The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci once spoke of the need for 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will'. As the new year arrives, as mankind staggers into the closing...

Down on the picket line Ferdinand Mount A sullen brazier sits on a wet pavement tended by a girl in a long scarf with frizzy hair. Three mild young men in overcoats warm their...

The events of recent days in Iran now point, in a depressingly inevitable way, to a long period of instability which is likely to persist whether or not the Shah remains as the...

Thoughts on the Circumcision Auberon Waugh Is it my imagination, or is champagne tasting more and more delicious with every year that passes? As a rich young bachelor, I would...

Murray Sayle Taipei Everyone tried to be civilised; the break-up was long expected, but there was still some bitterness at the end. 'Carter Sells Peanuts, Also Friends' said a...

Anthony Mockler Hong Kong Most lunchtimes in the Foreign Correspondents' Club (located, suitably enough, in Club St) the legendary Richard Hughes — now portrayed with pinpoint...

Alistair Home Press comment on the death of President Boumedienne has been instructive. The Daily Telegraph dismissed it in four lines on the front page; inside their venerable...

Richard West On hearing, over Christmas, of the murder at Phnom Penh of Malcolm Caldwell, the British sociologist and friend of the Pol Pot regime, I assumed at once that his...

Jan Morris Venice The saddest things in Venice now are unquestionably the two remaining horses on the facade of the Basilica. They are mourning their two colleagues, who have...

George Gale The Conservative and Labour parties both find themselves divided on the two issues most central to governmental domestic and foreign policy — the control of incomes...

An "Old-fashion Vicar," in search of a curate, writes to Monday's Times to complain of the mode in which the candidates for his curacy catechise him. One of them expresses his...

The brutal truth Patrick Mamham Just because a newspaper closes down there is no reason to conclude that journalists cease work. In both the The Times and the Sunday Times the...

Sir: Having just read Nicholas Davenport's article (2 December) on 'Insider trading', I must commend him for insisting that 'we could do with a little harmless insider trading',...

Sir: Piers Paul Read's 'Cautionary tale' (16 December) is matched by a recent case in my experience. A friend of mine, a distinguished writer, was asked to contribute a thousand...

Sir: May I correct an obviously unintentional error that appeared in your editorial of 2 December. In my letter to The Times, it was pointed out that the prosecuting solicitor...

Sir: I was indeed observing what Mr Mosley was trying to say and admired the subtlety with which he said it. What made the adrenalin flow in the first place was the bad art...

Sir: Whose television set was Christopher Booker watching on Tuesday, 12 December when he saw a Man Alive 'inquiry into the problem of agoraphobia'? (Notebook, 16 December)....

Sir: Could you offer us no profounder seasonal message than Christopher Booker's article 'Christmas AD 1978'? Christianity cannot be classified as a mythology after the manner...

Sir: It was rather sad to read an article in the Spectator about 'The New Public Schoolboy' written by the headmaster of a great school who still links idealism with the great...

Paul Ableman Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet J ames Atlas (Faber £8.25) In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories Delmore Schwartz (Secker £4.90) 'He...

Geoffrey Marshall Liberals and Social Democrats Peter Clarke (Cambridge £10-.50) Mr Peter Clarke's enterprise is neither a biography of persons nor a close analysis of...

Alastair Forbes A European Past: Memoirs Prince Clary (Weidenfeld £8.95) After a fourth enchanted reading of Paddy Leigh-Fermor's A Time of Gifts, his epic account of an...

Benny Green H. Rider Haggard Peter Berresford Ellis (Routledge £7.95) It would be interesting to locate the last occasion when any man of acknowledged literary sensibility took...

Francis King The Bachelor of Arts; The Dark Room; The English Teacher R. K. Narayan (Heinemann £4.95, £4.50 and £4.50) In an essay in his Indian Writing in English K. R....

Poor man's Titian? Bruno Wollheim Modest, down-to-earth, a shade dry but with a determined, even stubborn, eye, and jaw: the qualities of the first portrait we see on entering...

Spectacular Ted Whitehead Superman (A) (Warner West End) Superman's dad, leader of the planet Krypton, is quite evidently one of the nobs, every inch an aristo with his silver...

Revivalism Peter Jenkins Saratoga (RCS, Aldwych) Peter Pan (Shaftesbury) Inside Bronson Howard's Frenchified social comedy is a native American play trying to get out. Howard,...

Back to work Rodney Milnes The Adventures of Mr Broucek (Coliseum) The Two Fiddlers (Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre) Event the most devout Janack enthusiast has to admit that...

Prizes Richard lngrams 1979 finds me no less morose and grumpy for all that I am the proud if temporary possessor of a brand new television set. The only novelty is that I can...

Sad Old Year Hans Keller Now that the New Year euphoria about nothing is over, the old year's depression about quite something may perhaps be allowed to have its factual say....

Jokers Talc' Gstaad Now that 1978 is safely behind us it is time for High life's annual jet-set awards of the year. (This column, ever vigilant and upto-date, waited until...

Damned lies Jeffrey Bernard I've come across more lies recently and during the so-called festive season than it's been my displeasure to listen to for an age. There have been...