There is an old saying, nowadays dressed in the finery of scientific terminology, that men are wont to accuse others of their own fault. Mr Enoch Powell has long made a line of...

Hattersley's progress Ferdinand Mount The Labour Hall in Ilford shares premises with the Circle of Light Spiritualist Church (Sunday 6.30 Mrs G. Davies, Sunday 8.15 HEALING)....

A few days ago, on Radio Four, I listened to !-Ord Carrington commending Ian Smith's Internal' settlement. The reporter asked if It wasn't beginning to look a little bit too...

Nicholas Bethell Thirty-three years ago a woman now living in London was subjected by British authority to two years of extreme distress. Born in Russia, eighteen years old and...

Xan Smiley What now promises to become Rhodesia's 'internal settlement' is flummoxing observers and even the participants themselves. Those parties that are denouncing it most...

Anthony Mockler Paris Who wotild ever have believed how deeply candidates for the forthcoming French elections are concerned about good and bad architecture? Hard-headed hommes...

Peter Paterson Chicago The Chicago school of journalism is quite as well known, I suppose, as the Chicago school of economics. Possibly more so, since its chief celebration is...

George Hutchinson `Supermac', Labour leader? To many in the Labour Party (and especially, perhaps, to younger members) the proposition will seem fanciful if not preposterous....

Jo Grimond The liberal enlightenment was a new departure in human history, owing a great deal to the Renaissance and so to Greece, but breaking new ground. It only started in...

Peregrine Worsthorne 'Only assimilate' is the message which everyone sends out to the immigrant communities. But assimilate with whom? With the British, of course. But who or...

David Howell One does not have to be an unreconstructed Keynesian, a fine tuner, a demand manager, a growthman, or anything else of that genre, to be deeply worried about the...

The awkward reflation Nicholas Davenport Those who read this column will be aware that I try to do two things: First, to report What is going on in the City in language that...

TESS OF THE D i URBERVILLES. Macmillan Pocket Edition, 1919. 0. Herbert, 36 Lower Green, Tewin, Welwyn, Herts. A TREASURY OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH VERSE ed. H.J....

Sir: The unbearable story told by Nikolai Tolstoy cannot I think, be so easily explained in terms of crass spinelessness in the face of Soviet pressure, or even of a (reluctant)...

Sir: 'There was no genocide', declares Lady Hunt (Letters, 21 January), who then goes on to claim that 'that fact' was 'proved by the reports of the international observers...

Sir: Auberon Waugh completely reinforces the point I made in the letter which he quotes. Nowhere in his long article (4 February) is there the slightest attempt to defend his...

Sir: I am writing, as chairman of the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure in England and Wales, to ask for the help of your readers in our work. The task which we have...

Sir: Why should we take Mrs Thatcher's recent immigration speeches seriously When the 1970 Tory Manifesto, A Better Tomorrow, stated that `There will be no further large scale...

Sir: A disagreement seems to have arisen between David M. Jacobs and Susannah Greenberg in their attempts to defend Menahem Begin. Mr Jacobs wants us to distrust Arab writings...

Sir: Surely I cannot be the only reader to be unutterably bored by that dreary correspondence about Deir Yassin? Has it really continued for three months or does it just seem...

Sir: with reference to Emma Fisher's review (4 February) of Barbara Norman's Selected Poems, it hardly seems proper to write that 'the book is full if isic I misprints and...

Sir: Being noble in the only sense accepted by Mr Peregrine Worsthorne (4 February), Hilaire Belloc was too sensitive a realist to confuse this admirable virtue of nobility with...

Sir: Auberon Waugh tells us (Crowing old gracefully, 11 February) that a decline in live births from 980,000 in 1966 to 676,000 in 1976 is a drop of very nearly 45 percent. I...

A hand-picked Lobbyman Ferdinand Mount The Abuse of Power James Margach (W. H. Allen £5.50) There is something cosy about the idea of a 'Lobbyman'. Echoes of...

Hugh Brogan With Malice Towards None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln Stephen B. Oates (Allen & Unwln E8.95) lie was not only the greatest of American Presidents, but the greatest...

Alan Watkins The Politics of the Judiciary J.A.G. Griffith (Fontana/Collins paperback £1.25) My friend John Griffith of the LSE must feel quite pleased with himself. And with...

Richard West Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy Roger Morris (Quartet Books £5.95) This latest book on the Kissinger years by one of his former...

Benny Green The Greyfrlars Holiday Annual for 1978 (Howard Baker £4.50) Just when I was beginning to wonder if the moment might have passed for me to review the latest of the...

peter Ackroyd „Refiner's Fire Mark Helprin (Hamish H amilton £5.95) It must have taken a great deal of selfa ssurance to complete this book; it's a first novel, it is extremely...

Everything In the Garden Elizabeth North (Gollancz £4.75) Strangers Barbara Ewing (Heinemann £3.90) The Island Emperor Brian Priestley (Macmillan £3.50) 'Since he came to...

Romanticism's dark underside Bryan Robertson Mayerling (Covent Garden) I can't convey my huge and astonished admiration for Kenneth MacMillan's new three-act ballet, without...

Missus' art Ted Whitehead Love Letters on Blue Paper (Cottesloe) in the Blood (Theatre Upstairs) P rivates on Parade (Piccadilly) There's something pathetic about refugees...

Liberation Rodney Milnes The Bartered Bride (Scottish Opera) Smetana's masterpiece exploded onto the stage of the Theatre Royal in Glgasow with something of the force with...

Cerebral Clancy Sigal The Devil, Probably (X, Plaza, Camden Town) Last week I attacked the young German, Fassbinder, for reducing his film Effi Briest to a boring exercise in...

A pittance Richard Ingrams I said before that the mi s file Barrie Gavin at the end of a programme can normally be regarded as an indication of preceding bore" dom and...

Guarantees Huon Mallalieu To the cynic it sometimes seems that the conditions of sale, printed at the beginning of every catalogue, serve only to absolve the auctioneer of any...

Last fight Benny Green The air of finality with which the press invested Muhammad Ali's defeat in Las Vegas last week certainly has less than nothing to do with Ali's avowed...

No news Patrick M arn ham ' This is the story of Sun Valley, the broiler chicken who got away. As an epic it is not the equal of The Long Walk, but it has its own drama. And...

For science Jeffrey Bernard Drinkers everywhere must have been interested to have read about the strange case of Mr Russell Kerr, Labour MP for Hounslow, whose drink and...