Wind-blown, late and breathless, a sweet disorder in her dress kindling an air of wantonness, yet, we are told, a politician who is more completely a democrat than we who are...

Ferdinand Mount Quiet week. Only a 'holding statement' from the Department of Industry to let Mr Ian MacGregor have £500 million to see him through till April. To you and me...

I count myself privileged to be one of the very few people living today who have heard of the IFSWLCSWEC. Even I would not have heard of it if its existence had not beep drawn...

Auberon Waugh When I last discussed the enhanced radiation shell or 'neutron bomb' on this page a few years ago, it was chiefly in terms of the debate itself: how MI5's task of...

Tim Garton Ash Berlin `Will the Russians invade next week?' A German editor in Berlin asked me on my return from Warsaw, with the tortured look of a bookie smelling the tip of...

Peter Reddaway Political trials are now taking place in the Soviet Union every two to three days. Since mid-November, 31 courts in various parts of the country have sentenced...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Der Alter celebrated his 70th the other day and Nancy Fancy threw him a party. The cake was by Halston and a good, if subdued, time was...

Andrew Brown 'People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has a man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases?' Modern medicine can...

Alan Massie When I was a boy Aberdeen used to till up on Fridays. It was Mart Day and the country came to Town. We found a solid handsome granite city, smelling sometimes of...

Richard West Belfast At a neighbouring table in the Europa Hotel, a bearded American liberal was declaiming on Ireland, the Pope and President Reagan. 'I am reminded', he said...

Mr Carvell Williams is very justly elated at the success of the Nonconformists in the Cambridge Mathematical Honours List. He writes to Monday's Times that both this year and...

Jo Gnmond It is notorious that what this paper lacks is a good nature correspondent. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has 650000 members, and if only one in ten...

Paul Johnson The campaign by left-wing publicists to jostle Lord Denning into retirement — they do not like the way he sticks up for individuals against trade unions — has so...

Tony Rudd Budget time is here again. With less than thirty loss-making days to go before Sir Geoffrey Howe presents his next budget on 10 March, City analysts are busy trying...

Sir: Maybe President Giscard d'Estaing is coarse and snobbish, maybe he accepts gifts (Sam White, 7 February). But, paradoxically, Giscard's real achievement can be seen in the...

Sir: Paul Johnson's article on the difficulties of book publishing today (24 January) was so very revealing, as indeed he always is. Yet to me it seems a strange paradox that,...

Sir: Doesn't your article on "Ethnocide" in the Soviet Union' (24 January) a little resemble what Pravda might write about our pear destruction of the Welsh language? Surely any...

Sir: I don't think your Letters page is a suitable place to try to cure Paul Johnson's virulent political paranoia, manifested in his article of 7 February in his apparent...

Sir: May I welcome Paul Ableman to the small but select Peter de Vries fan club (31 January)? Unless, however, he has a good public library to hand he will have to go to...

Sir: I have often wondered why your cover (whether it be new and glossy or old and lack-lustre) is sometimes red and sometimes blue. Perhaps you are trying to assert your...

Kenneth Q. Morgan Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute John Davies (University of Wales Press pp. 335, £12.95) The Butes were a unique industrial dynasty, robber barons on the...

Paul Ableman The Noble Enemy Charles Fox (Granada pp.383,i6.95) This is a first novel that reads like the work of a mature novelist at the height of his powers. It is quite...

A.N. Wilson A Passion for the Particular: Dorothy Wordsworth: A Portrait Elizabeth Gunn (Gollancz pp. 256, £12.50) Dorothy Wordswoith, the younger sister oi William, is chiefly...

Stephen Koss The People's Budget 1909-10 Bruce K. Murray (Oxford pp. 384, £17.50) The Liberals and Ireland: The Ulster Question in British Polities to 1914 Patricia Jalland...

Nicolas Walter A Passion for Truth Robert Nowell (Collins pp. 377, £9.95) Does God Exist? Hans Kiang (Collins pp. 839, £12) Taking Leave of God Don Cupitt (SCM pp. 174, £4,95...

The Second Coming Walker Percy (Seeker pp. 364, £6.95) Bethany Anita Mason (Hainish Hamilton pp. 219, £7.50) The Second Chance Alan Sillitoe (Cape pp. 224, £5.95) Once, at a...

Charles Marowitz New York America is currently obsessed with mythology. Being a peculiarly American mythology, it is barely 50 years old. Its deities are Superman, Flash...

P i eter Ackroyd Nine to Five ('AA', selected cinemas) An American friend of mine was once asked to write a film script for Dolly Parton — it was to be what is usually called a...

John McEwen Contemporary French artists are about as rare a sight in England as golden orioles. This is because French art, at least in highbrow London circles, is generally...

Peter Jenkins The Suicide (RSC, Aldwych) A frantic flowering of the intelligence and the arts followed the Russian Revolution in 1917. It didn't last long; in the theatre it...

Richard In grams It was a heavy cultural weekend at the BBC what with Gounod's Faust and The Winter's Tale on successive nights. Faust was another of Humphrey Burton's posh...

Taki My, how things change. One of the first friends I made when I arrived in merry old England during the swinging Sixties was a cherubic, incredibly pink, forever laughing...

Jeffrey Bernard The thought for the week in my pub has been that of meanness. Why on earth we should have been going on about it I'm not quite sure. Perhaps it's because none...

Raymond Keene The six-game match between John Nunn and Bill Hartston for the British Championship starts on 13 February, carrying throughto 20 February ,with rest dayson the...