W.L. Webb (Collins £5.95) It's Only Me Jill Tweedie (Robson £6.95)...

Needs must Shirley Robin Letwin Liberal Equality Amy Gutmann (Cam- bridge £20; £6.50) The fair damsel, Equality, is by now a jaded beauty. Gone are the unquestioning...

Presto! Lynn Barber 1000 Things You Ought to Know Ginette Chevallier (Jill Norman £5.50) Grandmothers' Lore Simone Sekers (Hodder £4.95) Darling, You Shouldn't Have Gone...

End of Empire Paul Ableman Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee (Secker £5.95) 'What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in water, like birds in air,...

Arts Class, culture, conflict Peter Jenkins Not Quite Jerusalem (Royal Court) Don Juan (Round House) Class war is for the modern British theatre what the Trojan War was...

Art Clean cuts John McEwen Sculpture swings in and out of fashion like everything else, but on the whole it is the poor relation of the visual arts, just as poetry is of the...

Cinema Cold comfort Peter Ackroyd Buffet Froid ('AA', Classic, Chelsea) It is one thing to present a nightmare. quite another to become one. In Buffet Froid people murder...

Television Bearded Richard Ingrams Virginia Woolf. Lytton Strachey. The Bloomsbury set. Arentcha - as Private Eve's Glenda Slagg would say -sick ta death of them? Yet, I must...

High life No revenge Taki New York One of the greatest thrills of all is to find out for certain that - despite whatever anyone else thought - one had been right all along....

John Lennon Charles Clover It was appropriate that the news of John Lennon's death came over the radio. being too late for Fleet Street's late editions, for most of what we...

Low life Rational Jeffrey Bernard If vou ever doubted that the law is an ass then last Thursday's decision by three Appeal Court judges must surely have confirmed the fact....

Postscript Knight-errant Patrick Marnham Lancelot, the Bewick's Swan, has done it again. For the 18th consecutive winter he has ploughed into the water at the SliMbridge...