The Liberals, as usual, open the autumn's rite of party political conferences. Next week they perform. The following week it is Labour's turn. The Tories conclude the series...

Ferdinand Mount The gorgeous vestments are a little startling. Surely the Methodist Church was founded to do away with flummery. From the walls of Wesley's Chapel, austere...

Henry Fairlie Washington At the end of the past ten days no one knows what to make of Edward Kennedy. At one moment he seems to be in; at the next to be out again. He has not...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington 'Mama, Mama, kin I run for President, Kin I? Kin I, pleeeeze?' 'Not till you've had your bath, Teddy dear.' 'But Mama, you said I could if I'd...

Tim Garton Ash Cracow Cracow is Poland's Oxford. Its university was founded in 1364 by Casimir the Great, the last of the Piast Kings of Poland. From the castle of Wawel, which...

Murray Sayle I hope Sir James Goldsmith has sharp enough ears to pick out, from the chorus greeting his new magazine, the sincere welcome of an old-time, long distance...

Jo Grimond The season of oratory and brash sterility is upon us, when the discords of the Party conferences will soon be heard over the BBC. This year the jamborees will not be...

The two sons of the Prince of Wales, failing whom the Crown would again devolve upon a female sovereign, again a Victoria, started on Thursday from Portsmouth, in the...

Marcel Berlins When the American black activist Bobby Seale came to trial in 1970, it took four months for a jury to be empanelled. More than 1,000 jurors were rejected in the...

Christopher Booker Listening to a run-of-the-mill BBC 6 pm news broadcast the other day, I could not help being struck by the bizarre picture of contemporary life in Britain it...

Tim Congdon In the days when British Leyland made a profit, there was a readily understandable reason why its workers went on strike. They were trying to get more money for...

Richard West County Clare T he photographs of Pope John Paul II a re going up on the walls of the pubs, and the photographs of the Kennedys are c oming down. The memory of the...

Sir: I am surprised that Russia has not taken advantage of the strange moral position over Vietnam taken by the Western governments arid 'their odd interpretation of the...

Sir: Warmest thanks to the Spectator and to Christopher Booker for the article on 'Restoration of the old counties'. In a world so full of menacing insecurity and unreasoned...

Sir: What a strange world we live in when Simon Courtauld can claim (Notebook, 11 August) that much of the blame for the overcrowding in our prisons lies with magistrates. It is...

Sir: I am genuinely sorry that Mr McEwen found the 'documentary gruel' of our Ironbridge Exhibition not to his taste. He must however be sadly ignorant of exhibition finances if...

Sir: Like Francis King (15 September) I was introduced to Jorge Luis Borges by a woman (I have always thought it does credit to a man to be liked by women). But Mr King's...

Sir: Far be it for me, a New Yorker who has never been to Texas, to correct a native Texan, but your correspondent Mr Lee T. Pearcy (4 August) is totally in error when he inakes...

Sue Although I greatly enjoyed Tony L ambton's enthusiastic appreciation ( 25 August) of Alexander Herzen, I of ne vertheless a trifle pained (mindful ot his Own irritation at...

Prue Shaw The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri Trans. and introduced Kenneth Mackenzie (Folio Society E9.95) The best parts of Shelley's unfinished poem The Triumph of Life give...

Geoffrey Marshall Crime and Police in England 1700-1900 J.J Tobias (Gill and Macmillian E10) Mr Justice Page, one of Queen Anne's judges, told an inquirer after his health that...

Jonathan Keates Mr Home Pronounced Hume William Douglas-Home (Collins £6:95) Each of us now cherishes his favourite symptom of national decline, ready to advance it at the...

Patrick Cosgrave Apostles of Mobility Lord Carver (Weidenfeld £6) The essential purpose of Field Marshal Carver's Lees-Knowles lectures (delivered at Cambridge earlier this...

Benny Green Vintage Wodehouse Ed. Richard Usborne (Penguin 21 50) It would be simple enough to make out a long list of arguments against the existence of a paperback anthology...

Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough Hugo Vickers (Weidenfeld E8.95) 'I saw an extraordinary marionette of a woman — or was it a man? It wore grey flannel...

Francis King Wild Nights Emma Tennant (Cape £4.50) The Old Jest Jennifer Johnston (Hamish Hamilton £4.95) We all have lists of things that, though there is nothing...

John McEwen Inflation breeds academicism; that, at least, is the most obvious lesson of the visual art offerings at Edinburgh this season, notably in the form of 'Degas 1879'...

Peter Jenkins Outside Edge (Queens) Private Life of the Third Reich (Open Space) Love's Labour's Lost (RSC, Aldwych) One powerful image can go a long way in an evening at the...

Ted Whitehead Pretty Baby (Ritz) Scum (Prince Charles) Hard on the heels of the report recommendj ag the abolition of the age of consent comes Louis Malle's Pretty Baby (X) a...

Richard Ingrams I can't remember exactly when I stopped reading John Le Carre's novels but I rather think A Small Town In Germany (1968) was the last one I read and I'm not...

eoffrey Wheatcroft Sitting in a cafe in Naples, I think of Vienna. Just before leaving London I caught up with t he National Theatre's production of Arthur Schnitzler's...

Raymond Keene After nine rounds of the Riga Interzonal the situation is obscured by a number of unfinished adjournments, but the general picture looks like this: Tal 61 points,...