The House of Commons began the committee stage of the Wales Bill on St David's Day. Alas, for most MPs there was nothing very festive about the occasion. If the passage of the...

Beyond the threshold of pain Ferdinand Mount Sir Charles Villiers, chairman of the British Steel Corporation: 'I do not think that it could be said that we were blind to the...

The Metropolitan Commissioner's decision to ban all marches in London for two months has enraged a certain brand of b. ion-pensant opinion 'fighting fascism with its own...

Learning from Larnaca Auberon Waugh Nicosia It is strangely fitting that the only disciplinary repercussions of the great shootout at Larnaca Airport should involve press and...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The most exciting, but perhaps not the most important news emanating from the capital of the great imperial republic, is the accusation by the...

Sam White Paris There is now an interesting variant on de Gaulle's famous but alas apocryphal cry of: `Me or chaos'. Updated it now reads `Mitterrand or chaos.' It was voiced...

John Horgan Dublin The convulsions which have seized all the major political parties in the Republic on the question of Northern Ireland have different points of origin and...

Harold Pateshall Sydney The Wit of Whitlam* is a strangely illconceived act of homage to the recently departed Australian Labour Party leader. Whitlam strove for 'grandeur'...

John Biffen British membership of the European Community will not be an election issue. That however does not remove the topic from the political agenda. Le Monde has dismissed...

Thomas Szasz For the past decade the Western press has been waxing indignant over what it calls the political misuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. This is a case of...

Anthony Mockler After Scotland, the North? Not quite perhaps; there are certainly no calls for independence, no Northern nationalists, and a sheering away even from that...

Leo Abse 'Cultivate irreverence', Nye Bevan advised me on the first day of my entry into the House of Commons. The institution must not be allowed to intimidate: and the Welsh...

The intractable recession Nicholas Davenport The Chancellor has been trying to cheer us up — and himself too. He told the House of Commons last week that he hoped it would be...

S ir: May I, through your columns, apologise to Miss Sandy Parkinson and Mr Martin Horrox of Lincolnshire and Humberside Arts, for the article by Shiva Naipaul ('The road to...

Sir: It is disingenuous for Nicholas Bethell (25 February) to cite a handful of victimised Cossacks as typical of the majority who were traitors and enthusiastic collaborators...

Sir: Walter Paterson says (18 February) that Friends of the Earth are to publish a pamphlet for those wishing to consider the 'facts' of the Windscale inquiry. May I...

Sir: We agree with the article by Ferdinand Mount (18 February). Having met Mr Heath at the House of Commons during a tea party organised by the Oxford Tory Reform Group, being...

Sir: The following open letter has been sent to the Attorney-General in Nairobi: 'We, the members of the English Subject Group at the University of Sussex, are profoundly...

Sir: Patrick Marnham in his article 'Fal' ling in love with love' (11 February) uses the term 'Catholic' as synonomous with 'Roman Catholic', a thing which no loyal Anglican...

Sir: It would do no harm to Mr Auberon Waugh to peruse the statistics of the num bers of men and women who never live to enjoy the pension to which they have con tributed...

A dangerous man to ignore Peter Calvocoressi Most Secret War: British Scientific Intel', ,Iiience 1939-1945 R. V. Jones (Hamlsh r iamilton E6.95) The subject of this excellent...

Christopher Booker Janus: A Summing Up Arthur Koestler (Hutchinson £6.95) One of the most remarkable events of our time has been the way in which, after several centuries of...

Henry B. Ryan Allies of a Kind: The United States, Brit ain, and the War Against Japan, 194145 Christopher Thorne (Hamish Hamilton £15.00) I MPerialism at Bay: The United...

Hans Keller Toys and Reasons Erik H. Erikson (Marion Boyars £5.95) To Have or to Be? Erich Fromm (Jonathan Cape £4.95) Considering my attitude to psychology and my...

Paul Ableman The Thin Mountain Air Paul Horgan (Bodley Head £4.95) The doctor turned again to me. "That's better," he remarked genially and the emphasis set him to coughing –...

A measure of grace Terence Maloon French Landscape Drawings and Sketches of the Eighteenth Century (Britlah Museum till 12 March) Enthusiasm for French art of the eighteenth...

Waiters Ted Whitehead The Rear Column (Globe) The Kreutzer Sonata (Royal Court) Streamers (Roundhouse) Simon Gray proved himself, in Butley and Otherwise Engaged, as a master...

Right off Clancy Sigal Dark Star (Islington Screen on the Green) Pressure (Notting Hill Coronet) Jonah Who Will Be 25 In the Year 2000 (Paris Pullman and Phoenix) Before...

Student bodies Rodney Milnes T_he Lambton Worm (Oxford Playhouse) 'Pilchard Coeur de Lion (Nottingham University) The Maid of Orleans (Collegiate Theatre) every year the...

Socart John McEwen Just to remind you, "The King's Good Servant" Thomas More' (National Portrait Gallery) closes on 12 March. Apparently it has broken all attendance records;...

True-to-life? Richard Ingrams The current craze to dramatise real events is resulting in predictable confusion. A new series on the BBC called Survival for example is claiming...

Snowmen Takt Gstaad There are strong indications that the NUJ is about to call a general strike in protest over he Gulag-like conditions newsmen are ueing subjected to in this...

Old boots Jeffrey Bernard I'd got almost used to there being no racing during the spell of bad weather and I was beginning to wonder what it was that I missed most about it...