Groups of public employees have, for the last two months, been inflicting wanton hardship. These people are not the most popular section of the community: they are regarded with...

The Knights purse their lips Ferdinand Mount At its last gasp, this Parliament has suddenly taken it into its head to reform itself. The audacity, the improbability of the...

There is plenty of trouble at the BBC over the decision to reduce still further its coverage of current affairs on television. Newsday disappeared last year from BBC-2 (now...

Auberon Waugh For twenty-five years since the death of the second duke in 1953, the dukedom of Westminster has been effectively in abeyance. From 1953 to 1963 the title was...

Peter Nichols Mexico City I had temporarily left Rome and heard the first reports of the likely fall of the Italian government by radio at a mission-station administered by...

The Irish Members, though not always the most temperate of critics, are very sensitive to criticism. The Times of Tuesday happened to say that in the debates on the Rules of...

Dilip Hiro Despite five days of intense talks in the seclusion of Camp David, the Egyptian and Israeli negotiators failed to reach an agreement on the peace treaty. The...

Sam White Paris If it had been left to the French Government and its powerful ally, the newspaper magnate and owner of Figaro M. Robert Hersant, then Holocaust would never have...

Edward Marston West Berlin The third name on the Bavarian CSU's list of candidates for the European Parliament is somehow familiar. It is Franz Joseph Otto von Habsburg. The...

David Steel The recent shooting down of a second Viscount airplane by Joshua Nkomo's ZAK.") forces, and the subsequent Rhodesian airstrikes on guerrilla bases in neighbouring...

Janis Sapiets As the tiny Twin-Otter plane, which was taking me from Boston to New Hampshire and Vermont, flew over the snow-covered farmlands and forests beneath, I began to...

Marcel Berlins The stock response to suggestions that the reporting of committal proceedings could prejudice a subsequent jury trial has been that, even if a juror had read...

Christopher Booker If you put a saucepan full of boiling water out onto the icepack at the North Pole, it will not of course be long before you have a saucepan full of ice. The...

Simon Jenkins 'Sex fiend murders girl', 'Wonder bra! Stop-go lights will, show time to have a baby', 'Picture exclusive — the Magnificent bitch', 'Build a better bosom', 'The...

Nicholas Davenport Your Royal Highness, we are all delighted that you do not live in an ivory tower but we are not so happy to see you walking about factory floors and...

Sir: What Roger Berthoud calls a 'growing level of agreement between proand antiMarketeers' is entirely the result of proMarketeers like himself coming to realise the truth of...

Sir: Christine Verity's stimulating review (Private bar', 3 February), which I have only belatedly read, prompts me to make one observation regarding the public image of the...

Sir: I found your editorial of 10 February 'Racial hatred and free speech' most disturbing, not so much because of your opposition to the Race Relations law —in that you have...

Sir: As someone connected with the Chopin Society since its inception, I was surprised that you published the letter (17 February) from Elma Dangerfield, director of the Byron...

Sir: Readers of the four volume life of Richard Wagner by Earnest Newman, his devoted admirer, know that this musical genius Was not nice. This nasty truth is not dispelled by...

Sir: May I be allowed to express my amusement at the apparent discomfort of The Times management who have felt it necessary to defend their recent actions against statements...

Anthony Storr The Sense of Order E.H. Gombrich (Phaidon £15) This splendidly-produced book is designed as a companion to Art and Illusion and deserves to be as widely read as...

John Grigg Edward VII: Prince & King Giles St Aubyn (Collins £1 0) In the short preface to his new book Giles St Aubyn says that 'Edward VII has been fortunate in his...

Nicolas Barker The Comely Frontispiece M. Corbett and R.W. Lightbown (Routledge £11.95) The Duke of Burgundy is in council. To him enters Rouge Sanglier, the specious herald of...

John Scott Broken Images: Essays on Chinese Cul ture and Politics Simon Leys, Trans. Steve Cox (Allison and Busby £6.95) On 4 January the Renmin Ribao (People's Daily)...

In the issue of the Spectator dated 17 February 1979 our television critic, Richard Ingrams, in the course of a review of the recent Granada programme containing an interview...

Mary Kenny Maud Gonne: Lucky Eyes and a High Heart Nancy Cardozo (Gollancz £7.50) This is the second biography of the Irish patriot, beauty and femme inspiratrix within the...

Francis King Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass Bruno Schulz (Hamish Hamilton £5.95) A Polish friend recently told me that Bruno Schulz's was 'a name to conjure with'....

Fiction Penguin have issued six books by Isaac Bashevis Singer The Manor (£1.25), A Friend of Kafka {95p), The Estate (£1.25), Enemies (95p), A Crown of Feathers and Other...

Richard West The English journalist is briefing Pyle, the Quiet American. in Vietnam 25 year ago. I began, while he watched me intently like a prize pupil, by explaining the...

John McEwen 'Outsiders' (Hayward till 8 April) is officially described as an exhibition of art `without precedent or tradition'. Dubuffet was the first person to collect this...

Peter Jenkins The Long Voyage Home (Cottesloe ) Flashpoint (Mayfair) You have to settle down to Eugene O'Neill like three-day cricket: then the slowness becomes a virtue. The...

Ted Whitehead The Deer Hunter (ABC, Shaftesbury Avenue ) Towards the end of The Deer Hunter (X), Mike (Robert De Niro) plays a game of Russian roulette with his buddy Nick...

Rodney Milnes Le Chanson de Fortunio and M Chouf leuri (WNO, Leicester) La Reich°le (Singers' Company, Riverside Studios) The humour of Offenbach and his librettists at their...

Richard Ingrams Alan Bennett who appeared with his director colleague Stephen Frears on the South Bank Show (LW!') was quite unrepentant about his terrible play The Old Crowd,...

Taki New York People Weekly is America's, or rather Time Incorporated's answer to Nigel Dempster. Since it began publishing five years ago this week, People has sold 465...

Jeffrey Bernard The old barmaid in the Lambourn Lion dished me out some very lyrical stuff the other day which set me thinking. She was talking about the good old days v. the...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft For some, I suppose, February was the cruellest month, what with children turned away from school by picketing caretakers (though I don't imagine the...

No. 1054: Musa geriatrica Set by E.O. Parrott : Competitors are asked for verses (up to 16 lines) suitable for inclusion in When We Are Very Old or Now We Are Eighty-Six....

Raymond Keene Korchnoi was certainly treated shabbily when the Soviets reinstated Dr Zukhar in the fourth row of the auditorium for game 32 of the World Championship, but it is...