17 FEBRUARY 1990, page 30

Compromise

0 nce upon a time, in a far-off mount- ain country, there lived, quite unaware of each other, a hunter and a bear. It was late autumn, almost winter, and the hunter needed a fur......

Not A Passionate Pansy, More A Dopey Daffodil

Duncan Fallowell GINSBERG by Barry Miles Viking, £20, pp.588 W ith the Beats — Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, William Bur- roughs — the process of derangement and......

Grounds For Cautious Optimism

Robert Oakeshott HIGHER THAN HOPE: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY OF NELSON MANDELA by Fatima Meer Hamish Hamilton, £15.99, pp. 425 I f Nelson Mandela was an Afrikaner rather than an......