The muddle goes on The Conservative Party is by tradition a coalition of many interests, and an amalgamation of many opinions. To some extent that tradition implies that the...

Political commentary The straight and narrow Colin Welch W hen he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar honesty, it was with an inward assertion of...

Notebook T he moods of party conferences are .strange and fickle things. Last year the rrY Party was in considerable ferment: the Wets were noisy and confident, beginning to...

Another voice Freedom from bats Auberon Waugh Freedom, for a weekly journalist, is not having to go to the Conservative Party Conference this week in Brighton. I suppose I...

IMoscow s China syndrome Bohdan Nahaylo picture for a moment a jubilant President Brezhnev, or one of his successors, 1oing to Peking to be welcomed by an eulally elated...

Dropping the pilot ?I Richard West Bonn At least one German newspaper marked the fall of Chancellor Schmidt by reproducing Punch's famous cartoon 'Dropping the Pilot'; which...

Panic in Hong Kong ?l Derek Davies Hong Kong The Japanese were able to regard their visitor Margaret Thatcher as an interesting but comfortably remote foreign phenomenon, as...

The end of Solidarity? Stephen Aris Warsaw Not a stone's throw from Warsaw's th Victory Square, where soldiers guard e Memorial to Poland's war dead, the Veterans of the 1944...

Soho in Birmingham Roy Kerridge Every commercial traveller knows there is a Piccadilly in Manchester, yet how many people know that there is a Soho in Birmingham? I certainly...

Saying goodbye to Oxford ?M David Taylor Last June, in company with several thousand other young men and women, I became a graduate of Oxford University: a process, owing to...

The press Freedom and objectivity PUats Johnson ww-- - ~- IW- ' %.' , W~ lw W- - W0 ifow far should journalists be free O Publicly to associate themselves with tical causes?...

Civil rights tfot Ulster Sir: Your eurrlespsonlikat. ( '~i-i ~i N/1oorc ('A 4uestioll of allegian.e', 2) tuobehr) 1aS given all entirely maccur ac aJLt.i ou l Of thle Civil...

Keyt as imitator Sir: 1In his rcvicw of Gicorgc Keyt's cxhibi- iion (2 Octobcr) John McEwcln writcs: 'Bctter than anything at the Academy arc the paintings and drawings of...

Sir: i have certain rcscrvations about John McEwen's review of the Kcyt exhibition at the Patrick Scale Gallery (2 October). First, when a show opens on 7 September and closes...

Letters Debasing women Sir: I object strongly to Richard West's implication (25 Septemtber) that I am opposed to Mary Whitchouse in her condem nation ot violent and...

Creation Sir: Jefficy Bernard would havc us bliCie that hc shared a first-class railway coiPa nicia with a pimply adoicsccint train-l and a lattoocd rcader of le Sutin (I )V...

Books The dove and the hawk William Shawcross 'Tlhe P:ist IIlas Another P'altern Geor),ge V'. Ball (Norton S13.95) I Iaig: IThe (enicrtl's Progress kot! NIMoIIiS (Ruoh)oll...

Mythology Francis King Mantissa John Fowles (Cape £6.95) In this novel John Fowles presents his intellectual credentials with the defiant nervousness of a CIA agent showing...

The war of memory Michael Carlson The Memory of War: Poems 1968-1982 James Fenton (Salamander Press £6.95) Poems J. H. Prynne "I, (Agneau 2,£12.00, £7.50) The Bronze...

Wood-notes wild Peter Levi Collected Poems of Ivor Gurney Edited by P.J. Kavanagh (Oxford £12) Ivor Gurney is the ghost of a poet, a lost imusician rediscovered by Gerald...

Dark Ages David Hughes The Knight on the Bridge William Watson (Chatto & Windus £7.95) William Watson is an engaging young writer unlike any contemporary. His second novel,...

Foreigners Allan Massie Group Portrait Nicholas DelbancO (Faber £8.95) Some years ago my friend H. G. Wells wrote to the papers to say that for many years he was conscious of...

Rambler David Williams Moreover Miles Kington (Robson Books £4.95) Miles and Miles Miles Kington (Hamish Hamilton £4.95) Writing funny, like gathering samphire, is a...

Arts Deep waters Mark Amory Way Upstream (Lyttelton) Andy Capp (Aldwych) Trafford Tanzi (Mermaid) Rocket to the Moon (Apollo) The Paranormalist (Greenwich) Alan...

Art Masterly John McEwen T ainting in Naples 1606-1 705 ftoo# I Caravaggio to Giordano brought to th Royal Academy (till 12 December) courtle Martini & Rossi Ltd, indemnified...

High life Underworld Taki I was recently leafing through one of those glossies that are found lying around the houses of people who cannot read or write, and who are referred...

Low life All abroad Jeffrey Bernard My French stinks. It seems that when I asked somebody for a light I asked them to set me on fire and when I asked the concierge for an...