have been dominated ever I since the war by the efforts of democrats to exclude the Communists from power. The cost of keeping the country's second largest political party in...

The second round of French National Assembly elections confirmed an overall win for M Mitterrand's Socialist Party. However M Mitterrand decided to appoint four Communists to...

Who's swamping now? Ferdinand Mount Lord Scarman sits like an angular cherub, hunched into his dark suit as though the room was cold for June, like an old person (he is...

Towards apartheid Auberon Waugh The inspiration behind the Rampton Committee of Inquiry into what is euphemistically called the 'under-achievement' of West Indian pupils in...

Torn Bethel" Washington The central problem of our era i's the collision of inflation and the progressivity of tax systems.' So wrote Jude Wanniski, the author of The Way the...

Sam White Paris The scale of the Socialist victory in the French General Election following its victory in the Presidential one is now on such a scale that it even has some of...

Roger Cooper The most surprising aspect of Abolhasan Bani-Sadr's political demise is not that the Majlis has declared him 'politically incompetent' and that Ayatollah Khomeini...

Andrew Brown Helsinki The boats that ply between Stockholm and Helsinki exhibit all the characteristic features of a Scandinavian state. They are clean, hygienic, and full of...

Jo Grtmond The Liberal and Social Democratic parties have now issued a joint Statement of Principles, carrying their collaboration to a new stage. They must now set about...

Richard West Warrington The Editor-in-Chief of the Warrington Guardian, Trevor Buckley, writes on the front page of the current issue: 'Only Week Two of the preliminaries to...

Donald Gould The British Medical Association has just published a revised edition of The Handbook of Medical Ethics, which is a 100-page guide to the way doctors should behave....

Matthew Stevenson On board Queen Elizabeth 2 On the first evening of the crossing from New York to Southampton, I was standing at the port railing, wondering about the lights...

A very remarkable swindle has been exposed at Melbourne, by the Government of Victoria. An audacious person, of the name of Walker, engaged a year or two ago the steamship...

Keeping the readers satisfied Paul Johnson We all know about the Page Three girl in the Sun, but what about Page Three in the Daily Telegraph? One reason why the Telegraph...

Flaming June Tony Rudd Once again investors are left with an uneasy feeling in the middle of June that it might have been better to have sold in May and gone away. By so doing...

Sir: Tony Rudd's piece (13 June) attributing the recent collapse of sterling to the emergence of Mr Benn is pure fantasy. If he really believes that investors have sold sterling...

Sir: While putting Auberon Waugh up with Richard Ingrams near the top of my list of 'great journalists of all time', 1 think that both suffer from the weakness of not living in...

Sir: The Royal bride's maternal grandmother threatens to boycott the wedding if novelist Barbara Cartland is there (Notebook, 6 June); the lady, together with others, would do...

Sir: For the third week running Richard Ingrams has told us why he did not watch Gay Life. Homosexuality seems to obsess hint and to distort his judgment even to the point where...

Sir: Richard West (6 June) sympathises with Canterbury as 'a saddening town, much of its old glory ruined by bombs and property men'. Certainly there have been lamentable...

Sir: Much could be written about the recent history of Argentina, and doubtless some of it would be very harrowing and gruesome. But to suggest, as does Nicholas von Hoffman...

Not entirely as other men John Hackett Monty Nigel Hamilton (Hamish Hamilton pp. 870, £12) Monty, for most of the millions of people to whom he was later to become an object...

Chrtstopher Booker Red Shelley Paul Foot (Sidgwick and Jackson, in association with Michael Dempsey Publications, pp. 293, £12.95, paperback 0.95). Paul Foot's Red Shelley...

C. H. Sisson The Botsford Book of Religious Verse Elizabeth Jennings (Botsford pp. 92, £595) 'One does not have to be in love to watch or read Romeo and Juliet or Chaucer's...

Paul Ableman Byzantium Endures Michael Moorcock (Seeker & Warburg pp. 400, £6.95) This novel, narrated in the first person, raises an ethical problem. Michael Moorcock, in the...

Harriet Waugh Base Case Julian Rathbone (Michael Joseph pp. 187, £6.50) Once a Spy Rennie Airth (Jonathan Cape pp. 245, £6.50) Going for Gold Emma Lathen (Victor Gollancz pp....

James Hughes-Onslow An Actor and His Time John Gielgud (Penguin pp. 229, £1.50). Listeners to Gielgud's off-thecuff radio talks may have thought they had been taken in by his...

Romantic isolation John McEwen The fact that the Modigliani retrospective currently to be seen at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (till 28 June) is only the...

Such dexterity Mark Amory The Shoemaker's Holiday (Olivier) The Worlds (New Half Moon) While the other shoemakers are still at work, one of them, who has been to the wars in...

Tinsel town Peter Ackroyd The Last Metro ('A', Curzon) As the credits unroll, Edith Piaf is singing one of her vibrant, throaty songs; it makes you feel warm and nostalgic all...

Figments Richard Ingram The pagan soul', writes Evelyn Waugh, 'has been compared to a bird flying through a lighted hall and out into the darkness. Better, to be a bird...

The brothers Takt In March 1963 four young Greeks and an older one went to Dublin. It was the first time Greece had entered the Davis Cup competition since pre-war days, and...

Low life Puffed up Jeffrey Bernard Readers of this and Taki's column are warmly invited to a party at Kettner's in Greek Street on Friday, 26 June to launch our book, High...