her all the many brickbats thrown at Mrs Thatcher, not even ;ler most ferocious detractors have ever hurled one labelled coward' in her direction. Her critics accuse her of...

Quango man fights back Ferdinand Mount 'Quakers,' Malcolm Muggeridge used to say, 'minister to the minor vices.' He meant chocolates and cocoa, but he could have included...

What can be done to improve our penal system? The question is often put, suggestions are made which may be impractical, or e xpensive, or are concerned with only one Of the...

Nicholas Ashford Lusaka 'I found that President Nyerere and I were astonishingly close,' declared Mrs Margaret Thatcher in Lusaka this week, shortly after the Commonwealth...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Congress has left town on holiday, leaving one last Jimmy joke, which holds that the President isn't a case of the emperor having no clothes,...

Emma Parsons Djibouti One of the poorest countries in the world and only two years independent from France, Djibouti faces a series of seemingly insurmountable problems. This...

b esmond Stewart Cairo Arab rifts are widening into canyons and, e i , ve n when started by outsiders, they se authentic obstacles to the develop' 1 1 ;ent of Arab unity. The...

Richard West It was President Eisenhower, 25 years ago, who coined the telling metaphor about what would happen in South-East Asia if Vietnam succeeded China in falling to the...

Bill Langland Do you talk to your plants? A lot of people do, but until recently no one has paid any attention to the best type of conversation for each plant species. At last...

Christopher Booker It tnay seem cheating to conclude this series 'books of the Seventies' with the script of 4 televi s i on series that was both broadcast published in 1969....

The thunder-storm of last Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, was one of the most severe and the most universal ever known in England. But, fortunately, the most...

It's distressing to read (4 August) how flomphry Berkeley was beaten up during i ns attempt to stage a pro-Nigeria coup in the Transkei. What baffles is his tone of Injured...

" l e press (28 July) contains some very Misleading statements about public opinion oo this subject. She says that 'the British are broadly sPin', gives figures of 56 per cent...

Sir: My heartfelt congratulations to Taki (Spectator, 21 July) for getting 'bon vivant' right. Lest he think that I am being facetious, let me assure him that, for more than 30...

Sir: My attention has been drawn to an item in your magazine in which your television critic writes about Dr Goebbels's film of 'the ranting State prosecutor Roland Freisler,...

Secret lives of women Paul Ableman Chamber Music Doris Grumbach (Hamish Hamilton £5.50) Sleepless Nights Elizabeth Hardwick (Weidenfeld £5.50) My colleague, Christopher...

Richard Cobb Pariswalks: Five intimate walking tours of the most historic and enchanting quartlers of Left and Right Banks Alison and Sonia Landes (New Republic Books,...

Anthony Storr Surviving and other Essays Bruno Bettelheim (Thames & Hudson £10) Until he retired, Bruno Bettelheim was director of the Orthogenic School at the University of...

J.A.G. Griffith Law and Politics: The House of Lords as a Judicial Body 1800-1976 Robert Stevens (Weidenfeld £18.50) In no aspect of government is the British System more...

Max Hastings Going To The Moors Ronald Eden (John Murray £11) Nothing has gone right for the Tory Party since it cast loose from the grouse moor image. If the Prime Minister...

Benny Green Now God Be Thanked John Masters (Michael Joseph £6.50) Some years ago in a volume of autobiography, J. B. Priestley, who spent most of the Great war on the Western...

The case of Bruckner Hans Keller Bruckner's Ninth Symphony will be played in next Thursday's Prom (16 August). broadcast live on Radio 3 at 7.30 p.m. Yes, it is still a case,...

Big bang Ted Whitehead The China Syndrome (Leicester Square Theatre) The title of The China Syndrome (A) takes some explaining. It refers to a terrifying possibility dreamed...

Conjuring Peter Jenkins As You Like It (Olivier) A performance of a play is a fleeting affair like the life of a butterfly and one of the reviewer's tasks is to capture it in...

Flying start 'Rodney Miines Lucia di Lammermoor (Buxton Festival) The opening of the first post-war Buxton Pestival (Lilian Baylis, as always, got there first) was assailed...

More deadly Richard ingrams 1 had hoped that recent strikes in Independent Television would consign to oblivion certain best-forgotten programmes, but it was not to be. LWT...

Animal crackers Jeffrey Bernard I've just been listening to another of those nutty, veterinary psychiatrists talking on the radio and this particular one was on about how he'd...

'Victory Geoffrey Wheatcroft Conquered City is, as I wrote last week, 1 he last book of Victor Serge's trilogy. The tponymous city is Petrograd (formerly St 1 'etersburg,...