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Political commentary Unfair to hooligans Ferdinand Mount The contest for Britain's Most Unfashionable Cause alwavs used to be a walkover for the Ulster Protestants. Alone of...

Notebook Those people who decided - mistakenly, but the deed is done now - to go to Moscow for the Olympics are by all accounts enjoying an Outstandingly well organised...

Another voice Bouncer, Puss and Spiderman Auberon Waugh 'It is the little people. the nobodies like me who are always in the wrong. They are always the same, these so-called...

Electing Premier Whatsisname Murray Sayle Tokvo The )lot so Jar:- Ten weeks (Igo 69 treaclierois Jap)alnes politi cians brought down Prinme Minister Masavoshi Ohira by...

III wind in Jamaica Richard West Kingston, Jamaica On the morning I left Miami, that city was back to what the papers called 'peace, with only sporadic sniper fire and...

Ford 'endorses' Reagan Nicholas von Hoffman '(ashlitiglol Too bad. The nomination of Gerald Ford for the vice-prcsidcncy would have given the Reagan ticket much-needed youth...

Observer on the roof Peter Paterson In the dying days of the old News Chronicle. it is said, the management was thrashing around for ways of reviving the paper and came up...

Three sides to the border Charles Clover South Fermanagh When I left Belfast for Fermanagh on the eve of Orange Day, the Union flags had been hanging outside most Protestant...

A kind of hysteria Brian Inglis %When 300 people, mostly children, collapsed with what was described as a mystery illness at an open-air jazz contest, it should nimediately...

Sir: May I thank you for Jeffrey Meyers's deeply interesting review of Gurdjieff and Mansfield, by James Moore (12 July)? This book clearly merited detailed treatment, for the...

Advertising standards Sir: Patrick Marnham (Postscript, 12 July) misrepresents both the substance of the complaint made to the Advertising Standards Authority about a recent...

Reverend Philip Potter Sir: I refer to the article contained in your issue of 12 July headed 'Peter Walker's Worcester' by Richard West. In the first paragraph we read: 'Last...

News from paradise Sir: A cutting from your issue of 17 May has been sent to me. This was a 'winner' in your competition for an extract from a travel brochure of the future of...

Sir: Jeffrey Meyers dislikes my book Gurd- jieff and Mansfield and is entitled to say so. But did I detect the slightest morsel of personal animus in his review (12 July)?...

Saving grace Sir: Mr Ingrams's faults as a television critic are doubtless many, and not to be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Had he not the one surpassing excellence of...

Letters Gurdjieff and Mansfield Sir: Jeffrey Meyer's review of James Moore's Gurdjieff and Mansfield (12 July) might well be preserved as an object lesson in how not to...

Books The drunkard and the hero Richard West The Oak and the Calf Aleksandr I. Sol- zhenitsyn (Collins/Harvill £8.95) Few westerners at the Olympic Games are likely to...

More light than warmth? Philip Magnus Raymond Asquith: Life and Letters John Jolliffe (Collins £10.95) Raymond Asquith, eldest of the five sons and two daughters of the...

Scotch genius - Benny Green -w RI.S: A Life Studv Jenni Calder (Hamish H'amilton £9.95) Mi5s Calder insists that her book is not a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson but a...

Great churches Gavin Stamp English Cathedrals: The Forgotten Cen- turies Gerald Cobb (Thames & Hudson Thc sub-sub-titlc of this very special book is Recstoratioln and...

D.N.I. Philip Warner Very Special Admiral: The Lifeof AdmiralJ. H. Godfrey C.B. Patrick Beesly (Harnisn Hamilton £9.95) Some who played a vital part in the seCOnd World war...

Adult children Paul Ableman Fictional Lives Hugh Fleetwood (Hamish Hamilton £6.50) The title, Fictional Lives, is an oxymoron. Presumiably Mr Fleetwood intended it to...

Cinema A bad joke Peter Ackroyd The Secret Policeman's Ball ('AA' selected cinemas) Perhaps The Secret Policeman's Ball iS meant to be unfunny; its title sounds like the...

Arts A remarkable man Peter Jenkins Elephant Man (Lyttelton) A Lesson from Aloes (Cottesloe) There is no telling what may happen to a play in a theatre. Happily or...

Art On the move John McEwen As everyone interested must know by now the Arts Council (formerly CEMA) has since 1942 supported painters and sculptors by buying their work....

Television Early closing Richard Ingrams It is funny how the attitude to lame ducks varies according to the duck's status. Almost everyone one talks to is indignant about the...

High life Unmentionable Taki Back in 1959, when I was 22 years old I met my first Iranian. Although this might Sound odd, do not forget that Iran had never been heard of...

Postscript Mind-control Patrick Marnham Watching the Moscow Olympics through the jaundiced eyes of the TV news reporters one sees rather more than they intend. It is clear...

Low life Testing I P. Jeffrey Bernard SefPty boredom and impatience are only nS being kept at bay. I've been sitting in i Y de room in the John Radcliffe Hospital aring Out...