Paying for inflation What on earth is the country supposed to make of the admission by Treasury officials that the Government's pay bill for its civil servants will be'25 per...

Political commentary Too much solidarity Ferdinand Mount Three times on Monday afternoon Mrs Thatcher talked about showing 'solidarity' with the United States. Nobody...

Notebook The news that the frontier between Gibraltar and Spain is to be reopened at last has apparently been 'welcomed' by Sir Joshua 14assan, Chief Minister of the Rock....

Another voice Anatomy of a strike Auberon Waugh To my sorrow, I find I shall not be in England for the TUC's Day of Action on 14 May. Plainly it is a time when all patriotic...

Carter's bad timing Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Ve (4 u (ai fSu If one can call bludgeoning the American Olympic Committee a victory, it can be said that the President...

A tale of two princes Sam White Paris I wrote in these columns, some weeks ago, that, Le Canard Enchatne permitting, Giscard d'Estaing would be assured of an easy re-election...

The enemy within Sweden Andrew Brown Gothenburg There are more than 150,000 registered teetotallers in Sweden, and many of them. more than half in fact, do not drink alcohol....

The lesson of Hong Kong Peter Bauer How would you rate the economic prospects of an Asian country which has very little land (and only eroded hillsides at that), and which is...

The police and the public Jennifer Monahan Mr Tony Benn, MP for Bristol South-East, and Lord Hunt, former Secretary of the Cabinet, share nothing in common except an Oxbridge...

What is a true Brit? Geoffrey Robertson The most remarkable thing about being a 'British subject' is that it is a distinction shared by about 950 million people. For most this...

Secrets of the jury room w w Karen Margolis No one from Fleet Street interviewed me after my jury service, though I, too, was an Old Bailey juror. I probably wasn't vetted...

Dying declaration Sir: Wallenstein's last words are not, as Michael Hulse (5 April) suggests, 'Ich denke einen langen Schlaf zu tun'; there are two more lines. l agree that...

Letters - - Catholic reporting Sir: The Catholic Herald was, as Richard West writes (12 April), the English Catholic newspaper which printed a front-page photograph of armed...

The role of social work Sir: If June Lait is right (29 March) and consumers of social work service (or clients as we call them because we cannot come up with a better word -...

A musical giant Sir: Whilst accepting the view of Hans Keller concerning the position of Wagner's music in Israel (5 April) I cannot understand why he has dismissed Richard...

Greek grudge Sir: Like other forms of pornography, scurrility for its own sake can be amusing enough - and good for circulation, I am sure. But I am nauseated that it should be...

Books East-West conspiracy Patrick Marnham Karma Cola Gita Mehta (Cape £4.95) What happened to India when it was flooded with the trash-culture of the West, a process which...

Post-Stalin Ronald Hingley Beyond Socialist Realism: Soviet FictionSince Ivan Denisovich Geoffrey Hosk- ing (Elek £9.50) Geoffrey Hosking's book is the first to chart in...

Very ferm Paul Johnson Queen Anne Edward Gregg (Routledge £17.50) ; J\-._--__ Professor Gregg, of the University of South Carolina, is a man of formidable industry arnd...

Educator Nicolas Walter The Tamarisk Tree Vol 11 Dora Russell (Virago £8.95) Autobiographies are awkward books to write or to review. They are almost always too personal or...

The Champ Paul Ableman Passion Play Jerzy Kosinski (Michael Joseph £5.95) Fabian, the hero of Passion Play, is a polo player. But he is not a good one. This is because polo...

Journeyman Benny Green Autobiography Anthony Trollope (Oxford £1 .25) The Warden Anthony Trollope (Oxford The reappearance of Trollope's autobiography in compact...

The Missing Years Walter Laqueur (Weidenfeld 25.95) This Place is a Madhouse Mary Hobson (Heinemann £5.95) Jack Be Nimble Nigel Williams (Secker £5.50) I have a Jewish...

Black magic Rodney Milnes Nabucco and The Mines of Sulphur !English National Opera North)- Lucrezia Borgia and - La fanciulla del West (Covent Garden) MarY, Queen of...

Art Flanagan et al John McEwen The work of Barry Flanagan can be difficult to get to grips with - certainly this is true of his new sculpture (Waddington II till 3 May). For...

-Cinema Making it Peter Ackroyd Starting Over ('AA, selected cinemas) Bad Timing ('X', selected cinemas) Two images linger in the mind. A Divorced Men's Workshop, being...

Television Rearguard Richard Ingrams Inl the dear dead days when I was the theatre Crtic of Time and Tide - I was replaced after (nly a few weeks by lain Sproat when W.J....

High life Speechless Taki Epidauros The knee-jerk reaction of most Greeks when small Britain is mentioned is always one of anger about a certain Lord Elgin and some marble...

Postscript Bad machines Patrick Marnham During the revolutionary summer of 1968 the striking workers who occupied the Berliet factory near Lyons re-arranged the letters...

Low life Spongers Jeffrey Bernard When Taki wrote in this journal (29 March) about how disgusted he was that the Alexander Onassis Foundation had awarded $100,000 to Harold...