There's trouble in the air at the United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. The problem lies not in some arcane policy quarrel with the State Department back home, but much closer to hand: with Britain's Inland Revenue in pursuit of back taxes owed by the Embassy's 300 British employees.

It is was not just what the judgment said, it was also the way that it said it. Lord Justice Simon Brown and Mr Justice Popplewell, sitting in the Queen's Bench Divisional Court, yesterday delivered their verdict on those ports and authorities that had stopped their facilities being used for live animal exports. The terms in which the judgment is couched make it one of the most political in recent legal history.

EATON SQUARE SW1, the spiritual centre of the Grosvenor Estate, where a short lease on a two-bedroom flat can cost pounds 1.25m, is nice to film in. It's what people describe as 'very English' - a euphemism for posh - and is actually rather film-settish. Uniform cream stucco facades, black doors and ironwork, lots of service extras quietly busying around - chauffeurs, Filipino helps, plumbers who look as if they've done apprenticeships. It all creates an impression of unnatural, un-English order, as if - you can't help thinking - the place was privately policed.

WE NEED look no further than the Queen's official birthday, which she celebrated yesterday, for a vivid reminder that she is not like us. We are not allowed a second birthday, and certainly not on a date of our choosing.

I thought you were dead. Before last week I only knew you as an obscure reference in a Pink Floyd song and an optimist waiting for another encounter, some sunny day. But suddenly you are all over the media and, if you don't mind me saying, looking remarkably good for your age.

DAVID IRVING, the extreme right-wing author and apologist for Hitler, was released on appeal by the High Court in London yesterday after serving 10 days of a three- month sentence for contempt.

SIX policemen were injured outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square yesterday when a protest against a US raid on supporters of General Mohammed Farah Aideed in Mogadishu turned violent. Nine of the group - made up mostly of Somalis living in London - were detained for questioning, writes Rhys Williams.

WAS it really all so vital, so hopeful, so different from any other year? The English middle- class students copying their Paris comrades in college and art school protests against 'repressive tolerance' through the summer and autumn of 1968 would have liked to think so. But there was an air of instant mythologising that seemed unconvincing even at the time.

Patsy Bloom, head of Pet Plan, a pet insurance firm, with dogs in Grosvenor Square, London, yesterday after being named Businesswoman of the Year. She founded Pet Plan with a pounds 250 loan in 1977 after finding no one to insure her dog. It now has a turnover of pounds 20m.

TWENTY-FIVE years ago yesterday, thousands of demonstrators marched on London's Grosvenor Square to protest against the war in Vietnam. It was the iconic event of the British Sixties for the generation that was going to change the world. Power to the People] It was instant ideology you could pin on your sleeve, but better than no myth at all; everyone who was anyone came, including a student from Arkansas called Bill Clinton. As the North Vietnamese flags were unfurled against a blue March sky, kids in beads and beards eyeballed cops on horses and, without a hint of irony, everybody shouted 'Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh]'.

Wednesday 17: Football International, England v San Marino, Wembley Stadium, London NW10.

1: Launch of 'Doughnut Week 1993' in aid of Save the Children Fund.

Sir: As a retired and pensioned police inspector, I found Sir Peter Imbert's comments on the right of silence to be nave ('Imbert urges end to court combat', 14 October). Albert Camus said:

Oliver Frederick Ford, decorator, born Bournemouth Dorset 19 June 1925, died Lacock Wiltshire 17 October 1992.