The plight of the Vietnamese refugees, the 'boat people', raises several important questions. It was inevitable that the Government should be criticised for what appeared to be...

Ferdinand Mount There is only one man in it. Not since Mr Gladstone barnstormed Midlothian (all right then, you try and think of another parallel), has a single individual so...

lit was only a few months ago that we were having lunch in Doughty Street to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Nicholas DavenPort's City Column. To have survived 25 Years on the...

A wicked thing Auberon Waugh MR SCOTT: I pretended I was the son of the Earl of Eldon. MR CARMAN QC:: Do you think that was a wicked thing? MR SCOTT: Yes I do, but I have...

Luigi Barzini Rome It is tempting (and possibly deceptive) for an Italian to see the slow process of European coagulation as similar to the gestation of Italian unity, which...

Sam White Paris Only in France does the political landscape promise to be different after the European election than it was before. That is because instead of being the...

Tim Garton Ash Hamburg The chairman of the Conservative Group for Europe has been supporting the European election campaign of the Christian Democrat Party (cm) in Hamburg. Mr...

What would be the effect of sending all Indian opium as Government property to England every month, and selling it here instead of in Calcutta by auction for export to China?...

Peter Nichols Rome Poor Columbus set off for the Spice Islands and encountered America. Who knows what the Italians will find when they set off for Strasbourg in the belief...

Roger Berthoud It remains an article of faith among Eurobelievers that the new European Parliament, to be elected between 7 and 10 June, will be qualitatively superior and...

Peter Hebblethwaite So, at last, Pope John Paul H flies off home to Poland this weekend. The Polish government dithered about the visit, delayed it to avoid the politically...

David Levy • Calgary, Alberta “He's from Alberta but he can't ride a , horse,' growled a defeated Albertan . Cabinet Minister as he prepared to go back • to raising beef cattle...

John Morgan The shoot out was at high noon in Carmarthen, Merlin's town, for the Labour nomination for the Mid and West Wales constituency: six of us to appear out of the 28...

Anthony Mockler The Ecology Party suffers, as one of its leading members admits, from a 'severe image problem'. It is largely the word ecology itself that is at fault:...

No mellowing with age The Reverend Ian Kyle Paisley is generally regarded as the arch-bigot, the personification of the type of bull-necked Ulsterman whose uncompromising...

Richard West Bloomsbury 24 May. Tartan-clad roisterers spotted in Holborn. Recall meeting Jeffrey Bernard this time two years ago in a pub in Soho. Inquired why he had a black...

Nicholas Davenport Climb up out of Oxford, west over Cumnor Hill; take roads that wind, and lanes that seem to lead nowhere; lose your way, turn once more — and suddenly you...

Sir: I have only just seen your leading article of 19 May. As an ordinary backbencher I am flattered by the attention you pay me; but I confess that I find your conclusions a...

Sir: David J. Levy does well (19 May) I° distinguish the Tory from the Liberal elements in the make-up of the Conserva tive Party. But he should beware of going too far with...

Sir: Sir Cecil Parrott's assumption that no one read George Eliot before Professor Leavis 'rehabilitated' her in 1948 is parrotted nonsense, and reveals the depths into which...

Sir: With respect to Mr Christopher Walker's most interesting article, 'The new Irish terrorism', those who suggest the application of stronger measures against the Provisional...

Sir: Mr Ernest W. Bacon's letter 'True poetry' (14 April) takes me a long way back to my early schooldays when 'free verse' was a lively issue with the jingle-rhyme brigade of a...

Sir: John McEwen in the review of Morris Louis paintings at our gallery states 'and the stripes, imposed upon him by the critic Clement Greenberg and not his thing at all'....

Sir: In his essay of 19 May on Conservatism, David J. Levy, in contrasting freedom and order, associates Hayek exclusively with those who emphasise the former. He thereby (no...

Sir: Dr Witton-Davies (Letters, 12 May) does not seem to have read my letter (5 May) very carefully. In no part of it did I state that Transjordan was not under British mandate...

Edward Mortimer The Palestine Triangle Nicholas Bethell (Deutsch £7.95) Zionism and the Palestinians Simha Flapan (C room Helm £11.95) A Moment of Silence Simon Louvish...

John Scott China: The People's Republic, 1949-1976 Jean Chesneaux (Harvester £12.50) On the cover of this third volume in a modern Chinese history series, the author, Professor...

David Levy Beyond Reason Margaret Trudeau (Paddington £5.50) If it was the German philosophers who dived the deepest and came up the mud diest, the errant wife of the Canadian...

Elisabeth Whipp London Pride: The Story of the London Hospital A. E. Clark-Kennedy (Hutchinson Benham £3.50) The winter of 1740 was appalling. The Thames froze over. In the...

Paul Ableman Kindly Light A. N. Wilson (Secker £4.50) I enthused mightily about A.N. Wilson's first novel The Sweets o fPimlico, missed the second and now, confronted with his...

Hans Keller This Saturday morning, 2 June, at 11.00 a.”1. at the Bath Festival, the Chilingirian Quartet's recital will include Benjamin Brit ten's Third String Quartet. Radio...

Morality play Peter Jenkins Measure for Measure (Riverside Studios) Peter Gill's interpretation of Measure for Measure sets itself against the fashion. The play is a can of...

Faithful Rodney Milnes Fidelio (Glyndebourne) I suppose the last great staging of Fidelio that any of us saw was Wieland Wagner' s ' which could hardly be more different from...

Tasty bit Ted Whitehead Nosferatu — The Vampyre (Gate, Notting Hill) The Muppet Movie (Leicester Square Theatre) Nosferatu — the Vampyre (X) is, I am told, adapted from Bram...

Totemic John McEwen On the basis of the Cyril Connolly test, that if a work of art stands on its merits after ten years then it must be of some significance, Allen Jones...

Euro-ugh Richard Ingrams 'The weak die early,' wrote R. L. Steven' son, 'and the survivors amid howling wind and pumping rain are sometinle s , tempted to envy them their...

Rose by any other name... Alan Gibson A very funny thing happened at Worcester on 24 May. There had been no play. because of rain, on the first day of the match between...

No jeans Taki New York When I read recently that El Morocco was about to close after 45 years at the top, it was like watching part of New York float away. El Morocco was...

Block busting Jeffrey Bernard I have recently had a sneak preview of two monstrously long and tedious novels. They weren't sent to me for review, they were given to me by a...

Liberties Geoffrey Wheatcroft Poor Voltaire. Last year saw the 200th a nniversary of his death. He deserved better of posterity, especially in his admired ngland. As it is,...