A .22 bullet is a small object, but had the one which struck President Reagan been an inch or so lower and more centrally placed it would have hit his heart rather than his lung...

What could be more exciting than a battle of wills between the country's two leading ladies, Mrs Thatcher and the Queen! Such a battle has just taken place, and the Prime...

Of spies and social democrats Ferdinand Mount Niceness, says the Prime Minister sounding Passably like Nurse Cavell, is not enough. ,No, but it makes a change. Besides, if you...

Henry Fairlie Washington The Washington Hilton hotel is more or less' round the corner from my home. Shortly after 2.30 p.m. on Monday, I was settling, down to compose an essay...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Much progress has been made: the films of the shooting of President Ronald Reagan are much clearer than those of the killing of President John...

The Temperance movement appears to be making a real impression on the consumption of alcoholic drinks in England. In The Times of Tuesday, Mr Hoyle has shown that the...

Tim Garton Ash Berlin Poland seems once again to have stepped back from the brink of the abyss. Last Friday saw the largest ever strike in the history of the Communist world....

Richard West Zagreb Recent events in Poland have overshadowed the scarcely less bitter quarrel, here in Croatia, between a Communist state and a largely Catholic people; but...

Sam. White Paris About this time seven years ago — that is to Say about one month before the last P r esidential elections — there was a strong Whiff of financial panic in the...

Wilfred De'Ath High anxiety engulfs me once again as I press the first five bell-pushes more or less simultaneously and wait for the jangle of voices, mostly foreign. But one...

The Chapman's Tale Paul Johnson If MIS cannot keep a secret, evidently the publishing world can. The Sidgwick and Jackson — Daily Mail publication of Chapman Pincher's...

The banks' dilemma To Rudd Mrs Thatcher's government now have another small but powerful group of enemies, namely the chairmen of the clearing banks, upon whom Sir Geoffrey...

Sir: Alexander Chancellor's report (21 March) of the vile treatment of a 20-yearold student by a London branch of the Midland Bank forcibly takes me back to the Oxford 01 1946,...

Sir: In his article (`The flight from paradise', 14 March) Bohdan Nahaylo suggests that two-thirds of the Jews who have left the USSR since 1970 have preferred not to settle in...

Sir: Edward Norman states in his review of The Pope's Divisions by Peter Nichols that the Archbishop had been a persistent supporter of Marxist revolutionary groups (21 March)....

Sir: The trouble with the obnoxiously acerbic Auberon Waugh ('Against the disabled,' 21 March) is whether to take him seriously or not. If he is, in fact, a handicapped person...

Sir: The riposte from Alexander Chancellor (14 March) to my letter has fallen right into the pit. For his information, and Your readers', the facts are: (a) I did not walk out...

Writers and Spies Y , L ADIMIR VOLKOFF, a French writer, of Russian descent, is the author of The ' b l o wil-sround (to be published on 9 April by The Bodley Head); a story...

Anthony Storr Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton Richard S. Westfall (Cambridge University Press pp.908, £25) Isaac Newton is generally acknowledged to have been one of...

Horror show Christopher Booker The Radiant Future Alexander Zinoviev (Bodley Head pp.288, £7.50) 'The lack of bitter experience of people in the West' Vladimir Bukovsky...

Ronald Hingley I sabel in the Age of Catherine the Great ,sabel de Madariaga (Weidenfeld and Nicolson pp. 698, £20) This is an exhaustive study of a key period in Russia's...

Caroline Moorehead Flora Annie Steel: Novelist of India Violet Powell (Heinemann pp. 170, £8.50) Flora Steel made the right decision when she agreed to marry a man she barely...

No jokes Paul Ableman Cities of the Red Night William S. 13 t 11.roughs (John Calder pp. 332, £9.95) Twenty years ago, William Burroughs pub,lished the most brilliant satire...

Stars and stripes John McEwen The October Gallery is becoming quite a force on the London scene: a novel gallery — it offers cheap and wholesome food and stages all kinds of...

Stirring it up Peter Ackroyd Stir Crazy ('AA', selected cinemas) Gene Wilder has become . famous for the noises he makes. They veer from outraged screaming, like that of an...

Box of tricks Richard Ingrams Humphrey Burton's latest operatic bonanza, a performance of La Traviata br oadcast live from New York was interrupted by an interesting Arena...

Gloomy point Alan Gibson The tour of the West Indies has so far been a disaster. I am not referring to the cricketing results. We could not be seriously expected to win...

Without reason Taki New York My old friend Randall Crawley recently gave a dinner here in New York in honour of Olivier Chandon, whose father owns a champagne. Randall chose...

Flat people Jeffrey Bernard The flat racing season got off to a rath er slow start for me. The 9.35 from K ings !, Cross wasn't the right train to ger tac Doncaster. All the...