The debate on education on the last day of the Conservative party conference was one of the best of the week. So it has regularly been in recent years. As a political topic...

Beware of snakes Ferdinand Mount 'I think myself,' Mr Denis Healey once said with that subtle insight for which he is renowned, 'that Giscard's going to make a cock of it.'...

When Astrid Proll was arrested M London SIX weeks ago she was said to be the woman who had helped Meinhof to rescue Baader from prison in 1971. An application was made for her...

Dropping the sailor Auberon Waugh Few things in last week's news were as depressing as the Daily Mail's National Opinion Poll finding that 71 per cent of those who watched Mr...

Peter Nichols Rome Only a matter of a few years ago, P°Pes looked as if they were destined to be the victims of reappraisal. I remember talking to the theologian Hans Kfing...

Richard West Warsaw On Sunday morning I noticed a Polish army officer weeping profusely as he listened on his transistor radio to the enthronement of Pope John Paul II. This...

Edward' Mar ston Berlin Living among the Germans is like staying With a large and interminably quarrelling family. Their separation into two halves has not made for greater...

Mr Edison's patents for the development of the Electric Light have been granted by the Patent Office at Washington, and a Company has been formed to light New York. They have...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Mr Ian Smith, the Rhodesian Prime Minister, has finally gone home. It seemed as though Smith had been here for an eon batting from one city to...

Raymond Keene Baguio 'Eighty percent of Filipinos are like goodnatured, simple children. The other twenty Percent are. . . Petra's trouble was that she mistook the twenty...

Jan Morris Istanbul Hardly had I unpacked my bags in the dear old Pera Palace (still faintly fragrant, I was glad to note, of Ottoman cigars and ancient omelettes) — hardly...

Graham Greene This is a new introduction to Graham Greene's The Lawless Roads, an account of Mexico first published in 1939 and to be reissued by Bodley Head on 16 November....

Jock Bruce-Gardyne Tories loathe dissent. No young Labour MP can be said to be on his way until he has put his name to a motion critical of his own front bench, and the path to...

Christopher Booker Two unusual ecclesiastical events caught the headlines last weekend. The first was the investiture of the new Pope. For various reasobs, not least his...

'A terrible verbiage is born' Patrick Marnham The current debate about press freedom on the Third World is being conducted at a semantic altitude where those actually engaged...

Useful union Nicholas Davenport On 5 December the heads of Government will meet to decide finally upon European Monetary Union. At the moment Mr Callaghan appears to be the...

Sir: As one of the millions of householders in the country, I have just received my bill for water and sewerage, and this shows a big increase on the previous bill. I now have...

Sir: George Gale's article on insuring our education system the comprehensive way (14 October) poured a lot of good common sense on the troubled political waters in which our...

Sir: I am grateful for some of Ferdinand Mount's comments in his review (13 October) of my book, Conservative Dissidents. I would have been a little happier, though, had he read...

Sir: I was, to put it mildly, surprised to read Geoffrey Wheatcroft's meandering collection of gratuitous insults. In 'PO blues' in your issue of 14 October Mr Wheatcroft gets...

Gathering winter fuel Manka Hanbury Tenison W . inter brings changes in most of our daily lives. As woollen sweaters and boots replace T-shirts and sandals and dried flowers in...

Tuscan tastes Geoffrey Wheatcroft Is Italian wine too expensive? That maY seem an odd question when in the list of Berry Bros., for example, the dearest Chianti is £2.35,...

The consummate paternalist Alan Watkins Lloyd George: The People's Champion 1902 - 1911 John Grigg (Eyre Methuen £10.50) There are many mysteries about Lloyd George. One is...

Enoch Powell Many Reasons Why Michael Charlton and Anthony Moncrieff (Scolar £10.000. 5 0 It will be a long time yet before we get Proper histories of the Vietnam War, the...

Alastair Forbes Boothby: Recollections of a Rebel Robert Boothby (Hutchinson £6.95) Vanalttart: Study of the Diplomat Norman Rose (Heinemann £7.50) Une Comedie des Erreurs...

Brian Walden Sir Donald Bradman: A Biography Irving Rosenwater (Batsford £8.50) R. C. Robertson-Glasgow once opined that, on the subject of Don Bradman, the rest should be...

Kay Dick William Makepeace ThackeraY: Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman Edited by Margaret Forster (Sacker & Warburg £8.7 5) It is as non-fiction that Margaret Forster Presents...

Nicolas Barker Temples of Convenience Lucinda Lambton (Gordon Fraser £3.96) One of the most endearing aspects of the High Mechanical Era, a century ago, was the passion for...

Paul Ableman Captain Pantoja and the Special Service Mario Vargas Lima (Cape £5.50) My long-standing belief that Borges is the only really important Latin-American writer was...

Revolutionary entertainments Rodney MIInes La Cubans (Sadler's Wells) Die Zauberfitite and Cosi fan tuttelGly ndeboume Tour) Lord Macaulay would have found something to say...

Conventional Ted Whitehead Eyes of Laura Mars (Leicester Square Odeon) Death on the Nile (ABC Shaftesbury Avenue) Two whodunits, and I didn't guess who in either. Fans of the...

Eye-deceiving John McEwen No artist's work differs more in appearance from show to show than Michael Craig Martin's, but on reflection it can be rec ognised that the logic of...

Waugh and piss Richard Ingrams Try as we may we cannot escape very fa t nowadays from the figures of Waugh, Per e et fl/s. Waugh the Younger is everywher e ' You have only to...

Illogic Hans Keller With apologies for the noun – but worse, or at least longer ones, have been invented in recent decades, such as my own `homotonality', or `musicalization'...

Guidance Taki Owing to the incredible response following the Spectator's summer guide to people, places, and things — and as a bonus to the thousands of new readers who have...

Sales time Jeffrey Bernard The Houghton Yearling Sales at Newmarket and the December Sales there give me as much pleasure as does a high quality race itself. Perhaps a thick...

The dog it was Geoffrey Wheatcroft On Monday, Mr James Kovaksik, a Hungarian-born industrialist chemist, appeared in court in Cardiff. Fle was accused of stealing cyanide, and...