perhaps the most enduring legacy of the 1 Royal Wedding, apart from the continuance of the monarchy itself, will be the return of the Royal coat of arms to the front page of The...

Sir Geoffrey Howe tried very hard to maintain optimism by sticking to his assertion that the worst of the recession was over, in spite of increased rejoinders from more...

Lessons of the Royal Wedding Auberon Waugh Languedoc, France One would like to think the French had derived some permanent benefit from the Royal Wedding. So far as one can...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The President did not deliberately time the announcement about the neutron weapon to coincide with the anniversary of the dropping of the atom...

Tim Garton Ash Berlin It is a proud, romantic Catholic nation. Its tragic history of oppression by powerful neighbours stretches back centuries. The scroll of popular...

Tom Bower Hasso Herschel gave up the escape business dramatically and in style. He was aged 38 as I watched him arrive at a rubbish tip in West Berlin on a warm spring...

Sam Mute Paris In early July, the Minister of the Interior, Gaston Defferre, issued a kind of 'order of the day' to his police forces, bidding them to cease harassing...

Richard West Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh Certain reporters on Northern Ireland have been telling us every week for the last 12 years how the latest atrocity means that 'nothing...

Donald Gould The Court of Appeal's decision, last weekend, to order an intestinal operation for a 10-day-old mongol girl, who would otherwise have died, bears a disturbing...

Alexandra Artley Wedding gifts can be so dotty, especially those destined for royalty. Everybody in the world wants to give something and what is more, they do. 'Does the...

C.H. Sisson Democracy has in effect dis-infected the individual conscience of its sanctity, at the same time that it has made it the foundation of the state. For the conscience...

Keeping to the facts Paul Johnson Neutron bombs or no, President Reagan is something of a folk-hero in Fleet Street just for the moment, chiefly I suspect because journalists...

MR OSCAR WILDE'S POEMS. THE reading of this book fills us with alarm. It is evidently the work of a clever man, as well as of an educated man, but it is not only a book...

Difficult days Tony Rudd Times are not easy for anybody in the City these days. It would be wrong to say that people are actually in distress yet but signs of strain are...

Sir: Could you correct an error in Mr von Hoffman's article 'Begin's American friends' (1 August)? 'The names of Guernica, Amsterdam and Coventry . . .' should read 'The names...

Sir: Mr Brian Inglis, like Cousin Alice, is at it again (18 July). He abandons, but not quite, his usual role of publicity agent for the medical demi-monde and takes up the...

Sir: Like most people of a liberal persuasion, Paul Johnson excepted (8 August), I Was greatly disappointed by the refusal of the BBC to allow E.P. Thompson the guest spot on...

Sir: In an article in the Spectator of 1 August, Ronald Mutebi referred to 'The British Government's decision to send 150 military "instructors" for the Ugandan Army.' No such...

Sir: Peter Paterson (`Taxing ingenuity', 1 August) spoilt that 'crude working-class joke' about the Prince Consort's being 'the dearest butcher'. As told in my far from...

Sir: Readers of the Spectator are doubtless used to your opera critic's habit of crediting strange sexual deviations to the heroes and heroines of the standard works. But in...

Sir: I read the missive of the two Daniels from Bangor with some amusement (Letters, 25 July). They seem to have completely forgotten about a document called 'Orders concerning...

The gadfly professor Kenneth O. Morgan A Life for our Times John Kenneth Galbraith (Deutsch pp. 563, £7.50) John Kenneth Galbraith, so he concludes at the end of this highly...

Xan Smiley Triumph or Tragedy? Rhodesia to Zimbabwe Miles Hudson (Hamish Hamilton Pp. 252, £9.95) Most of us self-styled Africanists, and especially the Zimboons, have plenty...

Eric Christiansen Words on the Air John Sparrow (Collins pp. 263, £7.95) Browning's verdict on Galuppi: 'Good alike at grave and gay' will occur to many readers of Words on the...

Mary Furness High Life Low Life Taki/Jeffrey Bernard (Jay Landesman pp. 207, £6.95) Taki inhabits the world of the very rich, the world where, as he puts it, people know how to...

Philip Warner Jellicoe John Winton (Michael Joseph pp.320, f12.50). `Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon'. Thus spoke Churchill,...

Francis King If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino, trans. William Weaver (Secker & Warburg, pp. 260, £6.95) At the start of Italo Calvino's Ifon a Winter's Night a...

Old romance Peter Ackroyd Drole de Drame (Academy, Oxford Street) A week which offers only a rehash of The Lone Ranger is not good news; so what could be better than to...

Bannable? Rodney Milnes Le nozze di Figaro (Glyndebourne) A Senior and Much-respected Older Colleague (hereinafter smoc) threw a frightful wobbly in the interval of Fidelio...

War games Mark Amory The Killing Game (Greenwich) A Talent to Abuse (Arts) U nderneath the Arches (Chichester) The Forest (Warehouse) T ranslations (Lyttelton) Shadow of a...

New age Richard In grams I have refrained from crowing at all over the departure of Mr Humphrey Burton who last month resigned in inverted commas from his job as Head of the...

Mis-taken Tab In August 1962 I was floundering as usual around the South of France when my friend Gianni Agnelli asked me to fly to Cowes with him for a powerboat race. It was...

Assault course Jeffrey Bernard There was a time, round about 1965, that 1 enjoyed the tremendous sexual success that I imagine the likes of Taki experience consistently and...