A lmost a week after Mr Rupert Murdoch had asked him to resign, Mr Harold Evans, editor of The Times and `Editor of the Year', agreed to go. He had lost the confidence of his...

The rosette my Doug wore Ferdinand Mount Glasgow W here, or whaur, is the Labour Party we knew and loved? Why, here it is, alive and spitting, in Keir Hardie House. David...

L ike so many organisations dedicated to noble causes, Amnesty International seems to handle its own internal affairs in a Particularly inept and nasty fashion. The Jeremy...

UK Eire Surface mail Air mail 6 months: £12.00 £13.00 £14.50 £18.50 One year: £24.00 £26.00 £29.00 £37.00 US subscription price: $65.00 (Cheques to be made payable to the...

Et tu, Andrew? Auberon Waugh T the Duke of Devonshire announced his conversion to the Social Democratic Party too late for me to retract my article of last week explaining...

Nicholas von Hoffman F or the first time in this recession or any other in the past 25 years you can hear sober-sided people discussing the possibility of a depression. Alan (...

Sam White Paris y ast Sunday's vote in the cantonal elec- tions was not so much a defeat for the Socialists as a re-affirmation by the anti- Socialists that despite recent...

Richard West W hen Business Traveller offered to send me to Africa (courtesy of an airline) I chose Senegal for a quite simple reason: it is one of the few countries left in...

Gerda Cohen Samaria M y cousin Patricia, unbelievably, had gone to live in a new settlement bang in the middle of Occupied Territory. She had never shown the least interest in...

Midnight Tea is not tea taken on the very stroke of twelve — it is tea taken in the dead waste and middle of the night, that is to say, our modern night; somewhere early in the...

Leo Abse L ord Diplock, a few weeks ago, presented his report on our security ser- vices to the Prime Minister. Will the subse- quent severely truncated publication, now...

Michael Deakin A t the beginning of Alan Whicker's autobiography* is a photograph of the author at the outset of his career — a reporter, then working for what was the most...

Never hustle The Times Paul Johnson T he wranglings within The Times have been distressing, as though an elderly and much respected royal princess had sud- denly emerged from...

The impact of indexing Tony Rudd Wr hen Sir Geoffrey Howe made indexed . government stocks available to all in Ms budget speech last week he did the e quivalent of putting a...

Cranston reports huge numbers of undergraduates flocking to join the Oxford University Social Democratic Club (Letters, 6 March). I wonder if he can explain why, after much...

Sir: How can one expect a secular mind like that of Mr A. N. Wilson (6 March) to understand the spiritual attitude of the Vicar of Christ? To read about the Pope persecuting...

Sir: I had to laugh when I read that A. N.. Wilson (6 March), in the middle of a vitriolic attack on the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, politely remarks that he 'intends no...

A matter of judgment Sir: Among all the millions of words written and spoken in recent months about the sorry industrial and racial state of our nation there is one which has...

Sir: In your issue of 13 March there were two articles, by Timothy Garton Ash and Aleksa Djilas, which between them state the whole anti-Communist case. The former's description...

Sir: Shortly after reading Mr W. E. Arm- strong's letter (27 February) about General Percival, I heard the following story. When the news of the surrender of Singapore came...

Sir: The original reference to the trial and death of General Tokoyuki Yamashita in Mr Murray Sayle's article on the fall of Singapore (13 February) was made in pass- ing and...

The nice and the good Jo Grimond The Politics of Change William Rodgers (Seeker & Warburg £7.95) The Politics of Change William Rodgers (Seeker & Warburg £7.95) ° ne of the...

Arthur Marshall W hich would be your choice of year if some magic wand or Wellsian time contraption could waft a historian back- wards through the ages to provide you with a...

A. N. Wilson I t is hard to take 'literary editors' seriously. Many of them are not really editors, and precious few are notably literary. Publishers send them the books....

EULOGY OF JUDGES by Calamandrei. D. W. Dare, 10 Charlotte Rd, London SW13 9QJ. THE SPEECH CHOIR by Marjorie Gullan, 248 pages, published by Harper & Bros, New York about 1937....

Anthony. Storr On Learning to Read: The Child's Fascina - tion with Meaning Bruno Bettelheim and Karen Zelan (Thames & Hudson £7.95) T he indefatigable Bruno Bettlheim , who...

John Stewart Collis The Best of Cameron James Cameron (New English Library £9.95) T he daily events of the world at home and abroad go hurtling past us before we have time to...

Harriet Waugh The Country of her Dreams Janice Elliott (Hodder & Stoughton £6.95) F fitful unease, dream-like fright, Alice in Wonderland not particularly liking or...

David Williams E verything has been said.' This was La Bruyere's view; and certainly Shiela Grant Duff bears him out in The Parting of Ways. The miserable 1930s are by now well...

Catherine Peters T he New Ewart is more of the same, rather than any unexpected move for- ward or away from The Collected Ewart of 1980, which will be recommendation enough for...

The infirm Peter Ackroyd I f you liked the play, there is no reason why you should not like the film also. The plot, remarkable for its concentration upon the more ambiguous...

Hit and myth Mark Amory Guys and Dolls (Olivier) The Little Foxes (Victoria Palace) m usicals, my editor considers, and I agree with him, are not what they were; but this one...

Home grown Jo hn McEwen I n art the English are happiest when Pottering about cultivating their own garri • - ens, minding their own business. This is b ackward- as well as...

Horrors Richard Ingrams M r Alan Whicker, in case you didn't know, has a book out, which is why ITV are showing a series of programmes on Sunday nights devoted to highlights of...

Nostalgia Taki Gstaad I n Gstaad, the latest crisis of The Times has passed almost unremarked. Nobody here reads the front pages, where the Murdoch-Evans soap opera has been...

Moving Jeffrey Bernard F or the fourth night running, journalis t s Horses hoping for a statement front 2 50. After more talks with Balon, waited anxiously outside the Coach...

No. 1210: Ladies' week Set by Jaspistos: A poet I know was recent- ly asked by an American magazine for a poem defining 'a lady'. You are invited to join this perilous attempt...

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for an eye-witness account of some famous historical remark or event which surprising- ly contradicts accepted tradition. In a piece...

On ice David Goodman T he 10th Reykjavik International Tour- nament was played from the 9th-21st February in the Kjarvalsstadir, the city's leading art gallery. Unlike...

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A prize of ten pounds will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 5 April. Entries to: Crossword 549, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. 1 2 3...