The first Official Secrets Act was passed in 1889 after an obscure scandal, one of the first 'security' scares. The Act in force at present was passed in 1911 — at a time of...

Our leading article this week will, I hope, help to persuade conservatives that freedom of information is a cause worth supporting,The danger is that they may be discouraged...

Sporting life in Moscow Auberon Waugh The International Olympic Committee is a self-electing body of some 80 members. Normally, there is only one member from any country,...

Sam White Paris Let's face it — as scandals go, the present crop in France is hardly a vintage one. Taken individually they are quite mild affairs almost constituting...

Peter Nichols Rome Who is it easier to stop being: Hamlet or John Wayne? The Pope must be wondering. Ever since he was photographed with a broad sombrero over his ruggedly...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The inten non was to open the campaign in Washington and to deluge the Party and the country with the third and no less invincible Kennedy....

Richard West Montevideo In the bookstall of the main hotel here I saw a display of the.latest paperback, Los Derechos Humanos (Human Rights) by David Owen, and turning to the...

Christopher Booker My eye was caught the other day by a passage in an archaeological guide to Southern England, published in 1973 by Faber and Faber. Speaking of the famous...

Clive Aslet Masterpieces of contemporary architecture are like the emperor's new clothes: often it isn't what they are, so much as what they — critics, the architectural...

Water works Sir: Ferdinand Mount had a high old time at the water industry's expense (3 November); and we all enjoyed reading him. However, it N. would be fairer to your...

Sir: Perhaps I could be permitted through your columns to echo Mrs Maxwell-Scott' s feeling of unease regarding the inquest on the murder of the Lucarts' nursemaid , Sandra...

Sir: Yes, Yes. Perhaps the Government will be putting senna pods into our water supplies next just to ease matters (Simon Courtauld, Notebook , 3 November); but there is a more...

Sir: Simon Courtauld (Notebook, 3 November) tells us that he is 'completely ignorant about fluoride'. He should have stopped at that point. In the Thirties and Forties fluoride...

Sir: Poor Peter Ackroyd. He must be a Cambridge man. Only an alumnus of the Fenland Polytechnic would so readily admit to boring days, melancholy nights, and lugubrious...

Sir: It's a shame that Tim Garton Ash's article on Hungary (6 October) should have dwelt so relentlessly on the one aspect of life in that country which is so vulnerable to the...

Sir: May I gently chide my friend Alan Watkins for a social error uncharacteristic of this man of our times (27 October). Soirees (as he calls what are usually known as dinner...

Sir: Alexander Chancellor (Notebook, 10 November) refers to the members of the Institute of Journalists as 'a rather mystifying collection of people'. This is an odd reference...

Sir: There are jokes and jokes (Auberon Waugh, 'No flies in Hong Kong', 3 November), Mr Waugh is offended by a sign at Heathrow airport indicating that there are toilet...

Sir: It is a little puzzling that you retain a television critic who appears only to enjoy the Muppets yet has the gall to advise John Cleese 'Not to Labour Jokes to Death'....

Claret crisis Geoffrey Wheatcroft For several years wine lovers, as they receive seasonal lists from merchants and clubs, have been asking themselves not just, how much wine...

Anthony Storr Freud: Biologist of the Mind Frank J. Subway (Bumett/Deutsch £11.95) Is there room for yet another large book on Freud and the origins of psychoanalysis? 'Yes;...

Nicolas Walter Whitehouse Michael Tracey and David Morrison (Macmillan £7.95, 0.95) Mary Whitehouse and the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association are the best-known...

Paul Potts Orwell: The Transformation Peter Stansky and William Abrahams (Constable £6.95) In the Suffolk village of Southwold where George Orwell grew up, a plaque was placed...

Jonathan Keates Dion Boucicault Richard Fawkes (Quartet 210.95) The 19th-century English theatre is never to be thought of without a shudder. Given the sheer, unredeemed...

Benny Green Chronicles of the Raj Shamsul Islam (Macmillan £10) The title is rather misleading, for a chronicle is usually something very much more exhaustive than what we...

Francis King £5.95) Confederates Thomas Keneally (Collins Although the greatest of all novels. War and Peace, is an historical one, in this century the genre has increasingly...

Cardboard and chains Peter Ackroyd Monty Python's Life of Brian (Plaza, AA) Mad Max (Warner. X) 1 he main memory is of John Cleese: John Cleese as a Jewish elder, John Cleese...

Odd man out John McEwen The facade of the Royal Academy is decorated with statues of the artistic elect: Phidias, Leonardo, Michelangelo one hardly registers the names, they...

Dark corners Peter Jenkins The Father (Open Space) Measure for Measure (FISC, Aldwych) Poor Strindbcrg was going through one of his bad patches when he wrote The Father. His...

Twin Screws Rodney Milnes The Turn of the Screw (Coliseum The Turn of the Screw (Eastbourne) La Scheme (Covent Garden) A new production by the Welsh National earlier this...

Showmen Richard Ingrams Unlike many contemporaries I have never felt any urge whatever to go to America and this prejudice is always reinforced during Presidential campaigns,...

Cheap thrills Taki Ed (Too Tall) Jones is a six fciot nine inch, 270 pound negro who used to make 60,000 pounds per year knocking people down. Jones did this legally as he...

Plain speaking Jeffrey Bernard Just as I was thinking about that very tough Soho sexual assault course that I had to go through, round about 1950, a much tougher business than...

The aid game Patrick Marnham Some years ago a letter appeared in the Kenyan Sunday Post which was headed 'The New Bogus Professors'. It was from a student of the University of...

No. 1091: Short short story Set by Jaspistos: One of Maugham's best stories begins with the question: 'Do you like macaroni?' and ends with the exclamation: 'You bloody fool,...

Bishop's move David Levy The relationship, or lack of it, between the game of chess and the church has had its ups and downs for almost as long as the game has been in...