Haughey, Thatcher and the Irish mess Mr Charles Haughey, who has been visiting Mrs Thatcher, is very much a Republican, which in Irish terms amounts to a gut hostility to the...

Political commentary Return to the Villa Rosebery Ferdinand Mount It must be some time since you last visited the Villa Rosebery, Mr James. Ah, my dear young friend, the...

Notebook Although at my prep school I repeatedly won the slow waltz competition in partnership with my cousin Simon Elliot, I have never since had a dancing lesson. This is...

Another voice Daytrip to Nagasaki Auberon Waugh Nagasaki describes itself on its tourist brochures as the City of Romance, Naples of the Orient. The sympathetic, conservative...

A Diet of treason Murray Sayle Tokyo What a sizzling Kabuki play it's going to make. One minute, there was the Prime Minister, Masayoshi Ohira, lolling halfasleep in his...

Why Carter will win Henry Fairlie Washington At the time of writing it is two weeks to 3 June, when the primary season at last ends in a flurry of big and smaller contests,...

The decline of Bani-Sadr Roger Cooper Teheran The Majlis, Iran's parliament, is now due to convene on 28 May, a week earlier than had been expected. It is a strange body,...

The Pope in Africa Peter Hebblethwaite Rome Pope John Paul II's African safari - six countries in ten days - was his most exhilarating and exhausting journey so far. It...

Why reform the Lords? Geoffrey Wheatcroft It was inevitable that the subject of reform of the House of Lords would re-emerge. It has long been included in that curious ragbag...

Actions speak louder Peter Paterson Fleet Street's jubilation over the fiasco of the TUC's Day of Action must have been muted among the accountants and the advertising men in...

Police raid in Cornwall Sir: At a time when we are assured of the dedication of our police force to the protection of the public, especially that section living in the area of...

. . - and after Sir: Nicholas Walter is perceptive in noting that a major effect of the assassination of John Kennedy was 'to make a sick society Sicker' Indeed, the...

Insight and inwit Sir: Is it not surprising that Roy Wallis, Professor of Sociology at Belfast, should leave that cauldron of hatred and bigotry in order to criticise a...

Letters Kennedy... Sir: Mr Nicholas Walter endorses at length the recent book by Mr Anthony Summers Suggesting an anti-communist conspiracy of anti-castro Cubans/CIA...

Books The language of fabrication Richard Cobb Madoc: The Making of a Myth: The Legend of the Welsh Discovery of America Gwyn A. Williams (Eyre Methuen £8.50) Those of us...

Contemporary Jonathan Keates The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse 1945-1980 Chosen by D.J. Enright (Oxford £7.50, £3.50) The Movement: English Poetry and Fic- tion of the...

Game plans Douglas Johnson Structuralism and Since: From Levi StrausstoDerrida Ed. John Sturrock (Oxford £5.50; £2.95) In the late Sixties the cartoonist Maurice Henry drew...

Discerning ?W A. N. Wilson The Wanton Chase Peter Quennell (Collins £8.95) The outbreak of Hitler's war found Peter Quennell as a somewhat languid employee of the Ministry...

Anglo-Ireland Paul Potts Somerville and Ross: A Critical Appreciation Hilary Robinson (Gill& Macmillan £1 3) Somerville and Ross were two late Victorian Anglo-Irish ladies...

Reprieves Francis King The Healing Art A. N. Wilson (Secker £6.50) If I had not been obliged to review it, this is not a novel that I should have read to the end. In writing...

Ashes to ashes Benny Green Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1980 (Mac- donald £6.75; £5.75) When a book consisting of 1239 pages leaps to the top of the bestseller lists within a...

Mulligan Stew Gilbert Sorrentino (Marion Boyars £7.95) Suttee Cormac McCarthy (Chatto £6.95) Myself as Witness James Goldman (Hamish Hamilton £5.95) New Stories 5 Ed....

Arts Another dimension John McEwen David Smith is probably the most highly considered sculptor to have emerged in America since the War. He is seen historically as very much...

Cinema Fantasies Peter Ackroyd The Tin Drum ('X' Odeon, Haymarket) The Empire Strikes Back (CU' Odeon, Leicester Square) A man, pursued by two soldiers, is running across...

Theatre Textured Peter Jenkins The Browning Version and Harlequinade (Lyttelton) Rattigan's short play The Browning Version is such a good play of its kind that I am bound...

Television Best friend Richard Ingrams 'This beautiful little film' was how The Times critic described We Think the World of You (BBC1) an Omnibus programme made by Tristram...

Low life Off the wagon Jeffrey Bernard I was driven out of Newbury last Saturday morning by a thousand Welshmen. These loud, mean, beer-swilling people come to Newbury on...

Postscript Rearguards Patrick Marnham The announcement that there will after all be a monument to the two million victims of the Yalta Agreement will provide the occasion for...