When MPs of all parties start congratulating one another, the rest of us had usually better watch out. The chances are that slovenly if not actually dirty work is afoot. Mr...

Carry on regardless Ferdinand Mount So what are you going to do? Do? Well, as you can see, the Government has a crowded programme this week. Take Thursday, for example....

r3 . 1 1 the day after the news of the royal divorce, the Daily Mail carried a picture n p ! Princess Margaret leaving hospital, the u„Qily Telegraph carried a picture of Lord...

The last kick Auberon Waugh At times this column has been marked by a nervousness, not to say a vulgar despondency, over the prospect of workers' power, on the grounds that it...

Xan Smiley Confusion reigns in Rhobabwe. The only certainty is that those most utterly convinced that they know the answer to the riddle are invariably the most ignorant — The...

Anthony Mockler The Shah is reported to be very worried — amidst his other preoccupations — by the situation in Afghanistan. The last Shah to be equally worried by the same...

Phillip Knightley AuStralians have a healthy cusrespect bordering on contempt for their politicians. My own theory is that broadcasting parliament has a lot to do with it. It...

HUNTING SKETCHES by Anthony Trollope; Vorrocks Country' by Uvedale Lambert; 'The England of Nimrod and Surtees, 1815-54' and 'English Country Life, 1780-1830' by E.W. Bovill....

David ,Pryce-Jones Moscow The most Stalinist building in Moscow is the University, gigantically visible everywhere, so that nobody can miss the ideological nature of thought...

John Macdonald The trial of Professor Yuri Orlov in Moscow and the parallel 'trial' in London — have fpcused attention on the abuses of human tights in the Soviet Union in a...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Florence On Saturday, the day of the state funeral, we talked inevitably of Aldo Moro, abducted and murdered by terrorists. Among the smallish party was a...

George Gale I happen to have heard all Prime Minister's Question Times since the proceedings of the House of Commons began to be broad cast. This is because each weekday...

Christopher Booker As the most famous crime committed in Britain since the war, obviously the most interesting thing about the Great Train Robbery has been not so much the...

Trade and money figures NIcholas Davenport The moaners and groaners in the gilt-edged Market finally got what they wanted — a 9 Per cent Bank rate. The MLR (minimum lending...

Sir: In recent weeks Geoffrey McDermott has apparently twice condoned the policy of the terror raids on Germany and more particularly that on Dresden. He has also assured us...

Sir: Geoffrey McDermott concludes his review of the Goebbels Diaries (6 May) with the words 'long may both the Federal Republic and the Democratic Republic flourish'. Would he...

Sir: So George Gale (6 May) believes 'mugging' to be 'where people of one colour attack and rob those of another'. Very per spicacious! But even here in Manchester our...

Sir: I do not know much about the fall in population, although I should have thought this overcrowded island could do with it; but as the mother of four children I can assure...

Sir: If, as I suspect, the name Judith Acton is a rose by another name, Judith Todd, then one may immediately assume that her article of 6 May on Rhodesia would reflect her...

Sir: Simon Courtauld's remarks about explorers and the books they read (Notebook, 13 May) reminds me of Theo dore Roosevelt's safari in the first years of the century. He took...

Sir: As Richard Ingrams says (6 May), there were a lot of gaps in the TV programme dealing with the journalists' strike at the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph last year. But...

Sir: Richard Ingrams has rendered the fine art of Pure Hypocrisy a near-mortal wound With his intolerant review (29 April) of my excellent appearance on BBC 2's Don't Quote Me...

Sir: Perhaps a word on behalf of the New English Bible may be allowed following the gratuitous kick aimed at it by Auberon Waugh (25 March). I began daily Bible reading (more or...

Sir: Bruce Chatwin's article (8 April) revives some well-worn anti-semitic formulations. He portrays the Jews as essentially herd-minding nomads, with a periodic itch for...

The head only Robert Skidelsky The Letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb: Vol I Apprenticeships 1873-1892; Vol II Partnership 1893-1912; Vol III Pilgrimage 1912-1947 Edited by...

John Kenyon The Letters of Junius Edited by John Cannon (Oxford £20.00) On 21 January 1769 the Public Advertiser printed a long letter over the pen-name 'Junius' which...

Alan Watkins Messengers of Day Anthony Powell (Heineman E6.00) One's picture of life as one would wish to lead it — or, perhaps, as it is in fact led, by a group of...

John Biggs-Davison A Place Apart Deryla Murphy (John Murray £5.50) Dublin from Downing Street John Peck (Gill & Macmillan £6.25) A Place among the Nations: Issues of Irish...

Benny Green Show Boat: The Story of a Classical American Musical Miles Kreuger (Oxford £11.95) A radio producer once played for me a tape he had received from a prospective...

Francis King Mother's Footsteps Harriet Waugh (Weidenfeld £4.95) Except for comedians in television studios or on the end of piers, mothers-in-law are usually no joke. If they...

Evelyn Waugh In a Valley of This Restless Mind Malcolm Muggeridge (Collins £4.95) This review of Malcolm Muggeridge's novel was first published forty years ago in the...

Flayed skeletons Germaine Greer The Tempest (Riverside studios) The Tempest (RSC, Stratford) The audience that perched itself on the wooden staging at the Riverside Studios...

Sacrificial Ted Whitehead lphigenla (Studio 3) A good classical education left me with an aversion to the classics that I regarded as permanent until the recent revival of...

Gestural John McEwen Most artists have one-man shows every two years or so, so it is asking a lot if you expect their work to evolve very significantly from their previous...

On form Rodney Milnes The Two Foscari (Coliseum) Form and convention in opera have to be accepted because, like Rio Rita, they are there, and they are probably accepted more...

Great lives Alan Gibson The new cricket season has been marked, I need scarcely point out to you, by atrocious weather; but also by the publication of several interesting...

Sickening Richard Ingrams What with my Melvyn Bragg obsession I had forgetten all about Russell Harty, a society for the extermination of whom I once proposed in this column....

Trojan horses Taki English gentlemen's clubs, already in their death throes, are suffering the ultimate Indignity. In order to ensure their survival they are electing as...

Run of the mill Jeffrey Bernard One of the few things I find to be absolutely compulsive reading apart from the Racing Calendar's list of defaulters, Irma Kurtz's agony column...