Gas and gaiters It is about time that Mrs Thatcher gave the country an Indication of how she thinks things are going and how she noW views our problems. She has been in power...

Political commentary Pat, Mike, Ali and Vidia Ferdinand Mount There is a disc jockey on Radio 2 who introduces the snippets of traffic news with 'Let's see what Pat and Mike...

Notebook ke Sir Anthony Blunt, Dr Andrei Sakharov has been stripped of his titles aid honours, and it would not be surprising if the idiotic Russians indeed regarded him as...

Another voice In the welfare queue Auberon Waugh There are moments in life when the miseries of the world threaten to engulf it, when the precariousness of the human...

The achievement of Tito Richard West Inl the small hours of a January morning in 1950, in Moscow, the secret police chief Abakumov reports to his master Stalin: .. . tie...

War fever in America Nicholas von Hoffman Washington The Iowa caucus results are in, to nobcdy's surprise. In the last days, television had Started to concentrate on Ronald...

From Kabul to Kragujevac John Erickson Just ninety-nine years ago, on 24 January, 1881, to be exact, General M.D. Skobelev, 'Akh-Pasha', or the 'white general', of the...

Messenger from the Desert Stephen Aris For more than a week the People's Congress of the Jamahariya (as Colonel Gaddafi has restyled Libya) had been venting its grievances in...

Olympic confusion Christopher Booker Ten days ago, when the momentum behind the proposed Western boycott of the MosCOW Olympics was just getting under way, I Was called in by...

The decline of the BBC Wilfred De'Ath I was sorry to learn of the death, at a relatively young age, of Sir Charles Curran. He was a man of unimpeachable rectitude who yet...

The irrepressible Beaton Alastair Forbes The children of Broadchalke were let off afternoon school on Wednesday, so that their playground could be pressed into service for...

No flip comment Sir: By referring in his wise and interesting letter (19 January) to my comments on the withdrawal of subsidy from English Music Theatre as 'flip', Sir Rov Shaw...

Opera in Cornwall Sir: Rodney Milnes sniped at Opera 8() in his review of the decade (5 January) in which, quite honestly, he seemed to be struggling for something to say about...

Funny boy Sir: I should like to record the unbounded amusement and delight afforded to my entire family by your 'Postscript' on La Rippon by John McEwen (12 January). Why do...

A loch afore ye go Sir: Loch Drunkie we have; Loch Callander we have not. Could Geoffrey WheatcrOft (Notebook, 12 January) have sipped not wisely but too well from the former...

Kuznetsov and the BBC Sir: In his 'Time to clean up in Neasden' (1 9 January) Mr Waugh displays a lack of accuracy equally typical of that other selfappointed scourge of the...

Letters Russia's stand against Islam Sir: The moral outrage expressed by the West over Afghanistan is surely of a highly questionable nature. Would this country, or indeed the...

Books An architectural dynasty Gavin Stamp Tle Wyatts: An Architectural Dynasty dfOln Martin Robinson (Oxford £25) As the English seem to find architecture and...

Factual orgy Hans Keller Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works Eric Walter White (Faber £13.50) There was a time when I objected to Eric Walter White, much as I liked him...

Aesthetics Benny Green Walter Pater: The Critical Heritage R.M. Seiler (Routledge £1i1.50) When the first-night audience at Patience in 1881 laughed at Lady Saphir's...

Left-overs Paul Ableman Mlonkey Grip Helen Garner (Viraqo 'The noble hero becomes a mass of bodily corruption, his skin putrid with suppurating sores that ooze pus over the...

Dame Rebecca West The following is a summary of a Statement in Open Court made on 21 January 1980, in settlement of an action for damages for libel by Dame Rebecca West (the...

Arts The last frontier Peter Ackroyd Escape from Alcatraz ('AA) The Incredible Hulk ('AA') In Escape firom Alcatraz, Clint Eastwood looks every inch a prisoner: in a...

Theatre Plays without action ram . Peter Jenkins Hlughie (Cottesloe) The Club (Hampstead) Eugene O'Neill's one-acter runs barely an hour and is scarcely more than a dramatic...

Television Speech less I Richard Ingrams I had originally planned to watch only 15 minutes of John Osborne's play You re Not Watching Me Mummy (ITV) before switching over to...

Art Boy wonder John McEwen Preconceptions of the retrospective exhibition of the work of Sir Thomas Lawrence (National Portrait Gallery Exhibition Rooms, 15 Carlton House...

Skiing Alpine attitudes Charles Clover There is little to rival the fear felt by the adult non-skier about to be lured into dangerous altitudes for the first time. For me...

High life Baked beans Taki Dai Llewellyn, the jet set's answer to Joe Valachi, is to be congratulated on his ability to con a newspaper into giving him a five-figure sum for...

Low Ilife Dummies Jeffrey Bernard Last Tuesday BBC-2 showed a good Bryan Forbes film, The Stepford Wives, starring Katherine Ross and Paula Prentiss and damn me if I didn't...

Postscript Domes Patrick Marnham In a country without a government there is a radar station without any staff which has been abandoned by a soldier without a name. The...