Political commentary A program me for 1982 Ferdinand Mount What then must be done, as the late V. 1. Lenin was inclined to ask in becalmed moments? Taking Britain as it is,...

Notebook A journalist with a large salary and a fat Aexpense account rang up to complain about my description of journalists in last week's Notebook as people with large...

The Polish joke Richard West Last weekend, thanks to the BBC, we were able to look at events in Poland as seen by Andrzej Wajda, the film director. First came an interview...

Cricket at fever pitch Mihir Bose Calcutta 6Indians play with thirteen people - eleven players and two umpires'. The slogan on the Bombay wall was, in fact, more than a year...

News from Israel Sir: I would like to know if you deliberately avoid reporting on the Arab-Israeli question. In the last two months very interesting and important developments...

Claud Cockburn Sir: My late father, Claud Cockburn, would have enjoyed reading Paul Johnson's article on him in your last issue. Johnson says that as 'a recorder of political...

Letters Life on a grant Sir: Richard West (19 December) writes that the Government is to raise student grants to £70 a week. This, he suggests, is due to students having the...

Paid to believe? Sir: Reviewing the late Desmond Stewart's The Foreigner: A Search for the First Century Jesus (I 9-26 December), A. N. Wilson alleges that 'almost no paid-up...

Suffer the little children Sir: I really must take exception to Auberon Waugh's remarks about Christmas (12 December). He says, with regard to Samantha Brown's drawing, that...

Das Capitol Peter Levi The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World G. E. M. de Ste Croix (Duckworth pp. 732, £38) Happy the scholar who lives in uneventful times. Yet at...

Mille and Loti Douglas Johnson The Colonial Experience in French Fiction Alec G. Hargreaves (Macmillan Press pp. 208, £20) Pierre Mille, who lived from 1864 to 1941, is a...

Jiggery Pokery Paul A tterbury King of the Confessors Thomas Hoving (Hamish Hamilton pp. 365, £9.95) The belief that the art world is controlled entirely by gentlemen who...

Creative spark John Jolliffe Moments of Vision Kenneth Clark (John Murray pp. 192, £9.50) fCConsidering that lecturing has brought me some reputation and a fair amount of...

Obsessions Caroline Moorehead Mrs Caliban Rachel Ingalls (Faber pp. 125, £6.50) The Royal Game and other stories Stefain Zweig (Jonathan Cape pp. 259, £6.95) It is eight...

American TV Humphrey Carpenter The Camera Age: essays on television Michael J. Arlen (Faber, with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, pp. 337, £7.95) As one recovers from the annual...

Obliquity and whimsy James Lasdun Serpent Nicholas Mosley (Secker & War- burg pp. 188, £6.95) The Organ Maker's Wife Paul Britten Austin (Duckworth pp. 388, £8.95) The...

Theatre Past imperfect Mark Amory The Second Mrs Tanqueray (Lyttelton) The People Show Cabaret (Royal Court) Treasure Island (Mermaid) A Night in Old Peking (Lyric,...

Art Natural selection John McEwen The baubles are back in their boxes, the Christmas tree has been sawn and bonfired, football is off, shooting banned and still there is well...

Television As usual Richard Ingrams The Canadian producer Roger Graef is famous for being the fly on the wall, purporting to bring us scenes of 'real people' doing 'real...

Low life Heroes Jeffrey Bernard et us now praise the heroes of 1981. LFirst there was Stanley. Now Stanley's a good man. True he drinks a little and true his marriage was on...