Many years ago a Foreign Office diplomatist remarked (to Mr A. J. P. Taylor) that there had only been one question in British foreign policy for a century: whether to go with...

A man of sensitivity Ferdinand Mount And how, as Crossbencher would say, does Mr Enoch Powell feel this May morning as he props his Propertius against the Weetabix? Why, he...

Is God a Tory after all? Awaiting the May Day Holiday not even the most vengeful reactionary could have expected such divine retribution to be visited upon Mr Foot's impudent...

The baby famine Auberon Waugh I don't suppose many babies were conceived last Monday. Since time immemorial, May Day has been honoured with pagan rites and dances,...

Judith Acton Byron Hove comes from a large and iesPected family in the Belingwe district of Rhodesia. He was the first African President of the Student Union at Rhodesia's...

Richard West Paris As usual it was on the boat from Dover to Calais that I once again remembered Sterne's immortal judgment that they manage things better in France — this time...

George Gale Relations between Labour left-wingers and the country's civil and military defence chiefs have never been worse. They are never much good; but last week the Prime...

Christopher Booker What is the single most remarkable thing Which has happened to these islands in the past twe.nty years? Arguably, it is the quite astonishing transformation...

Dennis Kavanagh What are we to make of the latest clutch of by-elections? The interviewer asks the pundit and party spokesman the inevitable questions, and is rewarded by the...

Jude Wanniski Remember the good old days, when your breakfast news was not cluttered with routine reports on the price of gold and nervous items about plunging dollars and...

Tide turning? Nicholas Davenport If workers were delighted at getting an extra holiday this week they will be less delighted later on this year at getting a lot more. For we...

Sir: It is a curious contemporary British Illusion that the views of epigoni such as Mr Booker and Miss Gainham deserve more notice by the public than those of people Who lived...

Sir: I write to you on the subject of Mr Mockler's article, `The Kremlin comes to London', published in your issue of 22 April. Might I ask Mr Mockler, through you, what he...

Sir: Poor June Laid Her article (1 April) indicates her discovery that the subject she teaches is a `ragbag of ideas': Having fled into social policy from the practicalities of...

Sir: Eliot would have known 'A mis soledades voy...' as the epigraph of Pound's The condolence' (1915). If he indeed wrote `me bastan' in Mr Duncan's blurb, he was tuscanising...

Sir: As a Ukrainian who never served in any German formation during the war and who became an officer in the Canadian Army after it was over, and as an outspoken critic of the...

Sir: On reading Richard Clutterbuck's enlightening article (22 'April) on the . similarities betWeen the Red Brigades and the Red Army Fraction, I found it necessary to ponder...

Sir: Richard Ingrams (22 April) is quite right to criticise the Cross Question programme in which two atheists discussed the question whether Christianity was a Good or a Bad...

Restlessness and triumph Benny Green The Letters of Charles Dickens: Volume Four: 1846 - 48 Edited by Kathleen Tillotson (Oxford E20) There must be a great many Dickensians...

Alastair Forbes Conversations with Willie: Recollections of W. Somerset Maugham Robin Maugham (W. H. Allen £5.00) 'Fifty years, it's a very long time,' remarked Willie...

Geoffrey McDermott The Goebbeis Diaries Edited and intro duced by Hugh Trevor-Roper (Secker £7.50) This hobgoblin, who came into the world scarce half made-up, left it after...

Thomas Balogh Monetarism Tim Congdon (Centre for Policy Studies 0.75) Nothing illustrates the swiftness of change in economic fashions (or should one say religions?) than the...

John Kenyon The Dissenters: from the Reformation to the French Revolution Michael R. Wafts (Oxford £15.00) Considering the imporance of the pis: senting tradition in English...

George Gale The Twilight of the Young Klaus Mehnert (Secker £6.90) Britain in Agony Richard Clutterbuck (Faber £6.95) There are many kinds of violence. Only one of them — the...

P hilip Hope-Wallace Shton Eric Underwood (Batsford £5.95) Elst Sussex: A Shell Guide (Faber £4.50) S ussex by the sea and all that can be a bit of a bore. Too much about prep...

Emma Fisher Reading some poetry magazines is a bit like going to jumble sales. You have to disentangle each object mentally from it surroundings -often dreary and ask yourself...

Francis King Lancelot Peter Vansittart (Peter Owen £5.95) Don 0 Jose Lopez Portillo (James Clarke £4.20) Any novelist who concludes the last sentence of his book with a...

Goosey Goosey Brander Germaine Greer Brand (National Theatre) Audiences of the Seventies are quite used to productions in which scenes and machines completely steal the show....

Annie lives Stanley Reynolds One of the great mysteries of American popular culture has been whether Harold Gray was serious. That is to say was 'Little Orphan Annie' for...

Sex-ethic Ted Whitehead Al No Corrlda (Gate) The American Friend (Gate 2) There is no finer si g ht than that of a married couple makin g love. If you a g ree with that idea...

Back to earth Patrick Marnham In April 1870 the Spectator reported a political demonstration held in Trafalgar Square. 'A number of poor persons calling themselves the Land...

Red and blue Richard Ingrams The BBC have launched yet anoth . e„ r series about 'what really happened' in dry ferent situations called Inside Story. 1.11 . e first programme...

Off the game Taki While the British press is busy speculating over the coming elections and the Lib-Lab pact one more British institution has flown the coop. This time it is...

Around town Jeffrey Bernard Circumstance plus an inaccurate watch had me waiting for someone for a solid halfhour last Monday at the entrance of Earls Court tube station. If...