lo 1891 the German ambassador to Romania wrote to Caprivi, the German Chancellor, that King Carol, the komanian ruler, operated on a single principle: 'To the most savage dog,...

This other Eden Ferdinand Mount You wish to know what the world needs now? You have come to the right depart ment. What the world needs now is stability. Take Africa. Large...

It was ironic that the Anti-Nazi League's concert on Sunday should have coincided With the race riot on the other side of Lon don. The Whitechapel riot was obviously isgusting...

Waiting for Goddard Auberon Waugh Nobody I knew has ever been hanged, and very few have been murdered. Off-hand, I can only think of poor James PopeHennessy. I was sorry to...

Richard West Johannesburg Some seven years ago in South Africa I met a north Johannesburg matron who told me about a marvellous film she had seen on holiday in Greece. It was...

David Levy When will the West learn that Russians think primarily in terms of friends and enemies, and of truth and falsehood only as functions of these? Whose side are you on?...

Fred Bratman Pieter Menten returned to his mansion out-' side Amsterdam on 30 May when the Dutch Supreme Court overturned a fifteen-year prison sentence for his 'involvement'...

George Gale 'Intellectually they were a remarkable crew. Eight of them had first class degrees from Oxford — Harold Wilson, Dick Crossman, Douglas Jay, Denis Healey, Roy...

Sir Rutherford Alcock writes to Monday's Times that though rain has now fallen in some of the famine-struck districts of China, and that by the month of October it may produce...

Tony Judge Most of the hostility to the Greater London Council's proposal to rehouse, as one community, some of the Bengali families in Spitalfields, came from expected...

Robert Oakeshott With the partial exception of Mr James Prior, who has spoken of 'methods of financial participation' in the context of the industrial democracy debate, no...

Nicholas Davenport The great war in the City was won, I regret to say, by the Old Boys Brigade, the storm L t roops of the City institutions who stubu cirnly refused to buy the...

Mr Ian Hamilton Finlay is a Scottish concrete poet who almost never leaves his home at Stonypath in Lanarkshire. He is said to have transformed his garden there into some sort...

Sir: Unlike A ubcron Waugh, I try to make a habit of admitting it when I'm wrong. Sorry about saying Philistine for Pharisee: too long since I was in Bible class. It doesn't...

Sir: I was amused to read Richard West's panegyric to Eire (27 May) as I also read the Irish Post —the paper of several hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants in this...

Sir: In her excellent essay on the abortion era 1968-78(3 June) Mary Kenny describes the impact of Glasgow's slums on Mrs Judy Steel and no doubt on her husband David, MP. I...

Sir: Gerald Howson's review of Murray Bookchin's book The Spanish Anarchists (10 June) treats the subject in such a puzzled way that it seems appropriate to correct some of his...

Sir: Since the promised biography of Nancy Cunard seems permanently postponed wonder if you or any of your readers can answer a question that is agitating a few of us here in...

Politics and other passions Michael Foot Stendhal and the Age of Napoleon Gita May (Columbia UP £10.50) Stendhal and the Age of Napoleon does not fulfil the expectations...

Alastair Forbes Lady Sackville Susan Mary Alsop (Weidenfeld £6.95) Revisiting Knole one recent meteorologically magical day, I found it little changed from my first boyhood...

Patrick Marnham Family Web Sarah Hobson (John MurraY £5.95) The first lesson taught by contact with the Third World is that the struggle to eat, find shelter and reproduce is...

DANTE, Temple Classics edition. Trans by Gardner & Wickstead: Rev. J.O.C. Alleyne. 44 Cherllon Road, Winchester. Hampshire. E. HALEVY The Triumph of Reform. L'Europe et la...

Alan Watkins Herod: Reflections on Political Violence Conor Cruise O'Brien (Hutchinson £6.50) Having been subjected to Welsh windbaggery from an early age, I soon acquired a...

Benny Green Farewell the Trumpets James Morris (Faber E9.50) When Pax Britannica first appeared, it seemed to me so brilliant a piece of work that I feared for its author's...

Francis King Light on a Honeycomb David Pownall (Faber £4.95) In the past I have never had any difficulty in understanding David Pownall's novels. But Light on a Honeycomb had...

Shy Schubert Hans Keller In a forthcoming Schubert symposium edited hy Yehudi Menuhin (more leading practising musicians ought to be in charge of literary ventures!), I am...

Schismatic John McEwen If one single thing changed the nature of painting it was photography. Or, perhaps more accurately, if one thing altered the consciousness of painters...

Freaks Richard Ingrams The World Cup fiasco, which is something that ought to be investigated by the Mono Polies Commission, has in some ways come a s a welcome relief. On...

Caustic Ted Whitehead Allonsonfan Camden Plaza Allonsonfan OA) is about a man riding the tiger of revolution and desperate to get off, 'if only because he knows that the tiger...

Companies Geoffrey Wheatcroft Macbeth (Olivier) Coriolanus (RSC, Aldwych) The superiority of the Royal Shakespeare Company over the National Theatre is one of the puzzles of...

Cornish tasties Marika Hanbury Tenison I have an endless succession of brilliant ideas but when they are put into action they have a tendency to flop like failed souffles. At...

party men - rale! A lthough social climbing is as prevalent as ever in cafe society, the costume ball, the r?tece de resistance of a successful climb, is Puerto as rare as...

Raining Jeffrey Bernard I usually try to avoid the Derby. One quarter of a million people don't make for enormous comfort and the cars, coaches and buses that take them to it...