Are we downhearted? Well, yes, we are rather. It would be unreasonable to be bright and gay in a week when the lorry drivers' strike continued, causing nearly 200,000 workers to...

January in Park Lane Ferdinand Mount Past the Allied Arab Bank, past Grosvenor House and Faberge's shimmering window, past the ineffable Hilton Hotel winds the great...

One aspect of our industrial troubles which has deeply shaken people has been the Willingness of trade union officials to make cynical public statements revealing an apparent...

Alas, poor Enoch! Auberon Waugh Few Englishmen outside the racing fraternity. I imagine, ever go to Doncaster. It is said to have a fine mansion house, built in 1748. The Corn...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Until last week the American news consuming public and their far-flung foreign correspondents thought that Ayatollah was Mr Khomeini's first...

Sam White Paris An interesting parallel exists between the current debate in France over direct elections to the European Parliament and the one of over twenty years ago over...

Dr Richardson, the well-known lecturer on sanitarian questions, the dreamer who dreamed some years ago of the model city of Hygeia, in a lecture delivered on Monday at the...

Richard West Inyanga A few years ago some of us opened a book on whether Rhodesia, Northern Ireland or England itself would first disappear down the plug-hole of history. Since...

Peter Hebblethwaite Pope John Paul II completed the first hundred days of his pontificate this week. His public appearances in Rome have been spectacular and rowdy. He has had...

Peter Ackroyd During one recent summer there were approximately fifteen hundred inmates in Liverpool prison, a Victorian building which had been designed originally for one...

Christine Verity To many Lord Denning, who was 80 last Tuesday, is the greatest living English judge. In the manner of Coke and Mansfield he has 'championed the cause of the...

Roger Berthoud 'Are any other European countries involved in this sort of thing?' The question, from a conservative lady in the West Country, was not wholly typical of those...

Christopher Booker Of course it was absurd of a senior ambulance official to describe his colleagues' refusal to answer 999 calls as 'legalised murder'. If you or I see a man...

Rt. Hon. Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone believes that we can with benefit take a leaf from the book of our more successful competitors. Being by nature a cheerful kind of man,...

Rt. Hon. Jo Grimond former leader of the Liberal Party sees a strong tide driving us towards autocracy. Conventional punditry often describes Britain as a decent if...

Rt. Hon. Lord George Brown former both Foreign Secretary and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party argues that only the British people themselves can reverse the drift to decline....

The White Paper and the black Nicholas Davenport What a contrast is presented in this split society tetween the comparatively well paid workers in the City and the...

Carter and China Sir: It is perplexing to find almost every opinion-maker, including the editor of the Spectator, missing the point in the Chinese debacle. The point is not...

Between intellect and spirit Christopher Booker Pythagoras: A Life Peter Gorman (Routledge £6.25) One of the most extraordinary moments in the history of mankind was that...

Desmond Stewart Orientalism Edward W. Said (Routledge £8.95) Founded in 1927, Princeton's department of Near Eastern Studies is the oldest in the United States. For a...

Richard Cobb Protest & Punishment: The Story of the Social and Political Protesters Transported to Australia 1788-1868 George Rude (Oxford £8.95) George Rude's latest book is...

Benny Green Diary of a Somebody Christopher Matthew (Hutchinson £3.95) It is a bold man who would measure himself against the great Charles Pooter of Holloway, the only man...

Paul Ableman The Fight for Manod Raymond Williams (Chatto £5.50) Some six months ago, I was rebuked in print by a critics' critic for admitting that I had not read the entire...

A genius for likeness John McEwen One of the outstanding exhibitions of 1979 will obviously be 'Holbein and the Court of Henry VIII' at The Queen's Gallery (till September)....

Avant gauche Peter Jenkins The Hang of the Jail (R SC, Warehouse) Daughters of Men (Hampstead) Plainly Howard Barker has been studying how he may compare the prison where he...

Nice guy Ted Whitehead Magic (Odeon, Haymarket) Ashanti (Odeon, Leicester Square) You can settle back in your seat with the certainty that you'll jump up from it several times...

Physical Richard ingrams Thanks to Mr Ray Buckton and his merry men I was compelled to spend Monday night in London and was thus unable to watch the new Eamonn Andrews show...

Water music Patrick Marnham As the winter wonderland or White Horror returned to the countryside, its residents tried to puzzle out what the newspapers can have meant by the...

In the valleys Alistair Horne Over the past twenty years I suppose I must have skied down most of the best slopes in Europe. Now, late in the day, I think I have discovered...

Ski Swiss Taki Gstaad This winter manual is appearing prematurely. January is not considered the chicest of months to be in the Alps. February and March are much better. But...

Good old days Jeffrey Bernard There's something about the country. I've begun to notice, that lends sex a terribly serious, almost dramatic aspect. Perhaps it's the acute...

Lost London Geoffrey Wheatcroft Those of us who, like Mr Pinfold, love the architecture of every age except our own can find few cities which more firmly confirm us in our...

No. 1049: Brief chronicles Competitors are asked to summarise any Shakespeare play in a set of three limericks. Entries to 'Competition No. 1049' by 12 February. No. 1t)46:...

Ovicide Raymond Keene Beneath his innocent, boyish exterior, the twenty-seven-year-old Swedish Grandmaster, Ulf Andersson, conceals the instincts of a wolf. His style of play...