Glorifying tyranny It is nonsense to argue. as some have attempted to do. that the Olympic Games are not a political occasion. They were in ancient times, and are now. The...

Political commentary The Good Samaritan rides out Ferdinand Mount 'No one,' Mrs Thatcher tells us, 'would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had had good intentions. He...

Notebook The death of Mrs Ellen Donovan is horrible, but not surprising. Mrs Donovan, a 71-year-old woman, was admitted to Springfield Hospital, Tooting, suffering from...

Another voice Time to clean up Neasden Auberon Waugh Various ingenious reasons have been put forward by the BBC to explain why it has decided to proceed with its 20-part...

Winnowing the Republicans Henry Fairlie Washington The voting in the party caucuses of Iowa is about to take place. The state is so called from an Indian tribal name, which...

Marchais goes back to Moscow Sam White Paris 'Die For Danzig?' This notorious headline, to an editorial written by a last-ditch French appeaser before the outbreak of the...

The triumph of Mrs Gandhi Karan Thapar New Delhi Mrs Gandhi's breathtaking electoral triumph has restored her to the domination of Indian politics which she enjoyed for the...

Gold rush in Rhodesia Richard West Fort Victoria The whites came to Rhodesia in 1890 in hope of gold, and may have to leave Rhodesia in 1980, just as the gold rush has at...

The new nation of Taiwan Leo Abse The Chinese air hostess gave me her total attention: the Boeing's first class cabin was almost empty, and the other passenger had his own...

The explosive price of gas Jo Grimond We are about to suffer another weird macro-economics exercise as irrelevant to the modern world as Ptolemaic astronomy. The Government...

Signing on in Oxford and London Wilfred De'Ath 1 have been out of work for just one year now. The last job I had, teaching English at a grammar school in Yorkshire, came to an...

The case for negligence John Woodyard The medical and other professions formulate and to a certain extent enforce codes of conduct for their members. Failure to keep to the...

Offshore criticism Sir: I have been plagued for some time by an unhappy feeling that the critics were writing less and less for the common reader. Review after review reads as...

Letters - | Lumps of metal Sir: Tim Congdon puts the cart before the horse when he states (12 January, 'Gold standards') that 'the only reason why links to a metal were needed...

Dates and decisions Sir: Although he writes regularly from the anonymity of his home address in St Albans, David M. Jacobs is a professional Zionist propagandist (he used to be...

Don't drinka pinta Sir: In Patrick Marnham's 'Postscript' (5 January) he digs up a very old chestnut indeed in an attempt to justify the slaughter of farm animals for food. The...

Staff and subsidies Sir: I hesitate to pick on one or two relatively minor points in Rodney Milnes's wise and interesting thoughts on 'An eventful decade' (5 January). However,...

The first Pope Sir: Mr Wilfred De'Ath writes (22-29 December): 'Peter, who did the same - betrayed Christ in his words - . . repented, went on to become a follower, and ended...

Books A man of feeling A.N. Wilson Walter Scott and the Historical Imagi- nation David Brown (Routledge £9.75) In that delightful volume Talking of Whittington, Hesketh...

Scots Fifties John Kenyon Cromwellian Scotland 1651-1660 F.D. Dow (John Donald £12.50) The influence of Scotland on 1 7th-century England has always been obvious enough....

Truth and lies Tim Garton Ash Propaganda in War 1939-1945 Michael Balfour (Routledge £15) Michael Balfour's great, thick, square book is a remarkable achievement. No...

Proofs of God Nicolas Walter The Existence of God Richard Swin- burne (Oxford £13) The Spiritual Nature of Man Alister Hardy (Oxford £6.95) Almost all people have almost...

Imparfit Peter Ackroyd Chaucer's Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary Terry Jones (Weidenfeld £8.95) Yesterday's heroes become, of course. today's villains or...

Day-dreaming Francis King The Roses of Picardie Simon Raven (Blnd & Briggs £6.95) At the conclusion of this work, there comes a list of places that suggests some 18thcentury...

Doyliana Benny Green Portrait of an Artist: Conan Doyle Julian Symons (Whizzard/Deutsch £4.95) As slim volumes go. this is a very slim volume indeed, just over 100 pages of...

--- Edited realism John McEwen It may well prove ominous that the first important public exhibition of the I 98ts is a retrospective of the photographs of Andre Kertesz...

Theatre Odious Peter Jenkins The Love of a Good Man (Royal Court) Howard Barker begins with a powerful theatrical image and that is a good way to make a play. Hacker, a...

Cinema Blood lines Peter Ackroyd Wise Blood X ('AA' Camden Plaza) The Amityville Horror CXY Wise Blood is a sport, a freak, a farce. It is set in the Deep South of the...

Football Crossball Hans Keller Absence makes the cross look dafter, and if You had absented yourself from English football for close on nine months, you wCould know what I...

Television Seeing red Richard Ingrams I am verv occasionally asked to sign petitions and hardly ever do so. usually because I haven't the faintest idea of what the petition...

High life Play the game Taki When Baron Pierre de Coubertin first had the idea to revive the Olympic Games there were. admittedly. no Russian tanks running wild. Although she...

Postscript Orphans all Patrick Marnham What happened to that killer lion? No sooner was it reported in the press to be the quarry of 'armed police and game scouts', than the...

Lowe life In the event Jeffrey Bernard I have been given further proof this week, as though I needed it. of the fact that a pretty big slice of the population is still...