On 28 May 1945, British V Corps in Austria handed over to the Russians some 2,000 Cossack officers, including a number of legendary White Russian generals, such as the...

Bye, bye, bipartisan Ferdinand Mount A bipartisan area is an agreeable spot, providing politicians with a kind of leisure centre where the normal cut-and-thrust of politics is...

It ha s been a better year so far for the House ot Commons than for the Government. It would have been better still if the vote after Tuesday's debate on the blacklist had gone...

Growing old gracefully Auberon Waugh There are now nearly eight and a half million old age pensioners in the United Kingdom, an increase of about two million in the past ten...

Sam White Paris Since my last despatch from the French election battlefield, a new element has emerged in what can be roughly described as a struggle between left and right —...

Henry Fairlie Washington It is highly unlikely that anyone will be able to challenge Jimmy Carter successfully for the Democratic nomination in 1980, although it is less...

Alexander Chancellor Until now only two Asian girls in England have actually been murdered by their fathers for refusing to submit to an arranged marriage, but several others...

George Gale Conspiracy theories of history are all very well in their way. They make for good and sometimes sensational reading. They gratify the instinct of the ignorant to...

Jock Bruce-Gardyne If hypocrisy is, as the French believe, a vice which we British elevate to the level of an art-form, then incomes policy is surely the best of all stages to...

Patrick Marnham That the Archbishop of Canterbury should have emerged from his great intercommunion initiative with egg on his face seems to have surprised no one. People are...

Alan Gibson In his third Reith Lecture, Professor Halsey cited The Magnet to illustrate a point in his discussion of status in British society. I was reminded of a celebrated...

Markets and pension funds Nicholas Davenport The City is feeling pretty sick at the moment. There was a sharp drop in the gilt-edged market last week and on Monday this week....

JAMES I by David Mathew, also Gardiner's 'History of England from 1603'. Write Spectator Box No. 802. D IS FOR DOG and 'Hyman Kaplan' by Leo Roston. Hard or paperback. A. Peck,...

Windscale Sir: Mr Leo Abse, MP, in his article Peter Shore's rule of silence (4 February), accuses the nuclear industry, and me in particular, of trying to rush Mr Shore into a...

Sir: In your edition dated 4 February, Nicholas Davenport had some critical remarks to make about Mr Gordon Richardson, the Governor of the Bank of England. I know and like...

Sir: Unlike Mr Patrick Marnham (28 January) I do have a copy of The Revolt by Menachem Begin — indeed my late father edited the English version published in 1951. In a new...

Sir: Mr Mockler's 'forecast for the Horn' (28 January) overlooks too many factors to be credible. First, the bloody strife which is tearing Ethiopia apart makes it difficult to...

Sir: My attention has just been drawn to the article Stern berg's circus by Ian Waller (14 January). It is deplorable that your respected magazine permits Ian Waller to use his...

Sir: I was much interested by Peregrine Worsthorne's excellent article (28 January) in which he drew attention to the oligarchical nature of trade unions. There can be no doubt...

Sir: Mr Kenneth Middleton (Letters,.28 January) has, I believe, focused attention on the central weakness in the Government's present approach to financial policy, when he asks...

Sir: Doesn't Richard Ingrams (28 January) know that television is terrified of allowing anyone to speak for more than two minutes without interrupting? For those of us who did...

A personally sensitive matter Christopher Booker Victims of Yalta Nikolai Tolstoy (Hodder and Stoughton E9.95) In 1931 Winston Churchill was the chief speaker at a meeting in...

Richard Shone A Pre-Raphaelite Circle Raleigh Irevelyan (Chatto and Windus 0.50) Some extraordinary marriages are recounted or touched on in this agreeable book. Already well...

Peter Ackroyd Blind Date Jerzy Kosinski (Hutchinson £4.95) There are certain great moments in fiction, when the vast mists of the world suddenly part; Blind Date has one of...

Benny Green Gilbert Cannan: A Georgian Prodigy Diana Farr (Chatto and Windus £8.50)

common enough literary fate; to become a footnote to your own is an irony so crushing that the egocentric Gilbert Cannan, had he foreseen his destiny, would surely have found it...

First the drama Denis Arnold Caw:till Jane Glover (Batsford E8.50) The vast graveyard of opera tempts exhumation; and where better to start digging than in that area known...

David Pountney Janacek's Tragic Operas Michael Ewans (Faber £7.95) Janacek completed his seven mature operas between 1903 and his death in 1928, and the last four, Katya...

Hans Keller The Second Vienna School: Expressionism and Dodecaphony Luigi Rognoni translated by Robert W. Mann (John Calder 212.50) The publisher has a distinguished history...

Rodney Milnes In Defence of Opera Hamish Swanston (Allen Lane E6.50; Penguin £1.25) Literature as Opera Gary Schmidgall (OUP £6.95) Romantic Opera and Literary Form Peter...

Simple faith Ted Whitehead A Day Forever (Open Space) Perhaps Michael Sharp shouldn't complain about the less-than-serious critical response to his play, A Day Forever,...

Honourable Clancy Sigal The Duellists (Plaza 3: Classic Oxf° rd Street) There is a particularly chilling sound effec t in The Duellists (A). It is the jagged scrape of a...

Welds, weaves John McEwen Over the centuries Dutch artists have displayed an instinctual ease with abstraction or, more accurately perhaps, because all art is to some degree...

Resonances Richard Ingrams Well, 1 think I have now seen it all. That is to say I have seen Melvyn Bragg shake hands with Bruce Forsyth and present him with an award for being...

Young giants John Moyniham It had been a fairly quiet day at the Evening Standard a middle-aged model suing he r r millionaire baronet lover for the return e u jewellery...

Making it work Jeffrey Bernard Last Monday the Daily .Mail began the serialisation of what it called 'David Jacobs' Startling Love Story'. Not an epic event in itself, but one...