The Queen has let it be known that it is her 'firm intention' to attend The Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference. Her courage and conviction do her credit, though they come...

Ferdinand Mount They are still a heartwarming sight, those brewers' drays with their fat-rumped dray horses and sleek high-hatted drivers. Even though you know they are kept on...

Last week I was complaining about Mrs Thatcher's reported reluctance to admit any significant number of Vietnamese refugees to Great Britain. I rather hoped that I had done her...

Nicholas Bethel' 'Yes, but that will hardly be the responsibility of Her Majesty's Government,' said the Foreign Office spokesman last week. I had just pointed out that,...

Richard West Udon, North-East Thailand On 30 April, 1975, the day that Saigon fell to the communists, the 'honourable schoolboy', the hero of John Le Carre's recent thriller,...

Murray Sayle Tokyo The Akasaka detached palace, where eight presidents and prime ministers met last Thursday and Friday to do something about the oil crisis, is a rather tacky...

David Gilmour Nazareth Israel's Arab population is seldom accorded much attention in the Western press. By comparison with their countrymen in the West Bank and Gaza, the...

Tim Congdon The New York Daily News is not one of the world's great newspapers. But its front page on Monday last week displayed a surprising degree of sub-editor's wit....

It has been announced in both Houses that the Government have advised the Queen to create a new University in the North of England, to be called the Victoria University, of...

Jo Grimond 'Gentlemen of the Jury, you have seen my client —he looks a very stupid man, you have heard him and you may well think that he sounds a very stupid man, certainly he...

Christopher Booker Last Saturday, for the first time in my life, I paid a visit to that holy of holies of the tennis world, Wimbledon. On the face of it, it would be hard to...

A great Chief of Staff Patrick Cosgrave At the end of his book Operation Victory, which appeared early in 1947, Sir Francis de Guingand sought to distil certain principles of...

Sir: If Ferdinand Mount hopes to make a worthwhile comment on the activities of newspapers before and during the Thorpe case, he should attempt to be a bit more reliable than...

Sir: Two weeks ago a great headmaster died. The one national daily that now writes about these events covered his life's work in about 50 lines; it was an inadequate record of...

Sir: The letter from Mr Bethel] (23 June) on Darwinism was a typical piece of linguistic logic-chopping, written for the purpose of dumbfounding the tyros. Mr Bethel] labours...

Sir: Spectator readers will, of course, sorely miss Auberon Waugh's page during the next three months, but I hope that if any similar request for extended leave is submitted by...

Sir: We, the undersigned, who have worked with Michael Gillard or know his work, are astonished at the verdict in the recent highly publicised libel action, We have always found...

Sir: The sensitive reaction of your Mr Chancellor to the jocular remark from Sir James Goldsmith is yet another example of the known fact that journalists are good at handing it...

Sir: Your otherwise excellent publication has been marred in the last two issues by your insistence on using 'England' when of course you should be talking about 'Great...

Sir: The Mr Sharpies who wrote in to complain about Taki seems ignorant of the role of satire in a magazine like the Spectator. My dictionary defines it as: 1. a literary work...

Tim Garton Ash Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography Brian Finney (Faber 0.50) 'German boys and girls,' Christopher Isherwood wrote in 1931 in a paper started by Oswald...

Anthony Storr The Myth of Psychotherapy; The Theology of Medicine; Schizophrenia Thomas Szasz (Oxford £5.95, £5.75, £5.95) The vital thing to understand about the...

Patrick Marnham Happy Valley Nicholas Best (Seeker £6.95) The story of the English in Kenya, when it is told, will make an excellent book. Happy Valley is not it. Instead,...

Richard Ritchie Enoch Powell: Principle in Politics Roy Lewis (Cassell E7.95) There are two ways of helping an intelligent understanding of Enoch Powell's career. The first is...

Benny Green Barrie and the Lost Boys Andrew Birkin (Constable £6.95) There was something vaguely unsavoury about Barrie, something distasteful which impelled characters as...

Alex de Jonge It is, I find, one of life's little comforts that science fiction does not really lend itself to lit. crit, crit in the sense of 'Please sir, I couldn't write my...

Francis King Entertaining Strangers A R Gurney (Alien Lane £5.50) It has become a cliche' to say that every novelist must decide for himself how much time to devote to...

Is God Mozart-like? Hans Keller On Thursday night, 12 July, at 7.30 at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, Tamas Vasary will conduct the Northern Sinfonia in an all-Mozart...

Value codes Peter Jenkins Undiscovered Country (Olivier) On this occasion there is no faulting the literary judgement of the National Theatre. Here is a major work of the 20th...

Artist's eye John McEwen The fascination even of other people's personal anthologies, lists and miscellanea normally arises from our own selfobsession. If we cannot parade our...

Fable failings The Lord of the Rings (Classic, Haymarket) Admirers of Tolkien's trilogy angrily insist that it isn't for children, which may explain why I have never been able...

Richard ingrams Dr Stiles Dean Exell MD of Salem, New York, has done something to improve the image of America in my eyes. He writes to tell me that he shares my interest in...

Taki It was the greatest victory of good over evil since John Wayne carried the day for the marines in Sands of Iwo Jima. Or Gary Cooper survived the final shoot out in High...

Jeffrey Bernard To begin with I felt flattered by Neil Mackwood's letter in this journal (30 June) suggesting that Taki and I should swap columns if not places. For a moment...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft I have never knowingly heard the Reverend Paul Ostreicher speak. Our social and professional paths haven't crossed and I have never, as it happens, been in...