Now that Parliament has finished for the summer, and Much of the autumn too, we can sit back and consider the first term of Mrs Thatcher's first administration. The Prime...

Ferdinand Mount There he stands blinking in the sunlight high . above the Walworth Road, grinning broadly under his hard hat. It always looks odd to wear a plastic helmet when...

Anniversaries of public events provide a good excuse for the BBC to disinter old film from their archives rather than go about their business of making fresh programmes. This...

Patrick Cosgrave Lusaka Mrs Margaret Thatcher flew here late on Monday night, to face not only a storm of pressure from her Commonwealth Prime Ministerial colleagues on the...

Richard Wigg New Delhi India's power-hungry and unprincipled Politicians immediately fell to fighting over their portfolios this week even as the country's 76-year-old farmers'...

Murray Sayle Tokyo Two soggy Sundays ago a macabre ceremony took place. all but unnoticed by the Japanese press, in the nondescript Tokyo district called Ikebukuro. In any...

Humphry Berkeley At 9.30 p.m. on Thursday 15 February 1979 I was having dinner, alone, in the Holiday Inn in Umtata, the capital of Transkei. It had been, for me, a depressing...

Tim Congdon Three years ago the pound was collapsing on the foreign exchanges. As some wiseacres projected that it would drop to $1, newspapers became alarmed. Quite apart from...

An action brought in Paris by a lady, Madame Gelyot, of the Rue de la Sorbonne, against M. Paul Bert, the celebrated physiologist and vivisectionist — who spoke, as we observed...

Michael Allaby Ours is not the first generation to be haunted by the spectre of famine. It formed a thread that linked much of the scientific research and many of the political...

Christopher Booker Some years ago I recall watching a latenight, end-of-year TV discussion in which various celebrities, including Malcolm I VIuggeridge, were asked which...

Sir: My attention has been drawn to remarks made in your issue of 30 June on the subject of the cost of air travel within Europe, You attribute the blame for what you call the...

Nicholas von Hoffman's article in your 41 July issue goes a long way toward e th )( Plaining why it is impossible to believe "le same issue's leader when it sanctimomslY asserts...

Sir: May I congratulate you on Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft's pleasing and stately series entitled 'Last word'. I had not expected to see the word `meiotically' (7 July) used again,...

Sir: I read Xan Smiley's article, 'How to save Zimbabwe' (28 July) with close attention and growing dismay. Mr Smiley has much first-hand experience of Rhodesia, and I have...

Sir: Unlike Alexander Chancellor I like my pro-hinger friends best. They are realists and have their priorities right. Repugnant though the death sentence is to all normal...

Sir: I am writing a biography of 1.J. Paderewski, and would be most grateful to hear from any of your readers who might possess any letters, documents or other material...

Richard Cobb The Second Vendee: The Continuity of Counter-revolution in the Department of the Gard, 1789-1815 Gwynne Lewis (Oxford £10) This is above all a study of intense...

Vernon Bogdanor Power and Parliament Timothy Raison (Blackwell £5.95) Timothy Raison's new book is a riposte to advocates of constitutional reform such as Lord Hailsham and Sir...

Gavin Stamp The English House Hermann Muthesius; Trans. Janet Seligman, Ed. Dennis Sharp (Crosby Lockwood Staples £50) We — the English, that is — have been waiting for this...

Francis King A Marriage of Convenience Tim Jeat (Hamish Hamilton £5.95) From time to time, diminished and flickering, there appear on our television screens those sumptuous...

Peter Jenkins Twelfth Night (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford) PerIdes (The Other Place, Stratford) The fire alarm began to ring during the denouement in which Viola's true...

Rodney Milnes La fedelta premlata (Glyndeboume) Savonlinna Opera Festival Humour is a funny thing. News travelled to Finland of press and public alike falling under their seats...

John McEwen About 13 million people a year visit the numerous English gardens open to the public, so it is advisable to pick your moment for a tour of 'Flowers in Art, from...

Ted Whitehead Boulevard Nights (Gate 2) Buck Rogers In The 25th Century (Plaza) As Clancy Sigal pointed out in a recent Guardian article. Boulevard Nights (X) m ay well be one...

Richard ngrams I am afraid that we are in for another bellyful of guff about the amazing Pakenham writing dynasty — what with Lady Longford's latest biography and forthcoming...

Taki In 1970, while solipsism reigned supreme among students of the Western world, and campuses burned down in protest against a war that could possibly curtail the drug and...

Jeffrey Bernard Everything in the garden is lovely. As a matter of fact,. if I didn't loathe the public as I do. I'd think of opening it to them. But I don't think I'd make a...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Victor Serge (1890-1947) wrote a trilogy of political novels between 1928 and 1932. The three books. Men in prison, Birth of Our Power and Conquered City,...

Raymond Keene Momentous as it was, England's victory in the Clare Benedict did not have the effect of stunning all other chess players into inactivity. Rather the opposite. At...