When Western analysts pick non-Western heroes, they go for conciliatory figures, while Western heroes come from the warrior and confrontational class like Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. If non-Western analysts were to pick We...

Hence the new emphasis by President Clinton and Tony Blair that the real purpose of military action is to protect Iraq's neighbours from a future attack from Saddam Hussein. If so, it does seem a little odd that all but one of these neighbours, Kuwai...

As a result, a few years hence, Iraq may be in a position to unveil a strategic biological warfare capability sufficient to embolden Saddam to renew his geo-political ambitions in the Middle East. How would the UN Security Council then respond to Ira...

TREVOR COX Croydon, Surrey

The reason is simple. There is a pile of magazines on our bathroom floor, and the one on top is a copy of Sainsbury's Magazine for June 1995, which catches my eye every time I manoeuvre myself into the bath and begin the long process of getting out a...

However, Waterloo is a much less accessible station for the majority of people in Britain than St Pancras. A rail passenger from anywhere north of London would be likely to save at least one hour's journey time by using St Pancras rather than Waterlo...

When I married in 1937, I was in a job in which women were automatically dismissed on marriage. We therefore got married in a registrar's office during our lunch hours and went back to work in the afternoon, with no celebration of any kind, so that m...

Led by the former vice-chancellor of the Open University, Lord Perry of Walton, a group of peers is to look dispassionately at the drug and the contexts in which it is used. Far be it from us to anticipate the outcome. Suffice it to say that a lot of...

No sooner had I filed a series of reports to London on this new and terrible war crime of Saddam Hussein than a British diplomat, lunching with one of my editors in London, remarked that "Bob doesn't seem to understand the situation." True, he said, ...

PETER HARRIS Rugby, Warwickshire

The poor old Deputy Prime Minister fell victim at what is fast becoming an annual event at the Brit Awards - the Jarvis Cocker Moment. Named after the lead singer of Pulp, it is the moment when pop stars suddenly remember that their job isn't all abo...

A lot of us in private life probably risked a lot of flak by asking unsayable questions about Princess Diana. (Questions like: "Who cares?" and "Why has everyone gone mad?") But I think it is very healthy to say the unsayable, to question comfortable...

I love the landscape and the villages in my part of England. I like to walk in the woods and experience the passing of the seasons. I do not complain about the noise of tractors nor the smell of slurry. At the same time, I enjoy rock concerts and the...

Airbus Industrie does not receive subsidies - if Mr McRae means free, financial hand-outs. Rather, its industrial partners have received refundable launch-aid for some of the costs of research and development of specific aircraft programmes, with pri...

ROBERT SMITH Merstham, Surrey