HtE SPELCfTATOR ULSTER DISAGREEMENT The strike on Monday in Ulster confirmed that the British Government has Succeeded in putting moderate Unionists in an impossible position....

POLI TI CS Back to school with hints of a voucher system to come FERDINAND MOUNT The teachers' dispute has degraded and humiliated almost everyone involved. The Government...

THE RIGHT'S KEY TO POWER Sam White on how Chirac will have a hold over Mitterrand after the elections Paris THERE will be, as the eminent political commentator Alain Duhamel...

THE NEW MAMELUKES Charles Glass on the causes of the police riots in Egypt Cairo THE riots came a month late this year. Despite the delay, they bore a passing resemblance to...

Stout fellows GUINNESS'S difficulties multiply. One of its advertisements (which Distillers is paying for) shows a revitalised Johnnie Walker, striding over a world which has...

The speaking bank Sir: 'Home life' (22 February) reminded me of my brief and inglorious career as student officer/service-till minder at MY employer's (NatWest) university...

Careerist editors Sir: I must take issue with Paul Johnson when he suggests (Student magazines, 15 February) that 'Many of these [student] papers seem to be used by their...

Honeyford silenced Sir: May I correct a factual error in the Spectator of 22 February (Portrait of the week)? You said, 'Mr Ray Honeyford had to cancel a speaking engagement at...

Monkton Sir: Like Geraldine Norman, we would rather not see car parks, tea rooms and disabled toilets at Monkton ('Surrealist folly', 22 February), but such things seem to us...

LE TTERR S Roosevelt and Kinnock Sir: I greatly enjoyed, and heartily concur in, Ferdinand Mount's appreciation of Brian Walden's supremely skilful television interviews...

The King was pleased Sir: It is given to reviewers to pick up their authors on points of fact, and for a correspondent to pick up a reviewer or, through him, his author on one...

Christopher Dixon Sir: I was pleased to read Charles Moore's appreciation of Christopher Dixon (Diary, 1 March). I am also grateful for the inspiration he provided when I was...

How Dalton went Sir: Attlee did not sack Dalton on the spot as asserted by Ferdinand Mount in his 1 February article on the aftermath of the Heseltine/Brittan affair. I was a...

B O OKS Impostors for the Baroness Colin Welch BARBARA WOOTTON: SOCIAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY ESSAYS IN HER HONOUR edited by Philip Bean and David Whynes Tavistock, £25...

An enchanting student of the Middle Ages Michael De-la-Noy HELEN WADDELL: A BIOGRAPHY by Felicitas Corrigan Gollancz, £16.95 Helen Waddell, whose only published novel, Peter...

Deviations at a cocktail party Antony Lambton VESTAL FIRE and EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN by Compton Mackenzie Hogarth, £3.95 each CAPRI: ISLAND OF PLEASURE by James Money Hamish...

The great American vacancy Nicholas Lezard CARPENTER'S GOTHIC by William Gaddis Andrg Deutsch, f8.95 W illiam Gaddis has been lauded by 'he San Francisco Review of Books as...

The man that startled Canada Patrick Skene Catling IT'S ALL WRIT OUT FOR YOU: THE LIFE AND WORK OF SCOTTIE WILSON by George Melly Thames & Hudson, £12.50 M any people who...

A letter to Stalin and after Christine Verity FREEDOM AT A PRICE by Rosemary Kavan Verso, £9.95 Anyone who visits Eastern Europe regularly is bound eventually to come across...

Shrinking the past Anthony Storr FREUD FOR HISTORIANS by Peter Gay Oxford, 16.50 Peter Gay is Sterling Professor of History at Yale; author of Freud, Jews and Other Germans,...

Getting round the regime Bohdan Nahaylo A HISTORY OF THE SOVIET UNION by Geoffrey Hosking Collins!Fontana, f 10.95, £3.95 In the last few years three of this country's...

Deep down, is she shallow? Andrew Gimson THE THATCHER PHENOMENON by Hugo Young and Anne Sloman BBC, £3.95 he has few hidden depths and, Ine suspects, nothing much of a secret...

AR TS Theatre Superior soap Christopher Edwards Brighton Beach Memoirs (Lyttelton) There is a place for the savage review when either or both the play and the production...

Music South Bank symphonies Peter Phillips Smp hony Orchestra concerts in the eStival Hall are very formal occasions. I nnd forgotten this since the bulk of my p ntlal...

Cinema Car Trouble ('18', selected cinemas) A starring vehicle Peter Ackroyd It is something of a mystery how people choose the film they wish to see - in the queue outside...

Television Old films Peter Levi O ne likes old films out of curiosity if one missed them at the time, or because one knows the tunes of musical ones, or because they are bad...

High life God's country Taki 1-1, Gstaad emingway called Switzerland a coun- try more upside down than sideways, and as usual he was right. The mountains are mnagnificent,...

Low life A Soho character Jeffrey Bernard A couple of Sundays ago I was watch ing Songs of Praise, which was coming from Maidstone Prison of all places, WhCfl to my amazement...

Home life Building on Alice Thomas Ellis The other English vice is building on. Think of the proposed extension to the National Gallery. Few Englishmen can resist the...

Postscript About being drunk P. J. Kavanagh And if now and then, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the glum loneliness of your room, you come to,...

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