n Belfast a mob murdered two off-duty Royal Signals soldiers when their car was caught up in the IRA funeral of a man killed by a generade thrown three days earlier at the...

IT IS reported that the Minister for the Arts has decided to call a halt to the building of the new British Library. This is welcome • news for users of the Round Reading Room...

1706; Telex 27124; Fax 242 0603 ENGLAND'S INANITY n most political subjects, the House of Commons is rancorously partisan. Tri- vial differences between parties are magni-...

Reflections on the revolution in taxes NOEL MALCOLM I f you are going to do unpopular things, said Machiavelli, you might as well do them all at once rather than by degrees,...

T he news from Ireland is more than usually frightful, but I do not care. It might even be a good thing. Because the IRA have recently concentrated their attention so...

A fourth solution to the Irish Question AUBERON WAUGH Obviously, these two deaths are a drop in the ocean. In the sense that the two victims were not innocent civilians, but...

BBC current affairs journalists have attacked what they see they who are guilty of distorting television coverage WHEN THE BBC's own journal publishes explicit attacks on the...

Richard West on the most successful ethnic group in - South-East Asia Bangkok THE Chinese new year started off with a thunderstorm and a flood, which drove the rats from below...

Con Coughlin on the new Palestinian weapon of civil disobedience Jerusalem DURING the euphoric aftermath of the 1967 six-day war when thousands of cu- rious Israelis poured...

ANOTHER theatre has been burned down, in the usual way and with the usual appalling results. On the night of the 20th inst, while the Baguet Theatre of Oporto — a house for...

K. L. Billingsley on the Californians who have their heads chopped off and frozen Los Angeles 'PEOPLE live to a great age in this place,' remarks a character in Evelyn Waugh's...

Sousa Jamba sees the white tribes of Ireland through African eyes AS AN African in Northern Ireland, I found that the white man's tribal war between Catholics and Protestants —...

Lord Hailsham fears an ideological attack by anti-monopolists on lawyers, doctors and others A NUMBER of clearly inspired articles in the daily and weekly press following the...

Prize.

a book about the News on Sunday disaster makes fascinating financial reading THE only worthwhile thing to emerge from the unqualified mess of the News on Sunday is the book...

St Christopher upon the dashboard JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE Mr Heath, we learn, reckons that 'the way to get sterling further .down is to go into the European Monetary System'. Now...

Strange tales of the forty gilded mats and the chief executive's uncle CHRISTOPHER Fl LDES T he new staple assumption of public life is that at the passing of an eastbound...

LLOYD'S of London looks set for another lawsuit. Tom Benyon, sometime Con- servative MP and chairman until 1986 of the Association of Lloyd's Members, has written to his fellow...

THE besieging hordes of Lord Forte's army are beginning to rattle the defenders in the Savoy camp. So I inferred when lunching in that camp's venerable bastion, Simpson's in the...

NOEL Falconer and his fellow- shareholders in Rover (many aliases, same old Leyland) have a grievance, and I should like to offer them a new remedy. His letter (page 25)...

Sir: Christoper Fildes (City and suburban, 12 March) would be right about any other company. Rover's equity has long been lost, and creditors do have priority over shareholders....

Sir: What is happening to cultured spoken English? On Saturday I listened to Loose Ends on Radio 4. I endured a succession of uncouth voices only because I knew that sooner or...

Sir: Quentin Crewe's wonderfully dismis- sive letter at Ms Smoker prompts consideration of an associated aspect of the recently and politically contrived crisis in the NHS. If...

Sir: David Hare (Diary, 27 February) is quite right to berate some right-wing jour- nalists and intellectuals for constant com- plaints. It is certainly true that Mrs Thatch- er...

Sir: With reference to Mr Harold Pinter's letter (5 March), might I remind him that `real facts' is a redundancy and point out to him that his letter is fuller of clichés than...

Sir: I was reminded by Carl Hartley's letter headed 'Native Africans' (7 November) of a Zambian acquaintance telling me that when, as a young man, he went to study in what was...

Sir: I think you are looking at the past through rather rose-tinted spectacles when you write (Diary, 19 March) that 'the rich of the 1980s are less truthful, less patriotic,...

Sir: Mr Noel Malcolm tells us (Politics, 12 March) that in his constituency some 'little old ladies' will never vote for the Con- servatives while 'that man' (Mr Cecil Par-...

Sir: The letter of Camilla Williams (19 March) about Bishop Blomfield gave great pleasure, but there must be some puzzle about the Bishop having laid the founda- tion stone of...

Sir: Could I explain to A. L. Rowse (Letters, 12 March) why 'everybody over- looks the Cornish'? They are overlooked for the same reason that an uninteresting patch of waste...

