Among the senior management of Times Newspapers Ltd (TNL) are several men with gallant war records, given to th e use of military metaphor: Brigadier Sir Denis Hamilton has...

The uses of rudeness Ferdinand Mount It is doubtful whether the poet Joachim du BeIlay was working to the right brief when he described France as 'mere des arts, des armes et...

Mr Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia, is in a remarkably grim and bitter Mood. I met him this week at a party, where he was surrounded mainly by sympathisers to...

God and the trade unions Auberon Waugh Christopher Booker, it may be thought, has said the last word on the British trade unions, and it only remains to hope that he will be...

Henry Fairlie Washington Perhap one should be writing this week about Gerald Ford, who has just announced that he will not campaign for the nomination of the Republican Party....

Tim Garton Ash West Berlin The BBC 'has acquired a large worldwide audience and is trusted as a dispassionate and independent source of information about the world,' the 'think...

Judith Dempsey What is regarded as one of the most important political trials in Eastern Europe since the Fifties ended in Prague last Tuesday. Those on trial (Vaclav Havel,...

At Saltaire, on Thursday, Mr W. E. Forster delivered an address which turned chiefly on the reorganisation of secondary education in England, and the manner in which it could...

Richard West Rio de Janeiro Returning from SOuth America on a plane in April 1966,1 heard the captain announce on the intercom that Harold Wilson had won his second general...

Eric Jacobs So at last the dispute at Times Newspapers seems to have ended, 11 months after The Times and the Sunday Times shut down and a mere four months after the unions...

Ian Jack When Beaverbrook Newspapers closed their Glasgow plant five years ago I went north to report on its funeral. I'd worked there on the Scottish Daily Express in the...

Christopher Booker One of the most depressing sights in Europe is to be seen in the hills above the little village of Mauthausen, on the Danube in Austria (I have no doubt that...

The image of Captain Scott Sir: It seems strange to find Christopher Booker licking his lips over the supposed destruction of the Captain Scott 'legend' in Roland Huntford's...

Alan Watkins Hugh Galtskell Philip Williams (Cape £15) Biographies are to us what sermons were to our 17th-century ancestors. 'Oh, but I read a great deal of biography', people...

Alexander Chancellor Goldenballs Richard Ingrams (Private Eye /De utsch £4.25) There is a passage in Mark Twain's original manuscript of Huckleberry Finn which describes a...

Jan Morris The Lyttons in India Mary Lutyens (John Murray £9.75) When Disraeli chose Lord Lytton to be Viceroy of India, he knew what he was doing. He wanted somebody...

Andrew Boyle The View in Winter Ronald Blythe (Allen Lane £6.95) In a sense, I suppose, it was a natural progression for the author of Akenfield, a modern classic, to apply his...

Jeffrey Meyers The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Ed. James Boulton (Cambridge 215) Lawrence's letters — the greatest in Eng lish since Keats and Byron — are marked by intuitive...

John Morgan Gerald Davies: An Autobiography (Allen & Unwin £4.95) At last: a great sportsman has written a fine book. Millions throughout the world will remember the author's...

Paul Ableman Jailbird Kurt Vonnegut (Cape £530) In 1949, Walter F. Starbuck, the fictitious narrator. of Jailbird, is alleged to have been interrogated by a thrusting young...

Benny Green The death of Sidney J.Perelman at the age of 75 marks thc close of a chapter in the bumpy history of written humour. Fortunately for lovers of linguistic slapstick,...

John McEwen Rufino Tamayo, whose latest oil paintings can be seen at Marlborough Fine Art (till 28 October), is Mexico's most famous living artist and, for many, the best of...

Polly Toynbee Hamlet (New Half Moon Theatre) You Never Can Tell (Lyric, Hammersmith) Middle Age Spread (Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue) The week's most astounding performance was,...

Rave Rodney Mines La %delta premlata and Fidelio (GTO, Oxford) Glyndebourne Touring Opera could well become the Glyndebourne Festival's most dangerous enemy: the level of...

White guilt Ted Whitehead Zulu Dawn (Classic, Haymarket) 'I write in a moment of the greatest distress . . . ' scribbles Lt. Colonel Pulleine as 25,000 bloodthirsty Zulus...

Enigmas Richard Ingrams At least we all now know which one was the Mole. It was Toby. No hang on, I mean Percy. No not Percy, he was the one with the pipe wasn't he? Yes, of...

Brave Jane Taki The alleged regal gaffe over the Irishness of pigs has a redeeming value. It has proved liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith correct for once. The most...

Looking up Jeffrey Bernard Readers of this column must well imagine my . delight when I read in Wednesday's Daily Telegraph, 'Swiss bank accounts and gold bars available to...

Raymond Keene In the years since he routed Spassky at Reykjavik in 1972, Bobby Fischer has not played one single competitive game. He feels no real incentive to take part in...