Thirty is a number closely connected to newspapers, for in the 1920s and 1930s, a "Newspaper" was underworld slang for a prison sentence of 30 days. Thirty years is, according to the journal Nature in 1883, "the extreme limit of hippopotamian existen...

Sir: My experience as an "Irish American" in Britain has only confirmed and established the love and respect for Great Britain and the British that brought me to these islands to do my research years ago at Oxford. But it leaves me in the following q...

Sir: Andrew Marr's article "In Ireland, no war is still good news" (28 November), pointing out the benefits that peace has brought to Northern Ireland, is very welcome. But even Mr Marr slips into unnecessary pessimism by accepting the argument that ...

Sir: Monday was the 25th anniversary of the first Gay Liberation Front public demonstration against homophobic injustice. In those days - even after the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which I had helped to pilot on to the Statute book - homosexuals were s...

The Earl of Bradford has introduced a Private Member's bill to outlaw what he regards as a sneaky practice of automatic but optional service charges. According to our survey of some of the best London restaurants it's a practice which is spreading fa...

Sir: Does honesty really pay? My 21-year-old daughter graduated this year and is busy job hunting in London. After three years as an undergraduate and five months unemployed she has a cash flow problem. Two months ago, she picked up a discarded envel...

Sir: The listing of buildings is not a way of freezing the past, as stated by Peter Popham ("Be listed, be damned", 27 November). It provides a degree of protection to certain buildings by requiring a bureaucratic procedure prior to any substantial c...

The pounds 3.2bn reduction in government expenditure is welcome and although I hoped for more, it indicates our resolve to power the burgeoning cost of government. Furthermore, the lowering of taxes is very welcome and fully in line with Conservative...

Sir: "The Catholic Church remains absolutely central to Ireland's sense of itself as a nation" - so writes Conor Gearty ("When church and state divorce", 27 November). He thereby implicitly denies that a million Ulster Protestants can ever truly be r...

The message from much of the media is that teachers are idle incompetents whose holidays are too long and whose views are too trendy. Recently, Chris Woodhead, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools, has joined in, berating teachers for the methods...

How the IRA of 1918-21 bought, captured or stole the weapon will never be known. But it had passed into the hands of an Irish family and remained with them throughout the subsequent war in which Michael Collins died for the Provisional government of ...

Sir: One important lesson the Church of England might learn from recent events surrounding the Nine O'clock Service in Sheffield is that the adoption by church authorities of commercial criteria and business methods has its dangers. The Bishop of She...

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Sir: Jim White is wrong to propagate the myth that body-builders have "fuller G-strings" ("Running on the road to nowhere", 25 November). Now that many body builders (allegedly) take anabolic steroids, side effects dictate that the reverse is often t...

Sir: The opening paragraph of David Brazier's article about Rupert Bear ("Rupert loses his bearings", 24 November), which links the decline of the economy and the British Empire, the low esteem of politicians and the collapse of the Royal Family with...

Sir: May I clear up the confusion apparent in the report "Howard names 'white list' " (24 November) by Heather Mills? The short procedure we have been piloting since May simply involves giving asylum applicants an early interview and a deadline for s...

"She's different from everybody else in the world," stammered Robert ecstatically. "You simply couldn't describe her. No one could!" His mother continued to darn his socks and made no comment. Only William, his younger brother, showed interest. "How'...

The chief virtue of Mr Clinton's speech was that it recognised how much is at stake for the United States in Bosnia. It is not just a matter of the need to implement the peace agreement recently negotiated in Dayton, Ohio, though clearly the Clinton ...

insecticide investors, with the news that the poisonous redback spider, common in Australia, has been sighted several times in Osaka, Japan. On the Tokyo stock market, shares in Fumakilla surged forwards before anyone was even bitten.