Without Black's h-pawn, the position would be an easy win for White. The simplest way would be to play Ra8, a6, a7 then push the f-pawn to f7. After Black's Kxf7, White plays Rh8, queening his a-pawn or winning the black rook after Rxa7 by a check on...

Goodman Sir: I find the Rev Francis Bown's attitude to Charismatics both ignorant and alarming in his desire to rid our churches of any Charismatic expression (Letters, 25 August). Such views are not uncommon. What he expresses in his letter is a car...

Core, what a contest American attempts to export apples to Japan ran into problems with the oriental way of eating. In Japan, apples are washed, peeled, cored and cut into slices before serving. Biting into them is simply not done. The Americans, acc...

It was all inevitable. For most of the post-war period two facts sat uncomfortably alongside each other. The first was that a British university education was to a higher standard than that of most other countries. The second was that the proportion ...

It's not that I despise grand holidays in tropical paradises. It's more that I am struck by the way the essentials of a holiday draw on the same deep needs which fed our religious discussion of Paradise, feed our modern version of the love of wildern...

Now, throw away his expertise and give him something entirely different. Let's make him Chief of Staff of the Army of the Rhine, or Deputy Chief of Defence Staff. We could send him to serve a spell in Oman, Malaya or Borneo and he could write a book ...

Sir: The release of the human rights campaigner Harry Wu is laudable, as was his work to expose China's appalling prison regime. But the West's outcry is slightly risible, especially when the UK is introducing "boot camps" and the US puts you away fo...

There are, indeed, strong political arguments, as well as moral reasons, why the West ought to hit back with force against the perpetrators. One is that Western leaders, meeting in London last month after the seizure of the Muslim enclave of Srebreni...

Sir: While Nick Brown's concern for hill farmers (Letters, 26 August) is welcome, I fear he will find matters have moved on since the idea of paying farmers for environmental outputs was promoted a decade or more ago. The unpalatable truth is that fa...

Sir: Chris Blackhurst's article ("Met men 'made inaccurate claims'," 25 August) is an insult to our 1,500 members at the Met Office. Weather forecasters and other professionals have not fiddled the books to boost their pay packets. In fact, they have...

Sir: After the recent revelations of scandal in the Church of England in South Yorkshire, it is easy once again to blame the Charismatic Movement for allowing such things to happen. Yet, just as many a fond couple look back on their courting days as ...

Sir: While I agree that the Indian Army should be appropriately honoured at any commemoration of the war in Burma, I question Major G. R. Bide's statement (Letters, 24 August) that there were 750,000 Indian troops, who represented 75 per cent of the ...

Sir: So the Government has decided that the best way to cure present and future water shortages is to press for the greater use of water meters. At customers' expense, of course. The fear of higher bills will therefore solve the problem. We are a cou...

This week, our lexico-friendly survey of the current English wordscape provides a value-added entertainment moment - infotainment, if you like - without any funky-trainspotter factor in the sort of language any kidult can understand. So if you're not...

So valuable was Picasso's genius, for example, that he was able to pay quite hefty bills simply by scrawling his signature on the backs of used envelopes, and the rumour persists in cafes of the south of France that when smaller sums were involved he...

Sir: Your correspondent David Cooke (Letters, 24 August) says that he met U Aung San when serving in Burma and that Lord Mountbatten addressed a son of Aung San as "Your excellency". As the last British Assistant Resident, Putao, I myself met Aung Sa...

It would be wrong, however, to romanticise the good old days and claim that our cities in the past were anything other than smelly. No sanitation, no drains, elementary hygiene, bad breath, worse armpits... you get the message. In particular, the cit...

The X-Files - tag line: The Truth Is Out There - concerns FBI ggents Mulder and Scully and their close encounters with, in no particular order, aliens, vampires, shape-shifters, ghosts, missing links and the fearsome results of covert government drai...

Sir: You refer to the debate ("New college entry system would end scramble for places", 23 August), which has been continuing warmly for some months now, about a possible replacement for the current system of university and college admissions, operat...

Sir: We are appalled at the British government's decision to withdraw our troops from Gorazde (report, 26 August). It sends completely the wrong signal to the Bosnian Serbs and will encourage them to attack this so- called UN safe haven. There are 60...

Sir: Free collective bargaining failed the low paid and for this reason the trades unions now support a statutory minimum wage policy ("Unions to set low-pay target", 24 August). For most trades unions this is the opposite to what they said under the...

Sir: Dr A. Chatterjee (Letters, 25 August) says that Hillary and Tenzing chose never to reveal which of them arrived first at the summit of Everest. I remember reading, some 20 years ago, an interview with Tenzing Norgay in which he said (I paraphras...