Sir: Following your ,recent very cogent articles on Tibet your readers might like to consider charitable contributions to the UK Tibet Relief Fund. The Fund is operated by the...

Sir: If the article on Hun cooking (Food, 19 March) is followed by others on chink, coon, dago, frog, nigger, wop, wog, yid etc culinary specialities they will not only interest...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - Save 15% on the Cover Price! RATES 12 Months 6 Months UK .0 £45.00 0 £23.00 Europe (airmail) 0 £55.00 0 £28.00 USA Airspeed 0 US $90 0 US$45 Rest of...

Charles Glass CHILDREN OF THE SIEGE by Pauline Cutting Heinemann, £12.95, Pan, £3.50 W hen Dr Pauline Cutting burst into tears at the end of a particularly bloody day of battle...

Is it the lack of self that most of all Challenges eyes to stay And linger over the petals that will not fall Although they have some way Of suggesting that Chardin, had he...

Anita Brookner A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON by Muriel Spark Constable, f9.95 A ctually, it is a far cry from South Kensington, where Mrs Hawkins has fur- nished rooms in a house...

Nigel Clive CLOAK AND GOWN by Robin Winks Collins, £20 ON THE RUN by Philip Agee Lyle Stuart, $19.95 A merica came late in the day to the 'great game' of Intelligence. It...

David Wright GOD BLESS KARL MARX! by C. H. Sisson Carcanet, f4.95 P art of the Palgravian lie' — thus the late Patrick Kavanagh — 'was that poetry was a thing written by...

Andrew Boyle CONVERSION: A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY by Malcolm Muggeridge Collins, f10.95 W hatever his over-critical friends might say to the contrary, this possibly final slim...

Stephen Logan ARGUFYING: ESSAYS ON LITERATURE AND CULTURE by William Empson edited by John Haffenden Chatto & Windus, f25 L iterary criticism is apt to seem a rather...

Crafts Victims of the Bill The abolition of ILEA threatens the survival of two important London museums, Tanya Harrod reports Frederick Horniman: what will happen to the...

The Tutor (Old Vic) The Browning Version/Harlequinade (Royalty) Brecht without tears Christopher Edwards T his strangely unBrechtian production of a Brecht satire offers...

Fruitful Grove Peter Phillips C onfirmation that we live in the Age of the Dictionary arrived through my letter- box last week in the shape of two highly coloured leaflets....

Old Master Paintings from the Thyssen- Bornemisza Collection (Royal Academy, till 12 June) Baronial beneficence Giles Auty F or those of us who spend a significant part of...

Living in history Alan Powers on the unique 'holiday lets' of the Landmark Trust A rriving at a property of the Landmark Trust is always exciting. The approach may be...

Not my cup of tea Wendy Cope I was interested to learn from a newspap- er article that a Granada programme called Falklands has just been voted best documentary of the year by...

Call to arms Taki I remember it as if it were yesterday. Hundreds of Princeton University students demonstrating behind a giant sign that read: 'Nothing is worth dying for.'...

Maidenhead, Berks. Price £5.00 including postage.

Nearly nirvana Jeffrey Bernard Bangkok think I've cracked it. I may have found the end of the rainbow. It's a village called Bangpar-In on the banks of the river Chaophya 70...

Pig's breakfast Alice Thomas Ellis I breakfasted this morning on a segment of orange, a broken bit of melba toast and pâté, a Belgian chocolate, half a glass of lukewarm Soave...

THE claims of Australia have been pretty thoroughly trumpeted in these pages (though not on this page) of late; time perhaps for a gentle puff towards her quieter, smaller...

reviewing Steven Spielberg's latest film, Empire of the Sun.

THE current state of eating and drinking in Britain was revealed in the last of the series of the Food and Drink television program- me. The programme has never shrunk from...

Dutch comfort Raymond Keene igel Short fulfilled all my optimistic predictions by winning the first prize of £5,000 in the Max Euwe Memorial Tourna- ment, ahead of the world...

Bouts limes Jaspistos I N Competition No. 1515 you were asked to write a poem with given rhyme- words in a given order. The set of rhyme-words was taken from Auden's Letter...

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or, for UK solvers, a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £13.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Iiictionary' above) for the first...

E * T EFI SI or R t , o N I T RI R S A, R T 0' R "T ICEDOVERTIOIRIA0 AI Nbi r cl E B E 2 $ R E C E "P T 9 EMPLARAI4RIRLIRIE IIREERCIN E s SEMIS 2 t, A S E St " A T Sj A YV MI T...

You are invited to write a short story of approximately 300 words with the above as title. Entries to 'Competition No. 1518' by 8 April.