It has been clear for some time that whatever measures he took to resist deliberate and considered Russian expansion at various points around the world, Dr Kissinger was...

Sir: Mr Mark Bonham Carter's letter (January 24) in reply to my article on the immigration problem is disingenuous in the extreme. I said that he and his organisation opposed...

Sir: Logie Bruce Lockhart's article on the decline in modern languages (January' 24) was thought-provoking and timely, but I feel his diagnosis of the creeping malaise is...

Sir: Auberon Waugh's vision of a left-wing military regime coming to power in the United Kingdom is not as implausible as it sounds. 'Military socialism' has tended to appear in...

was a particularly happy accident that my first piece, in praise of General Pinochet last week, . . ." Shouldn't someone inform Mr Waugh that he did not write a piece in praise...

Sir: I regret that the brevity of my earlier letter did not convey to Mr Robin A. Howard (Letters, January 17) the gist of my argument. It is my view that any person or...

Sir: I am afraid that the "alternative factual perspective" that Mary Kaldor puts forward in her review of Captain Moore's book The Soviet Navy Today is somewhat narrow. On the...

Sir: Most Catholics among your readers are likely to be distressed by the flamboyant self-righteousness of your anonymous contributor on the Westminster Succession. The kind of...

Sir: The purpose of Mr P. F. Scott (January 10). writing from Salisbury to criticise Judith Acton's 'Deaths behind bars' (December 19), seems particu larly to offer the grisly...

Sir: In the immortal words of John Philpot Curran "Reason swings from her moorings"! My letter published by you (January 17) stated that the IRA's declaration that they will...

P atrick Cosgrave, Lord Aldington loved him: that is the epitaph history is most likely to offer on Mr Jack Jones, that earnest, bespectacled figure with the curious speech...

The Prime Minister has suffered what is probably the most wretched misfortune that can overtake any author: he has lost the only copy of an unpublished book which he wrote years...

A special correspondent Beirut The foundations of Beirut's St Georges Hotel, arguably the best in the Middle East and ,a symbol of the prosperity of the old Lebanon, have been...

Rawle Knox Much of what politicians say, or journalists opine about Northern Ireland bears strangely little relationship to what goes on when you are there. In part that is...

A romantic polymath George Hutchinson Tom Harrisson never grew older, except in years and experience. Otherwise he remained young — fresh in spirit, imagination, curiosity,...

Hans Keller "What's gone wrong with West Ham?" I was asked. "I don't know." Nor, I am sure, does the galaxy of football manager now ruling the club — John Lyall, the team...

Pink flag flying Auberon Waugh The whisper reached me that Anthony Crosland — plump, sensitive fifty-seven-year-old Secretary of State for the Environment — is thinkin g that...

John Terraine The Struggle for Greece 1941-1949 C. M. Woodhouse (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, E15.00) In April 1944 there were widespread mutinies in the Greek forces in exile...

Donald MacRae James Boswell and His World David Daiches (Thames and Hudson £3,50) There are three counts against Boswell in 1976. One is a hangover from the last century, from...

Michael Hamburger The Hesse-Mann Letters. Edited by Anni Carlsson and Volker Michels. Translated by Ralph Manheim. (Peter Owen £5.75) Although they had first met in 1904, the...

Richard Luckett Enemy Salvoes: Selected Literary Criticism Wyndham Lewis. Edited by C. J. Fox (Vision £4.95) No one was more fascinated by the parochial politics of literature...

Robert Blake Prinny's Daughter A Biography of Princess Charlotte of Wales Thea Holme (Hamish Hamilton £6.50) There is one sense in which the life of the girl W ho Would have...

Arianna Stassinopoulos The Rise of the Mediocracy David Tribe (George Allen and Unwin £4.95) 95 per cent is Crap Terry Arthur (Libertarian Books £3.50) No one will deny that...

Anima and enema Duncan Fallowell Eagle's Nest Anna Kavan (Peter Owen £3,50) Bird of Passage Mai Zetterling (Jonathan Cape £2.50) It would be better to smirk now. You can if...

Going West Penny Green Not very long before I took the plane for Los Angeles, one of the Sunday papers published extracts from Anthony West's forthcoming book about H. G....

How's this as a way of getting free books? Three weeks ago Sotheby Publications received a telephone call from a man purporting to represent Publishers Weekly, the American...

In the pubic interest Kenneth Hurren Come Into My Bed by Andr6 Launay (Whitehall) Funny Peculiar by Mike Stott (Mermaid) I Do! I Do!, book and lyrics by Tom Jones, music by...

Disoriented express Kenneth Robinson Breakheart Pass Director: Tom Gries Stars: Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Richard Crenna 'A' Odeon, Leicester Square (95 mins)....

Tour de force Rodney Mines The opera touring season is .almost upon us. Between now and the end of the year six companies will take to the road — English National Opera,...

Talking heads Jeffrey Bernard In the game in which you have to guess who I'm thinking about when I tell you what sort of food, drink, music, game, book, piece of furniture or...

Victoriana John McEwen It's rather a shock to go into the Victoria and Albert Museum these days and find exhibitions called The Making of the Womb/es and The Pack Age, though...

Ford, Healey and reflation Nicholas Davenport Last week I was taking my hat off to Mr Healey for selling such a hell of a lot of gilt-edged stock to the non-bank public....

Consumer surplus Bernard Hollowood One who is ever wise — and I'll give you two guesses about her identity — said the other day, "If we could afford cod we could have some...

I am a man of balance, said Thomas Mann, I instinctively lean to the right when the boat threatens to capsize to the left and vice versa. Skinflint knows the feeling well and...