M r Michael Foot unexpectedly repudiated the new Labour candidate for Bermondsey, 29-year-old Mr Peter Tatchell, an Australian and campaigner for homosexual causes, on the...

Ferdinand Mount A the back of a Commons cubby-hole, I chanced upon a pile of Bills. They had scarcely been touched. Dust was already gathering upon the eau-de-nil paper,...

w hile The Times has long aspired to speak for the nation, it has this week scaled a new peak of respectability by becoming the mouthpiece of the sovereign herself. Its leading...

The Father Christmas Idea Auberon Waugh M r Tom Hunt, a scrap dealer in the east end of London, came briefly to pro minence last week when his 15-year-old son, Graham, was...

Murray Sayle Tokyo B ack in Japan to find Fuji smothered in snow, the last of the autumn's persimmons plopping from bare trees and exports moving briskly, I see by the calendar...

Timothy Garton Ash Berlin, December 1983 T he first anti-nuclear demonstrator to be killed by American forces in Germany was buried here last Sunday. Hans-Dieter Narzisssohn,...

Andrew Brown Copenhagen T he only thing obvious about the results of Tuesday's Danish election is that there is a majority in the resulting parliament against any conceivable...

Sam White Paris t is now evident that the French Socialist 'government is split on the issue that was always calculated to split it — economic policy. It would be tempting to...

Richard West Kota Bahru, north-east Malaysia T he Malaysian communist Chin Peng, who started the insurrection that we came to know as the Emergency, is still alive, a...

Allan Massie 'E nterprise: an undertaking; a bold or dangerous undertaking; an adventure; readiness, initiative and daring in undertaking.' (Chambers's Twentieth Century...

Good old Scrooge Paul Johnson W hen I last reported on the general state of the British publishing trade, in February, I described it as firmly in the grip of the slump. As...

The Bank at bay Tony Rudd T he sequel to Noble House, that lengthy epic about the Hong Kong trading community which James Clavell has yet to write sets the Hong Kong financial...

Sir: In case any of your non-Catholic (or possibly Catholic) readers may be wondering whether Auberon Waugh's judgment of Cardinal Hume in his review of Butler's Lives of the...

in his review, distinguished between objective faith and subjective faith. Doubtless the Cardinal was writing about the latter. I regret that he did not say so. Objective faith,...

Sir: It was disappointing to see your correspondent Stephen Aris's phrase 'blueshirted right wingers' (5 December). Although the blue shirt became the standard dress of Franco's...

Sir: May I correct an error in Mr Woodhouse's review of Auchinleck: The Lonely Soldier (28 November)? What was denied to those who served in the Eighth Army before Montgomery...

Sir: Might I phrase my disapproval of the use of the SODPAL abbreviation, inspired though it may be, in the 'Portrait of the Week' (5 December). This column has, after all,...

Hugh Massingberd P. G. 'Wodehouse Benny Green (Pavilion pp. 256, £8.95) A Wodehouse Companion Richard Usborne (Elm Tree pp. 169, £12.50) Wodehouse at War lain Sproat (Milner...

Eric Christiansen History and Imagination ed. Hugh LloydJones, Valerie Pearl and Blair Worden (Duckworth pp. 385, £25) R ightly is they called Festschrifts. They were invented...

Douglas Johnson The War Against Pads 1871 Robert Tombs (Cambridge University Press pp. 256, £22.50, £8.50) T he Paris Commune of 1871 lasted for 72 days. It began by accident,...

Francis King Bliss Peter Carey (Faber pp. 296, £6.50) m ephistophilis's stonily despairing 'Why this is hell, nor am I out of it', in Marlowe's Dr Faustus, might stand as a...

P. J. Kavanagh The Black Soul Liam O'Flaherty (Wolfhound pp. 256, £6.90) A Minor Giant Peter de Polnay (Piatkus pp. 234, £6.50) T iam O'Flaherty was born in the Aran L./Islands...

Brian Inglis A New Science of Life Rupert Sheldrake (Blond and Briggs pp.229, £12.50). S ome 60 years ago William McDougall, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, instituted...

Ronald Hingley St Petersburg: A Travellers' Companion selected and introduced by Laurence Kelly (Constable pp. 303, £9.95, £5.95) This book is chiefly addressed to those 1...

A. N. Wilson Priestland's Progress: One man's search for Christianity Now Gerald Priestland (BBC pp. 224, 0.50) N e lisez jamais les journaux religieux was the wise counsel of...

James Hughes-Onslow Stephen Leacock selected and introduced by Robertson Davies (Penguin pp. 527, £2.95)Canada's answer to Mark Twain, or Thurber perhaps. 'You certainly seem...

Mark Amory The Oresteia (Olivier) T onger than Parsifal but not so funny', I said Noel Coward about something. Such unfair cracks were banished immediately The Oresteia began,...

John McEwen C raigie Aitchison's first retrospective exhibition (Serpentine Gallery till 24 January 1982) must surely convince anyone still in the need of it that he is one of...

Bryan Robertson T o conspicuous advantage, the Ballet Rambert has reconstituted itself under the direction of Robert North, who has done so much in the past as dancer and...

Richard In grams T must say that every time I see John 1 Osborne on the telly I warm to him. One or two of his plays may be bloody awful but at least there is some life in the...

Taki New York O ne more week to go in the Big Apple and then, I hope, I shall be returning to a country where everyone isn't into Freudian insights. Just last week I managed to...

Jeffrey Bernard ri" he week started off badly with the death of Michael Dempsey. When a really good bloke dies and at the early age of 37 it makes you wonder what on earth it's...

Raymond Keene I t is sad that just one week after Karpov had confirmed himself for the second time as the twelfth world champion, the fifth member of that illustrious group, Dr...