L ondon, in common with most Western stock markets, continued its steep decline on fears of a two per cent rise in interest rates, and after Mr Joseph Granville had predicted a...

The Hedda factor Ferdinand Mount Brighton 'Will all those supporting the Women's Action Committee amendment please meet Hedda Gabler at 4pm in the lobby of the Metropole...

Brighton I t was hardly surprising, but with all the fuss about the deputy leadership the Labour Party quite forgot that under the new rules it was supposed also to elect its...

The police and us Auberon Waugh In Mr Alderson's favour, I must admit that officers of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary have always struck me as exceptionally pleasant...

Michael Davie Melbourne Some people in England this week may have briefly wondered why the Queen and Mrs Thatcher, to say nothing of 40 other Commonwealth leaders, have been...

Tim Garton Ash Bonn What Solidarity is to Poland the Peace Movement will be to West Germany. What Poland is to the Soviet Union West Germany will be to the United States. Many...

Andrew Brown Stockholm Quite the nastiest development in Sweden over the last decade has been the increasing helplessness of parents and children who come to the attention of...

Shiva Naipaul `Welcome to Puerto Rico, USA' said the handout in my hotel room. I was being greeted by the Puerto Rican Manufacturers Association. They told me they were...

Tom Bethell Washington The guards at the north-west gate keep you waiting for five minutes or so while they fiddle with the computer, checking that Your birthdate (as requested...

Richard West The eye is no longer caught by the headline 'Springboks "run out of town" (Daily Mail, 17 September): for a quarter-century at least, we have been reading of...

William Rees-Mogg No economic policy which does not attack both unemployment and inflation is now worth considering. With unemployment at the 3 million mark, it is obviously...

The Daily News states that a Secret Society has been formed in Russia, having for its object the suppression of the Nihilists, or rather, of the Russian Revolutionary Committee,...

John Stewart Collis John Balfour, aged 22, after two years employment at an estate agent in the town of Westforth, received notice that his services were no longer required. In...

Is there a conspiracy? Paul Johnson This is the week in the year in which the Labour Party's paranoia about 'the media' is given free range, whipped on by the recent...

The bell tolls Tony Rudd The crack in competence which has precipitated the plunge in the markets has come with frightening suddenness. Only a month or two back the mood was...

Sir: Tim Congdon reports (19 September) that Chile has made a remarkable economic recovery since introducing strict monetarism and he argues that this cannot be put down to the...

Sir: Auberon Waugh's moving and witty tribute to his uncle Alec (12 September) is in one respect — his uncle's `voracious sexual appetit e , drawn in lurid and exaggerated...

Sir: Nostradamus's eerie prophecies may have even greater immediacy than that suggested by Richard West in his fascinating article on the 16th century seer (19 September). For...

Sir: I feel that I cannot allow a remark made by Nicholas von Hoffman in his article 'The problems of power' (12 September) to pass without comment: `The fact that the South...

Sir: As a former theatre critic and author who has seen all the leading Hamlets over a period of 50 years, including the great ones of John Gielgud and Donald Wolfit in the...

Sir: Might one say that Arthur Marshall's sacking, or, as he so nobly puts it, 'discontinuance' from the New Statesman is the most horrendous example yet of the intolerance of...

complete without a couple of hours in the local, spent perusing the Spectator (for its, oh well, good-natured sense) and another weekly publication (somewhat to your left, a...

Remembering like anything Christopher Booker The Dictionary of National Biography 1961-70 eds. E. T. Williams and C. S. Nicholls (Oxford University Press pp. 1178, £40) The...

James Cameron Among the Believers V. S. Naipaul (Deutsch pp. 400, £7.95) The affinity of uppercrust Islam with the old Brits of the brave Imperial days was understandable if...

Richard West Too Late to Turn Back Barbara Greene (Settle & Bendall pp. 205, £7.95) It is now almost 50 years since young Barbara Greene and her cousin Graham set off to walk...

Kenneth 0. Morgan The North Wales Quarrymen R. Merfyn Jones (University of Wales Press pp. 359, £14.50) The slate quarrymen of Gwynedd were the Wobblies of Britain's far west,...

Florence O'Donoghue Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology Sean Cronin (The Academy Press, Dublin pp. 391, £13.60) In 1969-70, when the Ulster troubles were...

Anthony Storr The Diseases of Civilization Brian Inglis (Hodder & Stoughton pp.371, £.10.95) Brian Inglis has long been recognised as a well-informed historian and critic of...

Aparna Jack Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy-Casares (Allen Lane pp. 160, £5.95) Don Isidro Parodi is a detective jailbird whose knowledge...

A. N. Wilson Lantern Lecture Adam Mars-Jones (Faber pp. 198, £6.95) Lantern Lecture is a collection of three stories. The first, whose title gives its name to the volume, is a...

The end of the silly season Rodney Milnes Otello (Coliseum) Macbeth (Opera North) Samson et Dalila (Covent Garden) It has been a very agreeable week in our opera houses, the...

Small changes Mark Amory On the Razzle (Lyttelton) The Deep Blue Sea (Greenwich) On the Razz/e, Tom Stoppard's adaptation of an 'untranslatable' Viennese farce, has opened to...

Diabolical Peter Ackroyd The Final Conflict ('X', selected cinemas) This is now the most popular film showing in London and, as such, is perhaps worth more consideration than...

Mainstream John McEwen Stephen Buckley (Knoedler Gallery till 3 October) is a rare example of an English artist who succeeds as a mainstream rather than an idiosyncratic...

Spectacles Richard In grams The farcical deputy leadership election in the Labour Party came to a climax, I thought, when on Sunday John Silkin told (Sir) Robin Day that having...

Foiled Taki Athens Not long ago, I bragged optimistically in this space that my oil investments would soon make me rich enough to try and buy the Spectator. For good measure,...