HOW deep and how serious are the divides within the C onservative party? At the end of the Budget debate the Government's overall majority, now reduced to 42 by Mr Christopher...

Adventures underground Ferdinand Mount The record for receiving the greatest number of publisher's advances for a single literary work used to be held by the late Humphrey...

My picture of Norfolk Conservatives is somewhat one-sided, my acquaintance with them being on the whole confined to the landed gentry. One thing I can say with confidence about...

Against the disabled Auberon Waugh If Mrs. Thatcher is seriously disturbed by insubordination — not to say disloyalty — in the Cabinet, then her remedy is at hand. She must...

Sam White Paris So Pravda is for Giscard. This will surprise no one but what is astonishing is that it Should come out so openly from him so e arly . The last time Moscow...

Tim Garton Ash Berlin Poland's truce did not last long, it could not last. On the government side, General Jaruzelski received new orders from his high command in Moscow. In...

Andrew Brown Gothenburg There's not been a bigger scandal here since it was discovered, ten years after the event, that the then King's boyfriend had been handed over to the...

A great and successful crime has startled Europe. The Nihilists, after four known and several unknown attempts, have succeeded in killing the Emperor of Russia. Though warned...

Henry Fairlie Washington The first big job which I remember as a reporter for the Manchester Evening News when I joined it in 1945, was to take the train to Warrington to...

Gerda Cohen It's market day in Llanelli, clucking with damp cosy shoppers, the rain falling calmly on a Grecian Methodist Temple, a rinsed Tabernacle and a drowned rugby pitch....

Duncan Fallowell BY car there are two ways to reach Hay - on-Wye from London. You can shoot along the M4, leap over the Severn Bridge, then fight your way north from Chepstow...

Thunderer in Chaos Shock Paul Johnson If Budget week was a rough one for the Government, it turned out a disaster for The Times under its new editor, Harold Evans. This...

Encouraging new business Tony Rudd A good deal more thought needs to be given to the question of how best to set up the new businesses encouraged into existence by the fiscal...

Sir: I was delighted to read Bel Mooney's wide-ranging praise for C.S. Lewis and the 'Chronicles of Narnia' (14 March). I hope you can set beside her comments these two points....

Sir: I was interested to note that Mike St Aubyn had detected 'undulating piety' emanating from Mr Rees-Mogg (Letters, 7 March). May I ask if this is the kind of piety which...

Sir: Your very thoughtful leading article (14 March) bids us remember — as Michael Foot carefully forgets — that the 90 per cent of our workforce who are in work 'includes a far...

Sir: It's a bit hard to be portrayed in your columns (Competition 1155, 14 March) as the perpetrator of a feeble rhyme, when my couplet was: There must be very few who can...

Sir: How pleasant to read Christopher Booker's article (7 March) in which he arrives at the conclusion that the present world crisis is a result of the 'growth' economy coming...

Sir: The easy and slightly glib final sentence of John Horam's article (7 March) on Social Democracy suggesting that the Liberals and Social Democrats are 'the best hope in...

Sir: The admission by Taki ('High life', 14 March) that 'I don't listen to modern music, or buy records' is, to mind, disappointing . Having enjoyed his previous attacks on the...

Sir: Gurkhas are not Indian: they are Nepalese. Not only does von Hoffman n° t know this, he doesn't know LiPPrrl ann doesn't know it either, though. in the ad o f praising his...

Misunderstanding Rome Edward Norman The Pope's Divisions: The Roman Catholic Church Today Peter Nichols (Faber and Faber pp. 382, £10) This book is the result of The Times...

Richard West Tito: The Story from Inside Milovan Djiles (Weidenfeld & Nicolson pp. 192, £7.9 5 ) On picking up Milovan Djilas's memoir of Tito, I did not expect to find...

Charles Clover An Open Book John Huston (Macmillan pp. 389, £8.95) One bizarre story shows why the title of this excellent autobio g raphy can be annoyin g . John Huston was in...

Xan Smiley The Last Days of White Rhodesia Denis Hills (Chatto & Windus pp. 187, £8.50) It is strange that no book of much merit has emerged from the war that brought the grim...

Paul Atterbury Life With Lowry Tilly Marshall (Hutchinson pp. 260, £7.95) For many years Tilly Marshall and her husband ran the Stone Gallery in Newcastle on Tyne. Established...

Paul Ableman Other People: A Mystery Story Martin Amis (Cape pp. 224, £5.95) Reviewing Martin Amis is like trying to hear a bird sing in the midst of an artillery duel. 'Most...

Christopher Booker If You gather together in your mind all the grief You have caused to others and concentrate it on Yourself as if those others had inflicted it all on You,...

Authentic? Rodney Milnes Euridice (Musica nel Chiostro, Riverside Studios) L'Africaine (Covent Garden) Jacopo Peres Euridice, the earliest surviving opera, was first given at...

So stale John McEwen Continuous Creation (Serpentine Gallery till 29 March) exhibits the work of five middle-aged, relatively established artists — two English, one German,...

In excess Peter Jenkins The Golden Age (Greenwich) The Crimson Island (Gate) Enjoyment sometimes prevails over one's better critical judgments in the theatre. My tolerance of...

Country life Peter Ackroyd Coal Miner's Daughter (A', selected cinemas) This purports to be the biography of Loretta Lynn, a 'country-and-western' singer; one might as well...

Touché Richard In grams Clive James the burly self-satisfied TV critic of the Observer has hit back at me, following my remarks about his appalling performance on Parkinson....

Roman joke Takt New York My old friend Roman Polanski, the pocket Pole paedophile, is back in the news again. And not because of some hanky panky or a drugs raid. It is...

Well informed Jeffrey Bernard By far the most interesting book to be published so far this year is Persistent POI Offenders: Home Office Research StudY No 66 (Stationery...