Sir: So John Major thinks that "party disunity" is the main cause of the Tory annihilation in last week's local elections (reports, 6 May). It is equally likely that at least some of those who do still vote Tory do so for just the opposite reason: be...

Sir: The third year of crushing defeat for the Tories in the local elections has brought complaints from the defeated about the unfairness of the electorate voting on national and not local issues. It seems that the Tories are incapable of seeing tha...

Sir: Now Iran joins the list of countries to have a US-led embargo against it ("US allies alarmed at trade ban on Iran", 2 May). According to the French human rights organisation, Partage Avec Les Enfants Du Monde, in Haiti the number of children suf...

First we should understand the Russian mood. Half a century past, Russia stood bruisedly victorious, its lifeblood and treasure expended in what Soviet historians called the Great Patriotic War. The title alone spoke of the mystical nationalism that ...

As an admin man, Dennis Easby seemed to have everything. Invisible, anonymous, hard-working, unknown, uncharismatic, pedantic and a senior citizen of unimpeachable grammar and sentence construction, Dennis Easby had moulded the administration of rugb...

Neither chap, however, is ready for the full clinch. As soon as the newspapers start panting about national pacts, they go all coy. No pacts, says the Labour leadership. No deals. No chocolates. Got that, everyone? Despite which, things are hotting u...

Sir: I am sorry to have wounded Jim Tomlinson of Brunel University (Letters, 2 May) in his assumptions about the economic record of the post-war Labour government, but I fear that the criticisms he makes of my article do not accord with the documenta...

Sir: Jack Dominian's Another View ("Starting afresh on divorce", 27 April) presented an optimistic picture of life in the future for children involved in divorce. As an educationist I am not so convinced. In my view the law and education require the ...

Sir: I was very concerned to read that Philip Jackson (Letters, 3 May) had not received information about the National Lottery Sports Fund. Although we fell short of the required standard on this occasion, I would emphasise that we have tried extreme...

Sir: The Croatian expulsion of 15,000 Serbs from western Slavonia this week marks the end to centuries of Serb existence in this region of former Yugoslavia. It also brings the Croats a step closer to realising their long-held goal of creating an eth...

Sir: It is with an overwhelming sense of anger that I anticipate the arrival of the VE Day celebrations. So many people during the war gave their lives in the unselfish hope that their sacrifice would help to bring a better world. It was a vision who...

Sir: Your reporter Decca Aitkenhead ("A hard pill to swallow", 1 May) quotes women who complain of a lack of information from manufacturers and GPs on oral contraceptives. She fails to mention that the side-effects, contra-indications and monitoring ...

Sir: Like Marjorie Edwards (Letters, 3 May) I was 17 on VE Day, and 11 when war broke out for the second time in my parents' generation. The six years of my adolescence were spent in the shadow of war with its terrors and deprivations and, it has to ...

Sir: Jonathan Glancey hardly needed to go across the Channel to find the military influences on post-1945 architecture in England ("Concrete proof of Rommel's invasion", 3 May). On the opposite page you aptly printed a photograph of the Festival Hall...

Sir: Tariq Ali's letter to Prime Minister Rao (1 May) is in line with his recent emphasis on distortion and exaggeration. Having received round condemnation for his film on Mother Teresa broadcast in November on Channel 4, he has now turned his atten...

Sir: I would like to address Maggie Brown's objections to Take Our Daughters to Work Day (Diary, 3 May). Girls and boys need to think harder and aim higher when choosing careers, but the things that stand in the way of achieving those heights are dif...

Since coming to live in Germany I have become accustomed to a familiar pattern in conversations about the Second World War, a pattern that is both depressing and encouraging at the same time. When talking to a 70- year-old, I can expect that any refe...

Sir: R. Marcetic and others (letter, 5 May) complain that the British government has not invited a representative from Belgrade to the VE Day celebrations. However the Government is quite right: during the Second World War Serbs indeed suffered great...

It is tempting to think that the new president, being a man loyal to the tradition of Charles de Gaulle, will take a more sceptical attitude to the European Union than has President Mitterrand, and that he might align France with Britain in a common ...