“Pledging allegiance to God”

Going like a bomb

par Alan Coren

"Free nuclear fall-out shelters are being offered by Penta Garage, Reading, with all £18,000 Jaguar XJ 12s ordered from stock before August 1."

Initial reaction

par Mahood

British - it's an airline, by the way - having re-designed its logo, Mahood persuaded a few other Government organizations to follow suit.

After yew, Mr Lee

par Basil Boothroyd

Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, has called for his island state to become courteous by 1990 and avoid going the way of Britain, where "courtesies have become perfunctory".

Paper tigers

par Jonathan Sale

Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules, but no one when compiling a short-list of all the world's great heroes, talks of Gabriel d'Annunzio. It is certainly true that Hector and Lysander would not have_ bothered to get padded up before kicking poor Gabriel mto the middle of next week, and that he, being 56 and bespectacled, was an improbable pioneer of a new form of warfare.

Sweating blood

par Rob Buckman

You know me: always eager to save the National Health Service at any cost. Or at least always eager to save it any cost. Either way, I think I may have stumbled across a cost-saving idea which may well be hailed by administrators in the future as having all the ease and clean simplicity of the Battle of Stalingrad. In the course of this piece, by the way, for those of you who like quizzes there will be occasional quiz questions, so do stay awake; and for those of you who don't, there won't, so don't.

The Great Trollope Mystery

par Angela Milne

To the many admirers of Sherlock Holmes the adventure I am about to narrate may be no adventure at all, for it has none of the criminal elements in which my friend usually found himself involved. But it shows well how ingeniously and tirelessly that remarkable man would attack any puzzle that happened to corne his way when he had nothing better to do; as was his plight on this particular autumn evening, which found us ensconced either side of a blazing fire, reading while we awaited our supper.

The world At Sixes and sevens

par James Watson