Good Thoughts in Bad Times was the title of a once well-known book of homilies. At one of the worst times the country has known for many years we might turn away from pickets,...

The hiccup in the structure Ferdinand Mount The Evening Standard billboard was arrestingly, reassuringly dull: JIM'S NEW STRUCTURE. The mixture of the homely and bureaucratic...

It is right and proper in these dark days that journalists should search for little beacons of light amid the gloom. This is considered good for public morale and it acquits us...

Auberon Waugh 'My husband, our Irish help, and I have never voted other than Labour,' wrote Miss Nora Beloff at the time of the Inner London borough elections. `But the same...

Murray Sayle Tokyo He looked as if he had just spent the weekend in the South of France, rather than three and a half years under stringent palace arrest in his deserted and...

Mr. E.J. Lowe, the astronomer, in a letter to Tuesday's Times, mentions a curious instance of the value of small birds in agriculture:'Thirty-five years ago, a countryman left...

Edward Marston Berlin There was darkness in the east at the New Year. And in the west there was light. The heavy snowfall has caused acute power shortages in East Berlin, as a...

Richard West Salisbury Returning to Salisbury after a three-week interval, I was startled by the deterioration of white morale. `You can feel things getting worse almost day by...

Peter Nichols Dar-es-Salaam The new truth is as clear here as anywhere else: that all roads now lead out of Rome; meaning that the Pope might even come to Tanzania one day....

Patrick Marnham In Seville, in the Museo de BeIlas Artes, a bespectacled girl in jeans and a red beret glared in horror at Murillo's luxuriant paintings of the Virgin and the...

George Gale Monopoly 1. Exclusive possession of the trade in some article of merchandise; the condition of having no competitor in the sale of some commodity, or in the...

Peter Paterson It is scapegoat time, and the trade unions have virtually elected themselves for the role. The British may be a nation of trade union members but they combine it...

Leo Abse All are equal before the law, except bastards. Blacks, women and Jews are by statute and commission specifically protected against discrimination: contrariwise,...

Stock Exchange cool Nicholas Davenport When the morning press was proclaiming that the country was in a state of siege and that panic buying had been seen in the shops it was...

Sir: In your admirable leader, 'Curbing union power', you are in one respect too kind by half to our trade unions — as indeed is Mrs Thatcher. 'There is no obvious reason,' you...

Sir: Nicholas Ashford's 'South Africa's secret government' (13 January) about the Afrikaner Broederbond is a very fair summary of this organisation's nature and activities, but...

Sir: Your appeal for ex-Letters to The Times-writers to redirect their efforts to Doughty St is destined to go unanswered for the following reason: one of the most endearing...

Sir: You in England may find little for optimism in 1979, but I can assure you that the outlook is rosier, far, in Scotland. We expect to win a resounding 'Yes' vote in the...

Sir: 0 tempora! as Auberon Waugh might say. Not the least depressing aspect of our contemporary decline is that we now seem to be confronted with the first generation of...

Sir: What is Patrick Marnham on about in his running lament against Robert Moss? This Moss seems to appear in respectable places — intellectually speaking — such as Encounter...

Sir: I am completing a biography of Peter Finch and I am interested in any letters, photographs and information pertaining to him during his last years — from 1967 to 1977. All...

Sir: Why does Mr George Gale, in his article of 6 January, acknowledge the existence of the Liberal Party only to begrudge it its very name? In fact, the Liberal Party provides...

Sir: Mn. Clements (Letters, 16 December) is surely quite right — identity cards are not the answer to terrorism and illegal immigration, particularly in an age of freedom of...

On lying and dying Elisabeth Whipp The Hospice Movement Sandol Stoddard (Cape £5.95) Lying Sisela Bok (Harvester £6.50) Doctors on Trial John S. Bradshaw (Wildwood £5.95) We...

Robert Blake Pitt the Younger Robin Reilly (Cassell £9.95) William Pitt the younger is generally agreed to have been one of England's greatest prime ministers, but he is also...

Peter Ackroyd A D.H. Lawrence Companion F.B. Pinion (Macmillan £15) There is an aspect of Lawrence's character which doesn't quite fit the conventional image of him as the...

Emma Fisher Cities of the interior: The Collected Action Anais Nin (Peter Owen £7.95) A Woman Speaks Anais Nin (W. H. Allen £5.95) In Favour of the Sensitive Man and other...

Benny Green The Golden Age of Cricket 1890-1914 David Frith (Luttervvorth £8.50) Now is the time for books about cricket, when the battle has drifted eleven thousand miles away...

Francis King The Negligent Daughter Edith de Born (Allen & Unwin £4.95) Even more than Conrad, Nabokov or R.K. Narayan (about whom I wrote a fortnight ago), Edith de Born is a...

Hans Keller Mary Barnes (Royal Court) When Mary Barnes entered Kingsley Hall she was an undistinguished, unknown, unhappy nurse. When she left, five years later, she was a...

Destroyers Rodney MIlnes The Turn of the Screw (WNO, Cardiff) Adrian Slack's production, first seen at the 1976 Wexford Festival, looks altogether more handsome in its second...

Tearful Mary Kenny I have been weeping a lot over the radio recently. I hope this is a sign of how good the programmes are at present, and not that I am heading for an early...

John McEwen Contemporary art activity at the moment is centred on the ICA, where three shows are attracting equal measures of publicity and people: 'Photography As Art: Art As...

Impinging Richard Ingrams Another week has passed and still I am in mourning for my old television set. The trouble is that anything remotely interesting on Independent...

Freak forwards Alan Watkins It is a commonplace that people go to circuses in the hope they may see someone killed. In much the same spirit, I am told, they would attend...

Regine's way Taki High lifers have been in an uproar since last week. Not unlike their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic, at the United Nations, jet-set...

Choked Jeffrey Bernard It's extraordinary to me — more like infuriating, really — that the smallest atom of what's considered to be 'class' can turn a ne'erdo-well, lounge...

At it again Geoffrey Wheatcroft The Noel Coward song went: We've spoiled the child and spared the rod: Open up the caviar and say, Thank God! For Alice is at it again. I'm...