There is poetry in stonewalling. To watch Geoffrey Boycott blocking the straight ones and leaving the rest well alone for hour after hour has its own fascination. But Mr Boycott...

Mr Prior's Green Cross Code Ferdinand Mount Jim Prior makes no secret of his lack of enthusiasm for the present leadership of the Conservative Party (leadership is such a...

What on earth could have possessed Harold Evans to allow the Sunday Times to publish such a foolish and ill-informed farrago of half-truths as its main feature last Sunday,...

Bakke to Bakke Auberon Waugh At a time of year when many of us —or many of those who are not already too old to have children at school — are gloomily awaiting their...

Sam White Paris P . nor Mitterrand, that was one's first reaction as the election results unfolded on tele vision in the first round of the French gen eral elections last...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Advisers and editorialists told Jimmy Carter that he had to win a victory, that he had, to show leadership, that it was time for a public...

Christopher Matthews Rome Covering Italian politics, one often feels, is !Ike reporting on the movement of polar icecaps. They may be enormously significant, but they make very...

Paul Martin Nairobi On those increasingly rare occasions when President Jomo Kenyatta goes to town, usually to open parliament or an important gathering at the ultra-modern...

Roberto Ducci No one, among well-read continental Europeans, is going to be much surprised by a line of thinking about the future of West ern Europe, slowly gaining ground in...

John Grigg 'If you are elected, Mrs Thatcher, will you ask Mr Heath to join your government?' If the Tories win, Mr Heath, will you be prepared to serve under Mrs Thatcher?'...

Julia Buckroyd The English love precedent. When faced with the challenge of devolution by the last remnants of their empire they naturally turn to the past. Where Scottish...

Dollar crisis crescendo Nicholas Davenport If the devil prompts — as alas! he so often does — some of the natives in the City of London may be tempted to view the continuing...

Enemies within Sir: As one who, but for a successful operation by the KGB in 1965, would probably still be a member of the House of Commons, I have much sympathy for the...

Sir: There is much truth in what Mr Grimmond has to say about liberalism (25 February), but he makes a fundamental error when he sugggests that his party should occupy the...

Sir: The 'Campaign for the North' has 8 distinctly chocolate flavour. It owes the hospitality of Birchcliffe Centre, Hebden Bridge, to the trustees of the Rowntree Trust, of...

Sir: This month marks the centenary of the liberation of the Bulgarian people' from 500 Years of Ottoman oppression. It would be a Pity for this event to go unnoticed in your...

Sir: It was with some forebodings that I began to read Christopher Booker's review of Arthur Koestler's Janus (4 March), but even so I was surprised at what I found. For some...

Sir: The inability to distinguish between the teachings of Christ which preach brotherly love, and certain left-wing orientated political philosophies which thrive on class envy...

Sir: Thomas Szasz (4 March) tirelessly reiterates his interesting cri de coeur but he always overplays his hand. He is dogmatic about the nature of madness (no such thing...

Sir: Perhaps I may be permitted to preempt protest from any French person as surprised as I was by a quite false impression, created by the mysterious disappearance of a letter...

Spinning the chamber Geoffrey Wheatcroft The Human Factor Graham Greene (Bodley Head £4.50) Mr Greene used to divide his fiction into 'novels' and 'entertainments'. The...

Alastair Forbes The Parting Years: Diaries 1963-74 Cecil Beaton (Weidenfeld £5.95) This is the sixth selection from the diaries kept by Sir Cecil Beaton for more than half a...

John Gretton Forbidden Sands Richard Trench (John Murray £4.95) The salt mines of the Sahara are less well known than those of Siberia, but they are no less unpleasant. In...

Benny Green Arnold Bennett: a Last Word Frank Swinnerton (Hamish Hamilton £4.95) The last time anyone fashioned a considerable work of art out of the private lives of a group...

Jeffrey Bernard The Coup Ken Payne (Futura 90p) Shaw's Champions Benny Green (Elm Tree £5.95) Reactions on the racecourse that I've seen during the past few weeks and, in...

Paul Ableman The Provocateur Rene-Victor Pilhes (Marion Boyars £4.95) When in doubt, outline the plot. The Prench subsidiary of a giant American Multi-national corporation...

The painted child Julian Jebb Berlin In Kreuzberg, a poor quarter of the city, someone swung out of a supermarket at three in the afternoon; longish blond hair, mascara,...

Problems Rodney Milnes ldomeneo (Covent Garden) Idomeneo is a musician's opera if ever there was one. The twenty-five-year-old Mozart was surely at the height of his musical...

Brutal banter Ted Whitehead Class Enemy (Theatre Upstairs) The Rocky Horror Show (King's Road Theatre) Elvis (Astoria) A few years ago the Theatre Upstairs gave a production...

Non-satirist John McEwen `Rowlandson Drawings' (Royal Academy till 21 May) continues the startling new Academy exhibition policy. No sooner is one major show over, in this...

Obsessive Clancy Sigal The Man Who Loved Women (Gala Royal) Assault on Precinct 13 (Screen on the Green, Islington) F rancois Truffaut's latest film, The Man Who Loved Women...

Finn ishness Malcolm Quantrill Sitting in the sauna he had designed by the lakeside at Eliel Saarincn's famous home and studio 'Hvittriisk' last January, Pro fessor ,Reima...

News decline Richard Ingrams Readers have been waiting, I am sure, to hear what I thought of the Mayor of Casterbridge which came to an end last week but I have to admit that...

North v South Alan Gibson The arguments about the England car taincy next season are well under way: or, at least, both sides are suggesting that there 15 nothing to argue...

Hustling Taki St Moritz Now that luxury liners have gone the way of high button shoes, honourable politicians and thin African guerrilla leaders, card sharks and backgammon...