Eight or nine decades ago the Great Powers were repeatedly on the brink of war over Africa. Germany's bid for colonies was part of the background of the world war that...

The striped pants problem Ferdinand Mount 'A rather crude fellow, don't you find?.' Teddy Taylor might well accept this description of himself by a Shadow Cabinet colleague....

The Conservative Party seems to be losing its collective nerve, something which hapPens to it from time to time. There are no doubt reasons for this but it is still puzzling...

Thoughts on the Trooping Auberon Waugh For the first time I managed to watch Trooping the Colour without a lump in my throat last week. This may have been because I now have...

Sam White Paris France's continuing and growing influence in Africa has been a cause for wonder to its former rivals in the nineteenth-century rush to exploit that continent....

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington As spring slips toward summer, there have been few retrospective looks backward to this season ten years ago. What little attention has been...

Xan Smiley Salisbury The tubby black policemen standing on the airport tarmac, replete with shinily starched khaki shorts, thick stockings and solemn topees, seem as •...

Richard West Mbabane, Swaziland It has been lightly said that the three principal foreign powers in Africa are the Cubans, the French and Holiday Inns. Certainly this hotel...

Peter Nichols Rome I remember some years ago the occasional appearances of a well-known, now late, British music critic with no knowledge of conversational Italian who used to...

Jo Grimond I make no claim to wisdom before the event. I thought that the SNP would make little more progress — but I did not expect its vote to decline, while in the central...

Germany is in the way of ill-fortune. At two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, the Emperor was driving down the Linden in an open carriage, when he was twice fired at, from rifles...

Leo Abse When the House Of Commons recently Made the awesome decision to go ahead With the plutonium-producing reprocessing Plant at Windscale, half its members funked the...

Philip Norman The lone policeman who spends the summer on Sark does his duty in a manner approved of throughout the island. Each morning, he stations himself on the Maseline...

Eric Moonman The International Labour Organisation has been meeting in Geneva this week in an atmosphere fraught with anxiety. It is frightened that other countries may now...

Summer madness Nicholas Davenport What I described as the War in the City' — the refusal of the life and pension managers to buy the 'tap' stocks offered by the Bank of...

Sir: Like many writers using the word 'logic' —she did it at least nine times— Mary Kenny shows scant regard for it in her article 'The flaws in liberation' (3 June). Abortion...

Sir: Your Notebook of 20 May carried a piece sharply criticising the inaction of the Holborn office of Camden's social services department. As you so rightly point out, it is...

Sir: Patrick Marnham made a number of good points about farming in his 'Country life' piece in your issue of 3 June. However, he was on less sure — and perhaps more emotional —...

Sir: Readers will realise, as apparently Lawrence Hills does not, that Government does not control measurement system used in books: Mr Hills's books can use imperial as long as...

Sir: Simon Courtauld's reference to coypus in the Notebook (13 May) prompts me to enlighten him and his ageing friend on one or two points. These rodents cannot live or breed...

Sir: Before expatiating on the mote in the eye of his brother Evans, the Sage of Combe Florey might care to consider the beam in his own. First, he quotes (27 May) Evans's...

Sir: The Editor of the New Statesman can quote Scripture to serve his purpose, but in his own revised version. He preaches to Spectator readers (Letters, 3 June) from the...

Sir: I read Patrick Cosgrave's review ef Charlotte and Denis Plimmer's book A Mauer of Expediency (3 June) with interest and would only disagree when he writes that, 'it is...

Heterosexual humour Germaine Greer The New Oxford Book of Light Verse edited by Kingsley Amis (Oxford £4.25) Light is, isn't it? (as they say on Crake Forum when twisting...

Aziz Azmeh In Search of Identity Anwar El-Sadat (Collins £6.50) It is sad not to be able to accord to President Sadat's autobiography the reception befitting that of a head of...

Last week a particularly confusing printing error made nonsense of part of George Gale's review entitled 'Conservative alternatives'. The second sentence of the third paragraph...

Georg e Feifer T he Russian Mind Ronald Hingley (Bod' 121 Y Head £5.50) °Ile of the last trials I watched in a year of w andering through the People's Courts of Moscow was of a...

Gerald Howson The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936 Murray Bookchin (Free Life Editions, NY; distributed UK by Wildwood House £7.95). Of all revolutionary...

Taki Theodoracopulos Britain's Greek Empire Michael Pratt (Rex Collins £9.50) What a pity that Lord Michael Pratt's fits! book is a serious work, well written an!,...

Richard Shone The Diary of W.M. Rossetti 1870-1873 Edited by Odette Bomand (Oxford £12.50) 'Poor Lucy Brown has been very ill of late — havin g abscesses in or by the ear ....

Paul Ableman Autumn Manoeuvres Melvyn Bragg (Secker £4.50) Melvyn Bragg's new novel opens with a distracted lady abroad on the fells. 'A great shower of yellow, golden-brown...

Genocide as soap opera Rhoda Koenig New York In Coming Home, the latest Technicolour tract from the Hollywood Left, there is a scene in which Jane Fonda, playing the wife of...

Marking time Ian Christie There are two main ways of coping with Cannes. One is to attend the Palais des Festivals twice daily for the main competition films, with occasional...

Possession Ted Whitehead The Shout (Warner West End) Jerzy Skolimowski's new film The Shout (AA) offers as its USP a sound rather like that of the Kop at Anfield as Kenny Dale...

Sequences John McEwen 4 1 'euneth Martin is now in his early seventies, but that he is painting and drawing as u usily as ever is happily demonstrated by his c rrent...

Hall-marked Rodney Milnes Don Giovanni (Glyndebourne) Peter Hall's production has survived numerous changes of cast and conductor, and much re-rehearsing, with its impact...

Cooling off Jan Murray During the steamy week which ushered in a dance-packed summer Richard Alston offered relief with a wonderfully cool evening of his own works at the...

Sheepdogs Richard Ingrams 1 , 4 Y cri de coeur sounded in the issue before f iast of the Spectator has evoked a response On Ms Julia Watson of Thornton Place, London W1 , who...

Last orders Jeffrey Bernard Bill and Mary asked me to take over for the evening when they heard that I'd once worked as a barman and, not averse to a busman's holiday, I...