When all is said and done, few traitors have got away with their treachery as nicely• as Anthony Blunt who, having according to his own account ceased to pass Information to the...

Ferdinand Mount These things are sent to cheer us up. There's nothing like a witch-hunt, with real witches, to set the blood racing. Never has a single scandal — even in the...

You may recall Beatrix Potter's lines on being a mole: Diggory Diggory Delvet A little old man in black velvet; He digs and he delves — You can see for yourselves The mounds dug...

Henry Fairlie Washington In one of the less inflamed phrases in his memoirs De Gaulle wrote: 'The United States brings to great affairs elementary feelings and a complicated...

Richard West Du blin Several South Americans, whom I met in my recent journey, not only condone their own government's use of counter-terror, with murder and torture, but asked...

Hugh Trevor-Roper The exposure of Anthony Blunt has followed a certain classical pattern. In 1 956 a Labour MP, prompted by journalists, asked in Parliament about the 'third...

In the visual arts architecture has, of course, taken first place, and in certain ways Russian architects have great achievements to their credit. The best blocks of living...

Tim Congdon When the increase in Minimum Lending Rate from 14 to 17 per cent was announced on the floor of the Stock Exchange last Thursday, it was greeted by a burst of...

Ferdinand Mount Most people believe in cheap money like most people believe in love and real ice cream. High interest rates are never going to be popular and for that reason...

Christopher Booker It is hard, in these troubled times, not to feel a certain sympathy with Mr John Morton. Mr Morton has for some years now been the General Secretary of the...

Sir: In Mr Chancellor's Notebook (10 November) he quotes me as saying to the Daily Mail 'That's not my husband. My husband is a real aristocrat, he looks like a lord.' I'm...

his own choice. Should he wish to return to this country I am certain that he could defend himself before a judge and jury in the knowledge that British justice would be applied...

Sir: Your issue of 3 Novenlber contained three articles which in total paint a depressing picture of contemporary Britain — Mr Mount on the wetness of water boards, Mr Waugh on...

Sir: Taki should stick to writing about social matters. His well-intentioned comments on Cambodia (10 November) were thoroughly misleading, and unfair to the present critics of...

Sir: As editor of the letters of Brendan Behan, I wonder whether any of your readers might have letters, postcards, or any information useful to this edition. Any help will be...

Sir: Ion Ratiu's letter (27 October) gratifyingly exemplifies the vehemence of the Romanian nationalism about which I wrote (13 October). To answer his specific criticisms: I...

Sir: Your correspondent Mr. DO. Dexter finds 'Mr Ingrams's apparently insatiable craving to dispraise' unacceptable, and presumes to speak for other readers in this matter. Mr...

Sir: Richard Rodgers collaborated with Lorenz Hart. Surely, it was Richard Rogers who collaborated with Renzo Piano on the Centre Georges Pompidou (Planning: the ultimate...

George Gale The White House Years Henry Kissinger (Weidenfeld; Michael Joseph E - 14.95) The years in question are those of Nixon's first presidency: early 1969 to early 1973....

Giles Gordon Allen Lane: King Penguin J.E. Morpurgo (Hutchinson 03.95) It will be reealled that the manservant in The Importance o f Being Earnest is named Lane, a splendid...

Mary R. Lefkowitz Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece David M Schaps (Edinburgh £7.50) The women who occupy the centre stage so often determine the outcome of Greek...

Paul Ableman A Married Man Piers Paul Read (Alison/ Secker £5.25) When John Strickland finds the naked body of his wife, Clare, in the living-room of their country cottage and...

Hans Keller I Saw the World End: A Study of • Wagner's Ring Deryck Cooke (Oxford £6.50,£3.95) The Wagner Companion Ed. Peter Burbidge and,Richard Sutton (Faber £12.50) — rather...

The Composer and his Works ERIC WALTER WHITE This exhaustive, marvellously authoritative study (to quote The Times's review of the first edition) comprises an account of...

Edited by KNUD MARTNER Alma Mahler, the composer's widow edited and published some 400 of his lettersin their original German in 1924. This highly important collection now...

Rodney Milnes Tchaikovsky: The Early Years David Brown (Gollancz £8.50) The Operas of Verdi: Volume Two Julian Budden (Cassell £17.50) If the three-volume (or more) 'Life and...

Peter Jenkins Lark Rise to Candleford (Cottesloe) Last of the Red Hot Lovers (Criterion) I am never more conscious of being in a theatre than when the theatre is at its most...

Peter Ackroyd Moment By Moment (Plaza, AA) Slow Dancing In The Big City (Classic, AA) When John Travolta walks, the pavements are made out of pillows; his smile stretches from...

John McEwen The photographer Brassai is 80 this year and the event is celebrated with a retrospective of his work at The Photographers Gallery (till 7 December). Brassai, as...

Richard Ingrams The exposure of Sir Anthony Blunt last week highlighted the lack of any Current Affairs machinery, especially on the BBC, to deal with the story. With Panorama...

Jeffrey Bernard It occurred to me, when reading my colleague, Benny Green's, column, that there is a sort of illness I don't have but wish I did suffer from. I suppose it might...

John Mortimer In all the tedious, tendentious, overemotional, under-intelligent, lip-licking, hypocritical, keyhole-peeping arguments about contemporary pornography no one has...

Raymond Keene Bunyips are mythical Australian swampdwelling creatures which are never seen, rather like Australian Grandmasters. This scarcity is easily explained, when one...