It is very easy to feel sorry for the Liberal party this week, as they hold their annual conference in Southport. The polls show that the party's public standing has never been...

A registry office wedding Ferdinand Mount 'No one of course,' said Mr Tadpole, 'would think of dissolution before the next registration. No, no, this is a very manageable...

The Liberal Party has of course made itself look very foolish in its handling of the Jeremy Thorpe problem. In particular, Mr Steel's decision on the eve of the Prime Minister's...

A pompous stand Auberon Waugh Certain errors are so vast, so obvious and so deeply entrenched that it becomes the mark of a boor to point them out. The TUC's conviction that...

Sam White Paris Errors of appreciation — this is how the French Communist party now labels the monumental, historic and tragic blunders Which have marked the greater part of...

Richard West Kyrenia In about 1956, a friend of mine who was trying to earn a living in journalism in Manchester, said he had just been offered a job o n a newspaper in Cyprus,...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Even the rumours about what Carter, Sadat and Begin are talking about at Camp David have partaken of naive banality. Shortly after this mountain...

Christopher Booker The only place befitting an honest man in Russia at the present time is a prison'. Tolstoy, Resurrection (1900) Last week marked the one hundred and fiftieth...

Jo Grimond The continuation of a socialist government cheers the Stock Exchange. I suppose over the last five years you would have done better by buying almost anything else...

Rhodes Boyson It is rumoured that Mrs Shirley Williams Wilt announce this week that she has accepted plans to scrap the system of separate '0' level GCE and Certificate of...

No holds barred Patrick Marn ham Fleet Street's failure to predict the date of the general election was a diverting spectacle, particularly in the case of the Daily Mail,...

The old boys Nicholas Davenport So the Old Boys in the City were right. The election was postponed as they said it would and my prediction was read in this column on Thursday...

The municipal authorities of Coblen tz, Treves, and Saarlouis have passed a police regulation forbidding boys under the age of sixteen to smoke in the streets. Similar rules...

Worse to come Sir: I liked Auberon Waugh's pungent description (2 September) of British edu cation as 'the wettest and sloppiest outside America'. Alas, dear Mr Waugh, our...

Sir: Many valid criticisms can be made about Holocaust, but I find Richard Ingrams's comments (9 September) highly offensive. It comes as no surprise to me that he regards it as...

Christopher Booker says it was 'cynical' the way the heroic Jewish family . . . was played by conspicuously unJewish looking actors'. Conspicuously? Would Mr Booker care to...

following the final episode of Holocaust on BBC 1, Rabbi Hugo Gryn, a survivor of Auschwitz, expressed the fear that a curious variant of Nazism was still around in the attempt...

Sir: I find Mr Davenport's views on government-induced inflation both dis turbing and puzzling. Disturbing, because they reflect the cynicism of the people in the City who aid...

Sir: I agree with Richard West (Notebook , 5 August) and J. Geoffrey Brook (Letters , 12 August) that North Humberside is an inelegant and cumbersome substitute for the East...

Sir: Irritating, this chap Booker (`An elemental calamity', 2 September). Could he be persuaded to clarify his thoughts on man and his relationship to the Universe, God,...

Sir: While appreciating the evocative and enjoyable style of Desmond Stewart (`The prospects for Camp David', 2 September), I am somewhat concerned by some of his formulations...

Sir: Mr Humphrey Burton claims that the last movement of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra evokes 'wild horses galloping across the Hungarian plain', as disproof of Mr Richard...

By the waters of the Jordan Alistair Horne Exile and Return Martin Gilbert (Weidenfeld £7.95) The Zionist Revolution Harold Fisch (Weidenfeld £8.50) Palestine: Retreat from...

Piers Paul Read Ravenstein: Portrait of a German General Rowland Ryden (Hamish Hamilton E7.95) The life of Hans von Ravenstein is hardly more interesting than that of any other...

Anthony Nutting David Livingstone Oliver Ransford (Constable £8.50) Writing about explorers can be tricky. The reader can all too easily become no less travel-weary than the...

Martin Butlin William Blake, His Life and Works Jack Lindsay (Constable 29.50) In the case of few artists more than Wil" ham Blake can it truly be said that the art was the man....

Jill Craigie Women and Children First Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig (Gollancz £7.50) In their survey of the subliminal effect of war fiction, or, rather, of that of the first...

Lynn Cardiff Audubon John Chancellor (Weidenfeld £6.95) Any biography of Audubon makes a cheerful antidote to that depressing modern maxim that if a man is to succeed in life,...

Benny Green Born for Opposition: Byron's Letters and Journals Vol VIII Edited by Leslie Marchand (John Murray £7.50) The fortitude with which Mr Marchand has agreed to endure...

Paul Ableman Ealnlly Business Anthony Blond (Andre Deutsch £5.95) There is more family than business in FamilY Business but, despite its 430 pages and a Promised further two...

Two leading ladies Rodney Milnes The Malcropoulos Case (Cardiff) Katya Kabanova (Edinburgh) It's not often that one can see performances of Janacek operas on consecutive...

Peter Jenkins The Passion of Dracula (Queens) Dracula (Shaftesbury) The Rivals (Old Vic) Both ends of Shaftesbury Avenue now oft an evening with Count Dracula. I caug",, them...

Anthologist Tim Hilton John McEwen's 'Critic's Choice' exhibition (ICA, till 7 October) demonstrates more than anything else that he has a lot of good friends. Whether it was...

Highlights Peter Ackroyd Ian MacShane as Disraeli had so much lacquer on his hair that it seemed to be carved out of wood: political 'confidantes' tended to stare at it;...

Blood money Ted Whitehead The Cycle (Paris Pullman) The Cycle (AA) is about a young man who arrives in Teheran from the countryside and adapts quickly, almost eagerly, to the...

Just as it is Mary Kenny May I be cheeky and offer some advice to Miss Monica Sims, the lady expected to be the new Controller of Radio 4? To the average listener, nothing...

Kerry's gold Marika Hanbury Tenison Have you noticed a thing about children that always fascinates me? They have an apparently in-built attraction to what I, at any rate,...

Time-honoured Talc! Mykonos, the wind-swept and whitewashed Aegean island known for its 365 churches and 60 windmills, has replaced Capri as the international gay set's...

Trickster Jeffrey Bernard After obituaries it's the latest wills column in The Times that catches my eye in the mornings. It's not that I'm expecting a legacy but, like the...

Don't get it Geoffrey Wheatcroft Badia Agnano, Tuscany A Swedish friend was in London recently before I left for Italy (I borrow the practice Of date-lining this column as an...