The English tend to regard the French as perverse, taking a more tolerant view of the French than the French take of their perfidious neighbour across the Channel. Perverse,...

A night at the play Ferdinand Mount My dear young friend, Your invitation to compose a 'profile' of Mr Michael Foot discomposed me to an extent which was scarcely lessened by...

As we go to press, I hear that the Pope has been shbt and that his condition is serious. I do not know who is responsible for this atrocious crime. Progressive Catholics have...

Press, Palace and Mrs Hill Auberon Waugh It is an unenviable and rather odious thing for any working journalist to write about Fleet Street. Apart from the obvious dec...

Sam White Paris The French electorate has long been skilled in playing Russian roulette with itself. This time, however, there was a bullet in the barrel. There can be no doubt...

Tom Bethell Washington Last week the House of Representatives voted by a wide margin (253 to 176) to cut Federal spending by 42 billion dollars in fiscal year 1982 (which...

Richard West San Salvador Before coming to El Salvador, I bought a Communist pamphlet whose very title attempted to make the point: El Salvador: America's New Vietnam. The...

Gavin Stamp Leningrad Behind the old barracks of Tsarskoe Selo, way off the Intourist track, we found what we were looking for: a ruined Neo-Classical church, four-square with...

Peter Paterson The Benn road show is picking up momentum at this year's round of trade union conferences, at such a pace that some previously confident forecasters who held...

Mr Hutchinson's new Libel Bill, which passed its second reading on Wednesday, was formally accepted by the Attorney-General, and seems likely to pass. It extends the defence of...

Allan Massie 'A contract worth £2.3 million for the overhaul of aero-engines for West Germany, yes West Germany. Come on, three cheers for Britain . . . an oil platform worth...

The moral of ICL Tony Rudd The imminent collapse of this country's only mainframe serious contender in the world computer market, International Computers Limited, brings into...

Sir: I was interested to read of Ferdinand Mount's experience as a juror (2 May) and his observation that jurors are now selected from 'twelve representative persons' rather...

Sir: It was Dr Johnson who invented the celebrated maxim: The Irish are a fair people; they never speak well of one another.' Perhaps that is why your reviewer, John Stewart...

Sir: I derived great pleasure from Gerda Cohen's article on Picardy in your issue devoted to the elections in France (2 May). It was a wonderful evocation. It was like walking...

Sir: In his review of Robyn Davidson's Tracks (14 March) James Hughes-Onslow quotes, among the 'facts' about camels supplied by Thomas Cook, 'that the last ones in Spain were...

Sir: Reviewing the first programme in Richard Leakey's series on The Making of Mankind (9 May), Richard Ingrams says that 'the evidence that man evolved from monkeys has always...

Sir: Paul Johnson (`More matter, less art', 9 May) has got it wrong. The decision to end the National Book Awards has, to the best of my knowledge, been greeted with complete...

A flagship out of line Patrick Devlin Justice, Lord Denning and the Constitution P. Robinson and P. Watchman eds. (Gower pp. 253, £10.50, £5.95) Lord Denning is a highly...

Eric Christiansen The Cult of the Saints Peter Brown (SCM Press Ltd pp. 187, £6.95) Peter Brown has been knocking about with the saints for some time, and his admirers may be...

J. Enoch Powell Revolutionary Empire Angus Calder (Cape pp. 916, £16.50) This is the first of three volumes of a projected 'history of the British Empire', of which the second...

Diana Quick Swanson on Swanson Gloria Swanson (Michael Joseph pp. 535, £9.95) 'Manhandled; Cinderella story about a department store salesgirl in love with a humble inventor....

Christopher Hawtree In Anger: Culture in the Cold War 1945 — 60 Robert Hewison (Weidenfeld pp.230, £9.95) English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980...

Raleigh Trevelyan Alexander the Great N.G.L. Hammond (Chatto & Windus pp. 358, £14.95) There are people in Hunza, in their beautiful valley on the border of Sinkiang, who...

Fatal pash Paul Ableman An Easter Egg Hint Gillian Freeman (Hamish Hamilton pp. 192, £6.95) This is a mystery story in more senses than one. It is, in the first place, a...

Novel experiences Rodney Mdnes The Greek Passion (Welsh National Opera, Cardiff) Anna Karenina (Coliseum) Both these operas are based on extremely long novels: Martinu's on...

Now and Zen John McEwen The retrospective of paintings, assemblages, prints and drawings by the American Robert Rauschenberg (Tate Gallery till 14 June) does not have the luck...

One misshtake WE Deedes Anyone for Denis? (Whitehall) A curious thing about Private Eye, a scourge of smoothies, Goldenballs, news paper editors and kindred riff-raff, is that...

No rings Peter Ackroyd The Postman Always .Rings Twice ('X', Odeon Leicester Square) It is now impossible to watch Jack Nicholson without embarrassment. He went over the top,...

Miller's tale Richard Ingrams Looking back at what I have seen of the BBC's Shakespeare series I am surprised how little stays in the memory. It has been going on for two...

Not so final Wilfred De'Ath The Jubilee line out to Wembley Park on Saturday morning was full of scarved and beribboned youths asking, 'Any spare tickets, mate?' The girl next...

Ladies doubles Tala New York After six long, interminable months I am about to return to my ancestral country seat in Oxfordshire. This is the longest I have spent in one...

Fishy Jeffrey Bernard didn't know Bernard Walsh who owned Wheelers at all well, but when I heard that he'd died this week I naturally started to think about the branch in Old...