The Conservative party exists in order to support Conservative MPs, whose prime political duty is to support their leader. The job of the leader of the Conservative party is to...

Ferdinand Mount Blackpool 'Thank you again, Minister, for that wonderful and forthright speech. We are indeed fortunate to have a strong Minister.' Where are we? We are at the...

Blackpool Mr Balfour said that he would sooner take advice from his valet (or was it his Poodle?) than from a Conservative Party Conference, This week Lord ThorneyCroft said,...

Auberon Waugh Port Louis, Mauritius The wage of a sugar-cane cutter in Mauritius is 25 rupees — slightly under £2 — a day. It is an exhausting and rather painful operation, as...

Edward Marston Berlin They call it 'simultaneous drama'. It is a trade-mark of West Berlin's most famous theatre, the Schaubuehne. Two different texts are performed on the same...

Henry Fairlie Washington. Florida is enjoying a boom which takes the memories of old-timers back to the Twenties, when both money and speculators poured into the state to...

Tim Garton Ash Bucharest The trouble with Romania is the RomaMans. Without them it would be a marvellous country.' The speaker was a German Pastor, a leader of the dwindling...

Charles Douglas-Home On . 15 November sanctions against Zimbabwe-Rhodesia are due to lapse unless Parliament extends them; and on 20 November it is calculated that Zambia Will...

Sam White Paris it is something of an irony that a major portion of Picasso's work spanning his entire life as a painter should now find itself in the hands of the French slaw...

Peter Paterson No one took much notice as Terry Duffy went to the rostrum during last week's Labour Party conference, to - deliver a few ritual sentences about his...

The fate of Miss Edwards still excites earnest attention in Liverpool, and is certainly one of the most inexplicable cases of disappearance, The young lady is 22, the daughter...

Exoticism rewarded The Conservative Party is a more tolerant party than Labour. Indeed it not only tolerates but positively rewards exoticism and even eccentricity. Where else...

Christopher Booker In the summer of 1978, following Solzhenitsyn's Harvard speech,' I wrote a long series of articles in these columns discussing one of the most fascinating...

Sir: It won't do. Righteous anger at Nazi atrocities (Letters, 6 October) may explain but it cannot excuse the vindictive and vengeful bombing of German cities by the RAF. I...

Sir: Thamesdown and Humberside may sound, in the words of Sir John Betjeman (6 October), like 'posh hotels'. But better that than a name which evokes a decrepit railway station...

Sir: Francis King is obviously very sensitive. First, because Borges did not hang on to his words, and second because some Argentine schoolgirls rejected Borges. In my last...

Hugh Lloyd-Jones Romans and Aliens J.P.V.D. BaIsdon (Duckworth £18) The historian of any empire must try to show how the imperial people got on with its subjects and with...

J. Enoch Powell Eminent Edwardlans Piers Brendon (Seeker £6.95) All collective biography is a difficult enterprise. A biography demands concentrated attention to an individual,...

Jonathan Keates In The Lap of Atlas Richard Hughes (Chan° £4.95) Morocco is one of those places whose atmosphere tickles the imagination like the smell of cooking. A conception...

Ronald Hingley Fire and Water: A Life of Peter the Great Alex de Jonge (Collins £7.50) Even by Russian standards Peter the Great was a package of paradoxes larger than life. He...

at the University of Oxford and the author of Myths of the Zodiac J. Enoch Powell is Member of Parliament for South Down. His books include Wrestling with the Angel, Joseph...

Richard West The Boer War Thomas Pakenham (Weidenfeld 210) Do we need another book on the Boer War SO soon after Rayne Kruger's excellent Goodbye Dolly Gray and Byron Farwell's...

Alan Watkins My Kind of Rugby: Union and League Ray French (Faber £4.95) Ray French played as a second-row forward (a usage to which he adheres, in preference to the...

Paul Ableman Darkness Visible William Golding (Faber £4.95) A scenario: a novelist conceives a novel. His starting point is a character that seems to him representative or...

Rodney Milnes Therese (Covent Garden and Radio 3) An Actor's Revenge (Old Vic) Patience (Coliseum) You have to admire John Tavener's refusal to compromise. Covent Garden was...

Serious evil Peter Jenkins Richard ill (Olivier) The shortcomings of Richard III as a play Place a great burden upon the actor who plays the title role. It is a...

Leading spirit John McEwen The Whitechapel Art Gallery is the place to visit at the moment, with the excellent reappraisal of the work of David Bomberg's later years...

Tricksy Ted Whitehead Love on the Run (Gala) 'This degrades women' said the sticker slapped on the underwear advertisement which I passed on my way to see Francois Truffaut's...

Double Parky Richard Ingrams You would have thought it might be possible for the BBC to find someone to preside over a chat show other than Michael Parkinson, but apparently...

Gold rush Taki Six months ago the chairman of FIAT, Gianni Agnelli, flew to Switzerland to visit Andre Mayer, a Lazard Brothers senior partner, a self-made financial wizard,...

Top drawers Jeffrey Bernard Although the Prix de L'Arc de Triomphe Was a personal punting success for me I m still very sorry that Troy didn't win the race for England. My...