'So, Sir, you laugh at schemes of political improvement?' 'Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.' The Scotland Act, which comes before the...

Harden your hearts Auberon Waugh Tring, Hertfordshire Certain great questions of our time are surely best tackled in the serene atmosphere of a Health Resort. A few weeks ago...

Watching Christopher Booker's magnificent television programme about the aestruction of British cities by planners and property developers, I was reminded of a less serious but...

The best laid schemes o' „ • Ferdinand Mount Edinburgh On a grimy wall in Tobago Place there is a big poster of an elderly man pushing a girl in a wheelchair with the slogan...

Hugh Trevor-Roper The referendum is upon us. The Scots — that is, those at present resident in Scotland— are to vote on the Devolution Bill which the Government has contrived...

Leo Abse I plead guilty. Throughout Wales, as in Scotland, the referendum campaigners are stirring. A bemused world, overinstructed in knowledge of our industrial difficulties,...

Lord Carnarvon inquired what precautions the Government had taken to prevent the introduction of the plague, observing that he had a special interest in the question, because he...

Edward Mortimer 'If this trend continues, we shall soon have another Chile in the Middle East.' The comment was volunteered by a middle-aged Iranian standing just in front of...

David Bonavia Hong Kong China's weekend assault on Vietnam was not in itself unexpected: the Peking media had clearly been preparing Chinese and international opinion for it...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington For the nineteenth time in this century, the Mexican and American presidents met. But it wasn't like the first time when William Howard Taft...

Raymond Carr Madrid Have Spaniards become fed up with politics? The elections of 1 March will decide the political future of Spain, yet the politicians are worried by opinion...

Richard West Two questions remain unanswered by Christopher Booker's marvellous TV documentary City of Towers, on the destruction of Britain since the war. Why has it taken ,...

Strange optimism Nicholas Davenport The banks in Iran, they say, are working much more smoothly now that under Islamic law they can charge no interest. Although I was brought...

Do something! Sir: For the past fortnight Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft has been giving your readers his views on the National Union of Journalists, of which he and I are both...

Sir: Mr Peter Nichols writes (3 February): 'Readers of Mr Graham Greene will have no difficulty in recalling that the last priest left alive in Mexico was knocking on a door at...

Sir: Had Mr Andtlew Boyle appreciated what was involved when the BBC decided to start the nation's first daily televised news service, remarks in his review (3 February) of the...

The most abstract city Alex de Jonge Petersburg Andrei Bely Trans. by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad (Harvester £7.50) Boris Bugaev (Bely was a pen-name) initially...

Alan Watkins An End to Promises Douglas Hurd (Collins E4.95) Mr Hurd is by training a diplomat. He was in the Foreign Office from 1952 until 1966. He then joined the...

Hugh Lloyd-Jones Renaissance Latin Verse: An Anthology compiled by Alessandro Perosa and John Sparrow (Duckworth £12) Victorian romanticism looked down its nose upon the Latin...

Benny Green Sinister Street Compton Mackenzie (Macdonald £5.95) The fate of Sinister Street is unique in that its virtues as a novel have been overshadowed by its accidental...

Simon Raven Beckford of Fonthill Brian Fothergill (Faber £13.50) If ever the good fairies blessed a cradle, it was that of William Beckford. Born in 1759 the only son of a...

New College, Oxford. He recently published The Weimar Chronicle and publishers in the autumn a new life of Pete, the Great. Alan Watkins is political columnist of the Observer...

Paul Ableman The Praise Singer Mary Renault (John' Murray £4.95) What was it really like to walk the streets of Periclean Athens or Augustan Rome? Without benefit of time-warp,...

(Harvester £4.95) I wondered whether a plot summary of Hasen (the word is the German for hares) would be unfair, since the book's method is to plunge you into a vivid and earthy...

'A pleasant evening' Rodney Milnes Die Zauberflote (Covent Garden) Dido and Aeneas, Les MameIles de Tiresias (Coliseum) The provenance of the Royal Opera's new Flute is of...

Devilment Peter Jenkins The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (Round House) Independence (Bush) Madness was Gilbert Pinfold's ordeal. During a voyage to Ceylon the ageing writer —...

Subversion Ted Whitehead Behind Convent Walls (Eros Piccadilly) The Hills Have Eyes (Classics) Libertarians could hardly ask for a more lighthearted and graceful ally than...

Illusions Richard Ingrams In my early days as a viewer I used to watch Panorama (BBC-1) regularly on Monday night. The attraction of the programme had something to do with the...

Victory Alan Gibson There is always satisfaction in winning a rubber against Australia, even if there is always some reason for starting apologizing immediately afterwards...

Cocks only Taki New York Such is the hunger here for information concerning the innermost secrets of the British upper classes that Esquire the magazine that is the arbiter...

Drink up Jeffrey Bernard I just can't let it pass without comment. That the sheer horror of it should have driven A uberon Waugh to prayer and d ragged James Cameron back to...

Busk off Geoffrey Wheatcroft If Time Out did not exist it would be a brave man who tried to invent it. It comes into that special category, which Mr Malcolm Muggeridge once...

No. 153: Talking shop Set by A.J. Wyborn: Competitors are asked to choose, from different authors, two characters who occupy the same job or position (e.g. Shakespeare's Quince...

Seminars David Levy In last week's Spectator I explained one of My suggestions for making tournaments more interesting for the chess public. In this week's column I shall...