In a world full of such gloomily intractable problems as Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, Northern Ireland and British Leyland, where our television scfeens are nightly filled with the...

The last imperial illusion Ferdinand Mount Outside Hardy's, the fly-fishing shop, are massed the supporters of the Patriotic Front. It is a small mass. There are thirty black...

Without perhaps going quite so far as Peregrine Worsthorne in Monday's Telegraph, describing him as 'Britain's greatest postwar hero', I cannot help feeling there is some...

Tim Garton Ash Warsaw Across the Oder, down the long monotonous road from Berlin to Poznan —straight as a line in a Prussian ledger — the West German Volkswagen pursues the...

Peter Nichols Rome Everybody must have had enough of Poland for a while. The Vatican's Wojtyla phenomenon is now being given its historical frame by the relentlessly detailed...

David Blundy New York A picnic in a small field next to a large graveyard in Nashua, New Hampshire, last Sunday marked a crucial moment for the American Democratic Party. As...

Richard West County Dublin In The Condition of the Working Classes, Friedrich Engels wrote of the Irishman in Manchester who loved his pig 'as the Arab his horse, with the...

As we shall hear a great deal by-and-by of Persian news-writers, we may as well say that these men are extremely useful servants both of the Government and the newspapers. They...

David Martin The Anglican Church inhabits 20,000 holy and expensive houses which define the sacred ecology of England. If you try to save money and pull one down you will...

Alan Watkins Several charges can be and are made against Private Eye: that it is trivial; that in sexual matters it combines prurience with puritanism —a not uncommon...

Philip Norman Anyone who maintains that we must welcome tourists, for they come to share our heritage and history, should have seen the Bedouin woman I met last week in Edgware...

Sir: In view of the continuing hypocritical brouhaha over the South Africans' Rugby tour of Britain, may one pose two pertinent questions? 1. The tourists are bringing a...

Sir: If Christopher Booker will lead a campaign to restore the old counties he will become a public hero, and nowhere more than in what used to be Westmorland, once a...

Sir: Dr Cosgrave, reviewing a life of Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria (1 September), mentions that his successor, Boris, was 'destroyed by the second world war s , but clearly does...

Sir: My thanks to the clairvoyant Paul Ableman for affirming that I did 'a sparkling job' on translating Arno Schmidt's Gelehrtenrepublik ('German jokes'' 14 July), A 'fluent,...

Sir: Nicholas Bethel!, commenting upon the 1939 options, states: 'The smart thing, both from Britain's short-term and the world's long-term point of view, might have been to let...

Sir: I am writing a biography of A.E. Housman, scholar and poet, and I shall be most grateful to hear from anyone who has personal recollections of Housman or who possesses...

Sense or sensibility? Auberon Waugh Collins English Dictionary Ed. Laurence Urdang (Collins E7.95; £8.95) The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford £65) 'It is the fate of...

Philip Magnus Brendan Bracken Charles Edward Lysaght (Allen Lane £10) Brendan Bracken destroyed his personal Papers with systematic and obsessive secretiveness. Having arrived...

Richard West African Trio Georges Simenon (Hamish Hamilton £6.95) The author Georges Simenon recently claimed to have had sexual intercourse with 5000 women — or 10,000, or...

Hans Keller A Seamless Robe: Broadcasting — Philosophy and Practice Charles Curran (Collins £8.95) In terms of sheer IQ, and as distinct from a surprising number of his top...

Elisabeth Whipp The Cancer Reference Book Paul M. Levitt and Elissa S. Guralnick (Paddington £4.95) Cancer: Myths and Realities of Cause and Cure M. L. Kothari and L. A. Mehta...

Benny Green Test Time at Tillingfold John Parker (Weidenfeld £4.95) In 1924 the novelist Hugh de Selincourt hit on the idea of deploying the structure of a Village cricket...

Jeffrey Meyers Desert, Marsh and Mountain Wilfred ThesIger (Collins £9.95) For nearly 50 years Wilfred Thesigcr has lived among tribal people in remote and hostile places, in...

Emma Fisher Pasts Paul Wilkins (Carcanet 22) Memorials of the Quick and the Dead Maureen Duffy (Hamish Hamilton £4.95) The Pain and the Pleasure Derek Bourne-Jones (Downlander...

Paul Ableman The German Company Norman Lewis (Collins £5.95) 'Has it ever occurred to you to ask yourself. the basic reason for all these unpleasant things that happen?' 'It's...

Francis King When Alicia Jurado, the dominant Argentine woman writer of today, offered to take me to see Jorge Luis Borges, I felt exactly as I did, many years ago, when Olivia...

Goodall's great 'Tristan' Rodney Milnes Tristan und Isolde (Cardiff) In a callow, English sort of way it is easy to get impatient with Tristan and Isolde. A few good cold...

Immortalisers Peter Jenkins Once in a Lifetime (RSC, Aldwych) Welcome Home Jacko (Riverside Studios) The Gorky Brigade (Royal Court) The Government Inspector (Old Vic) In the...

R ichard Ingrams Sefton Delmer known to everyone as Tom. who died last week aged 75, was the first journalist I ever met. He had worked with my father in the war and his second...

Indoor sports Taki The most titillating three-letter word in the English language is one and the same with the most controversial word in sport. Sex. Since time immemorial, or...

Dog's life Jeffrey Bernard You probably missed it, right at the bottom of .a column on the back page, so I'll give it to you in full. BIONIC LEG FOR POODLE Ubu, a...

Off the rails Geoffrey Wheatcroft So the Daily Telegraph wants to close down what remains of our railway system: The time has come to ask whether some of [British Rail's...

Interzonal 1 Raymond Keene The two Interzonal tournaments in Riga and Brazil form the second stage of the three-yearly World Championship cycle. Roughly forty players qualify...